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“So we swim, and we...help people?”
“That’s exactly right. Now, we need a really cool name.” She said “cool,” just like the kids did. She figured that probably that word was out of date, like all the other words that had come and gone throughout her lifetime. She was too old to care and definitely didn’t need to keep up with them. Back when she was in school, she just had to keep up on the swear words so she could know when a kid needed detention. Beyond that, she couldn’t be bothered.
“Does anybody have any ideas?”
“You kind of sprung this on us,” Asenath said. “Can’t we have a little bit of time to think? Like, until our next class?”
They met three days a week. She supposed she could give them two days to think about a name.
“All right. That is reasonable. We’ll take two days to think of a name, and then we’ll come back on Wednesday, and we’ll decide on a name.”
“Who are we going to help? And what are we going to do?”
“Well, I don’t know. I just think we should help people. Whether that means giving them things, or staying with them, or—”
“Matching them up with someone. People who are lonely could find their soulmate in us.” Opal looked like she was very proud of herself for coming up with that.
“I don’t know if we want to get into that. That’s...complicated.”
“I think we should vote on it. Isn’t that what groups do?” Kitten said slyly.
“All right. We’ll vote on it on Wednesday. And we’ll vote on a name. Come with your favorite.”
She didn’t know whether they’d end up helping Ellen or not, but Ellen had given them a reason to band together. And for that, Bernadine was thankful.
Chapter 15
“Are you going to keep her?”
Ford Hansen sat in Travis’s living room, staring at the man he’d taken under his wing more than ten years ago. Part of the reason he’d done it was because he wanted to give back to the community, part of it was because of Travis’s aptitude, but most of it was because of his wife, Morgan. Actually, almost all the credit should go to Morgan. She had seen something in Ford that no one else had seen, or maybe, she’d just taken the time to draw out the best in him.
He could feel his lips wanting to turn up as he thought about his wife. They’d had more than two decades together and had raised four children. And he loved her more now than he did the day they got married. She was one of those people who did not just put on a show but was truly good from the inside out, truly beautiful in both places.
She’d given up a lucrative career because she hadn’t wanted to violate her convictions. He could admire someone like that, and did.
And maybe, that had been God’s plan all along, because ultimately, while Morgan was the vehicle that God used, it was God who would reach down for Ford and not allow him to give up on life and become a recluse after his accident.
He resisted the urge to scratch at his eye patch and waited while Travis thought.
“I guess I hadn’t really thought I had any other choice,” Travis said slowly, as though the idea of not keeping the baby had never dawned on him.
“If that’s what you want.”
“Maybe that’s what I think I need to do,” Travis said slowly, as though he were thinking about the words as they were coming out.
“If you think that’s what God wants, that’s what you need to do.” That was always his advice. Sometimes he would tell people to read a certain passage, or passages, in the Bible, particularly if what they thought God wanted them to do violated Scripture. After all, God didn’t take the trouble to write the Bible only to tell man to go against it. Therefore, if anyone thought that God was telling them to do something the Bible clearly said not to do, that man was wrong.
But sometimes there were cases where either option would be right from a biblical standpoint. It was at that point in time where a person had to pray, seek the Lord, and then make the choice that they thought God wanted.
“I could report it to authorities, but you know they’re going to take the baby from me. And the mom clearly said that she wanted me to raise her.”
“You do know people are going to assume that’s your baby?”
“I know.”
“And I’ve already heard rumors that they think it’s Ellen’s baby too. That...could negatively affect her.”
“I know. Especially since she’s already been here helping me.”
