Obsidian Faith Read Online Free

then the footprints of a small person walking toward the bed. He didn’t have to turn around to see who it was.
    “Trevor? Are you asleep?” Shanice stage-whispered.
    “No,” he said.
    That was apparently all the invitation she needed. Shanice went around to the other side and hopped into bed with him.
    “It’s way past your bedtime. You’re going to be in so much trouble,” he said.
    “Not if you don’t tell on me,” she said, and snuggled under the cover next to him. They lay side by side in silence for a while until Shanice couldn’t stand it. “Mom and Dad won’t let them take you away again, Trevor. You’ll see.”
    Her confidence was reassuring. He’d been hurting so much for David and Elena he hadn’t thought of where he would go if they hadn’t made some arrangements for him. His uncle Philip had called Isaiah promising to contact them again with the funeral plans, and asking if Trevor wanted to come stay with him, but Isaiah had thankfully declined.
    “I asked Dad if Uncle David and Aunt Elena were in heaven and he said they were,” Shanice said with the certainty of a ten-year-old whose budding faith could not be shaken.
    “You know what I think?”
    “What?” she said.
    “I think it sucks that they’re gone. It sucks that whoever hit their car didn’t even stop to see if they were okay, or to call the police. And it really sucks that I’m never going to see them again!”
    Shanice didn’t call him on getting so loud that he could’ve woken up the whole house. She just scooted closer and hugged his neck. Trevor was so overcome by her offer of comfort his heart unclenched and all the pain lodged there from when he was told of his parents death came rushing out of him. As tears streamed out of his eyes, Shanice held him close, not caring that he was wetting up her pajama top with his tears.
    He wasn’t aware that Shanice was crying, too, until he heard her say through her tears, “You’re still my adopted brother, Trevor, and I’ll never leave you. ‘One for each other and each other for one,’ right?”
    “Right.” Trevor could only agree, because it seemed as if the one thing that would never change would be the commitment they’d made to each other as orphans.

    Trevor hated that the topic of conversation after David and Elena’s funeral became “who will take the orphan boy they adopted?” The Baileys, as his godparents, had been the most likely candidates, but Isaiah and Brenda had inquired and were not qualified to take him since they now had the twins, another foster child, and Shanice in a house that was considered too small to add another adoptive child.
    Trevor’s preference would’ve been the Baileys, if for no other reason than to be spared this conversation. However, David’s and Elena’s parents called the meeting immediately following the gathering of friends and family after the funeral where, like it or not, he was a witness to their heated debate.
    “Connie and I live in a retirement home,” David’s father, Robert said. “Hardly the kind place for a teenager.” A thin, wiry man with wispy salt and pepper hair, who couldn’t seem to stand still, he paced the floor incessantly as he spoke.
    “Maureen, what about you and Edgar?” Grandma Connie addressed Elena’s parents. She was the opposite of her husband, a matronly woman of average height. “Can you take him?”
    “We already have our daughter Nina and her three children living with us,” Edgar said. “We’re packed to the gills as it is.” Elena’s father was the most grandfatherly of the two, because he actually engaged Trevor when he was around.
    “Can’t you two move into David and Elena’s house and take care of him?” Maureen said. Elena’s mother didn’t look as much like a grandmother as Grandma Connie, because she was still slender enough to look younger.
    “And lose our rent-controlled condo in the city? We can’t go back to taking care of lawns and homeowner’s fees