Page 19 of My Vows Are Sealed

My dad pulled the car into the driveway, and my mom got out and paid attention to her son for the first time tonight. If you could call unbuckling him from his booster seat and telling him to go inside with Dad paying attention to him. I grabbed both of our Bibles and started to head inside, but she grabbed my arm before I could.

“Brendan, you shouldn’t be encouraging his infatuation with that girl,” she scolded me.

My jaw clenched and my hand balled into a fist. Whatever her issue with Darla was, it needed to stop. Darla had been nothing but sweet and humble ever since I’d known her, and she adoredNathan. Why was that an issue?

“Whatis your problem with Darla?” I growled. “Why all of a sudden is it such a problem for you that Nathan and I are spending time with her? It was never an issue when we were growing up, but now that she’s getting older, it’s not okay anymore?”

“It’s none of your concern!” she exclaimed. “Whatisyour concern is doing what I tell you, and that’s staying far away from that girl! For your information, I’ve been informed that she’s a seriously disturbed child and has major disciplinary issues. She’s not someone either of you need to be spending time with. She’s a bad influence.”

What the hell? Seriously disturbed child? Major disciplinary issues? Bad influence? Was she joking? If you looked up “well-behaved kid” in the dictionary, there would have been a picture of Darla Jones next to the definition. She obeyed her father blindly, to the point that it actually worried me, and she was the quietest and most soft-spoken girl I’d ever met.

So why was my mom under the impression that Darla was some sort of juvenile delinquent? What on Earth was Pastor Jones saying to people about his daughter? Just today, he’d tried to convince me that Darla lacked the mental capacity to understand her own thoughts and feelings, and now he was telling my mom that she was disturbed and acting out? Why was he trying to smear his daughter’s image like that to everyone? What could he possibly gain by doing that?

“Well, it’s not like either of us see her outside of school and church anyway,” I bit out. “Anything else?”

“No, that’s it,” she said matter-of-factly with a smug, superior smile on her face, almost like she was proud of herself for this little display.

“Okay. Good. I’m going to go help Nate brush his teeth and get into his PJs, since you have aheadache,” I said as sarcastically as I could manage, making it clear that I didn’t buy that excuse for a second.

Beyond done with her bullshit, I took off toward the house without giving her a chance to respond and headed straight to my brother’s bedroom. He was sitting on his bed holding his little platypus Beanie Baby and looking like he was on the verge of tears.

My heart squeezed as I closed the bedroom door behind me and went to sit next to him. Screw what my mother said. Nathan was happier with his surrogate big sister in his life, and I wasn’t about to discourage his relationship with her just because my mom had gotten a bug up her ass.

“What’s going on in that head of yours, bud?” I asked.

“What did I do wrong?” he mumbled. “Dad told me to go right to my room. He only does that when I’m in trouble.”

I knew it was wrong, but sometimes I genuinely hated my parents. There was absolutelynoexcuse for treating Nathan like a nuisance just because it wasn’t convenient for them to spend time with him or they didn’t feel like being the parents of a four-year-old on any given day. They’d made the choice to keep him and raise him instead of giving him up for adoption, and that meant they had responsibilities. But every chance they got, they shoved those responsibilities off on me. Not that I minded in the slightest because I loved this kid more than I could put into words, but it wasn’t fair to him. He didn’t understand why Mom and Dad didn’t want anything to do with him half the time.

“You didn’t do anything wrong, Nate,” I told him. “Mom and Dad are just super tired tonight, so I’m going to help you get into your PJs and get your teeth brushed. Okay?”

He nodded.

“Did you pick a name for this platypus yet?” I asked, trying to distract him.

“Darla,” he murmured. “Cuz she’s the one who told me what it was.”

I chuckled. “She’ll love that. I’ll tell her when I see her at school tomorrow.”

Finally, I got him to look at me, and his pure, innocent smile killed me. I would have done anything in the whole world to see that smile.

“Since Mom didn’t want the picture I colored, can you give it to Darla for me?”

Seriously. This kid.Howcould my parents just shove him off to the side? He was too cute.

“How can I say no to that face?” I chuckled. “How about if I help you write ‘To Darla, from Nathan’ on it so she’ll know it’s from you?”

“Okay!” he said excitedly.

I grabbed his Bible and pulled the picture out of it, then went to get one of his big hardcover picture books and pulled a pen out of my Bible case. I had no idea why I even bothered taking it to church with me on Wednesdays, but it was force of habit, I guessed.

“Okay, you know how to write ‘to,’ right?” I prodded as I handed him the pen.

“T-O,” he said out loud as he scrawled on the top of the page. “How do you spell Darla?”

“Big D,” I instructed, then waited for him to form the letter. “Little A. Little R. Little L. And little A. Good job.”

It was the messiest writing job on the planet, but it was kind of hilarious. And I knew it’d make Darla smile.

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