Lay It on My Heart Read Online Free

After he stops talking, his eyes keep moving over the three of us like he’s tracing a shape with them in the air. “Even my body has been changed.”
    â€œSon,” Daze says. “Do you need to sit down?” But he doesn’t sit down or even seem to hear her.
    â€œAre you smiling?” Phoebe says. Her pointing finger sinks to her waist. And he is smiling, right through his beard, and it would be better if he weren’t, but when he gets like this, preoccupied with a vision, it’s pretty much all he can see.
    â€œIf you could for once grasp how worry is just unnecessary,” my father says.
    I have been a nervous wreck, too, about living on faith alone, but I don’t say this out loud. I want to show my father that unlike Phoebe, whose flesh sometimes gets the better of her, I have enough faith not to worry.
    â€œAm I hearing that you do not plan to go back to work?” Phoebe says. “Is that what I’m hearing?”
    â€œIt’s interesting the way everyone uses the word
work
to indicate what one does for money,” my father says. “I have never stopped my true work. Not once. I am imperfect, and I have not always worked in pure accord with the spirit, but I have never stopped trying.”
    â€œDavid is a handpicked servant of the Lord,” Daze says. “But, son, remember that you can do the Lord’s work anywhere. Even at a job with a paycheck.”
    I am staring at the floor, now, feeling full-on sick to my stomach, either from the cramps or from the fact that we’ve all been waiting for my father to come home, and he’s only been back an hour, and he and Phoebe are already going at it. Beside the doorway where he stands is a heating vent, and it looks like the hem of his robe is dancing with forced heat the way my nightgown does when I stand there in winter to get warm. But there isn’t any forced heat, because it’s not winter. And as I lift my head to where my father’s fingers peek out from his sleeves, I see that they are all spreading out, then coming back together, very quickly, a motion like scissors that travels up his arms and causes his robe to sway.
    I say, “Dad,” and when he looks at me now he’s blinking even faster, way too fast, like the fingers and eyes are all being run by the same engine that’s overheating inside him. “Dad,” I say, “are you okay?” And I don’t know where this comes from since I’ve never asked him or any other adult if they’re okay before. And he keeps blinking at me like he thinks he might know me but can’t place how, can’t remember my name. The clutching in my stomach moves up toward my heart.
    â€œCharmaine, go upstairs,” Phoebe says.
    â€œI have a burden,” my father says, talking right to me, as if I’m the only one who can understand. Sometimes I think I might be. “It has to do with the salvation of the people of Rowland County. Not this town, with all its churches, its pharisees, but the dark, lost outskirts. I pray that I am up to the task,” he says, “but I worry that I am not.”
    â€œBut you’re willing, right?” I say.
    â€œDaze,” says Phoebe, “Charmaine has some exciting news she might like to tell you upstairs.”
    â€œI am willing,” my father says. “Yes, Charmaine. Charmaine, thank you for that.” He closes his eyes briefly, seems to steady himself, then opens them. “What exciting news?”
    â€œNothing,” I say, mortified at the thought of my period.
    â€œIt’s not that I’m not concerned for the people of Rowland County,” says Phoebe. “I’m just growing more concerned every day for the people of this family.”
    Daze stands up too fast and lurches to the right, which is the side that lags, still, from a stroke she had last year. “I’m fine, I’m fine,” she says, though neither Phoebe nor