Page 20 of A Lesson In Beginning

“Good night… Levi.” The smile that spread across his face was all the encouragement I needed. I trudged back through the dark house towards my room, pausing for a moment in the doorway of the other guest room where Samuel slept peacefully. After shutting my bedroom door, I curled up on the bed, the lamplight casting a warm glow over the bed and offering just enough light to write by.

At first, I wrote small thoughts down; what it was like to arrive here in this strange place, what it was like to see Ruth again after these last few years. I wrote about how it felt to discover their well-kept secret, and then to be offered a job working for them at The Temple. Before I knew it, words were flowing nearly without conscious effort, forming and flowing from my mind like water from a dam, down my arm and out of my fingers through the pen touching paper.

My hand cramped after a while. Finishing the thought in my head, I set the pen down, stretching my fingers as the sound of birdsong filtered into the room. It was almost morning. I had stayed up all night writing. A quick glance at the clock showed that I still had a few hours I could catch if I turned in now, but even as I flipped the lamp light off and set the journal aside, the first several pages now covered in my scribblings, my mind still raced with everything I had seen and experienced since arriving at Ruth And Levi’s house. My eyes stung with lack of sleep, and eventually my body’s needs took over as I drifted off into a fitful bout of dreams that left me tossing and turning for the few hours of early morning that remained.

* * *

“Mama? Playground? Please?” Samuel’s begging was exasperating as he repeated his plea for the millionth time since he had woken this morning — at the crack of dawn, mind you. So much for catching up on sleep.

“Not today, sweet lamb.” I managed around a yawn.

“Why not, Mama?” His lower lip stuck out so far he could have tripped on it, his pouting the singular thing he had truly honed in his barely three years of life.

“Mama is a little tired, but perhaps we can go tomorrow.” I pulled him in for a hug, only to be thwarted by his petulance.

“Adah, might I have a word?” Ruth’s voice piped up from the kitchen where she was stirring dinner. She had shown me the wonders of a crock-pot this morning and I could not lie; I was drooling over the wonder of it. To put ingredients into it and not have to check on it constantly, as one would a pot on the stovetop? It was a marvel; one I wished I’d had years prior.

“Run along, Samuel. Mama will come to play with you in a moment.”

“Can I watch cartoons?” He looked up at me, hands folded under his chin like a prayer, as he batted his long lashes, giving me the most adorable expression.

“Yes, you can, love.” With a gentle pat on the head, he dashed off to the living room, leaving me to join Ruth in the kitchen.

“Why don’t I call Ollie and Delilah? See if they want to take the kids to the park? What do you think?”

“No, thank you.” I gave her a polite smile, gently refusing her kind offer.

“It’s really no trouble, Adah.”

“I do not need any more charity than we have already required. Honestly, I am perfectly capable of caring for Samuel. I simply need a second cup of coffee.”

“You mean fourth?” She asked with a smirk.

“Excuse me?” I turned to her, having already begun preparing a refill of coffee for myself.

“That is your fourth cup of coffee today, sis.” She laughed lightly, and I felt myself bristle in response. “It’s only a joke, Adah. I promise. No judgment.” Her quick revision of words was an obvious attempt to calm my prickly demeanor.

“If I have drank too much of your coffee, I would be happy to repay you with my first paycheck, Ruth.” I bit out her name through clenched teeth, feeling far more defensive than I had any right to be at that moment, especially after Levi’s words from last night.

“Oh, no! That’s not what I meant at all! I’ve been known to drink an entire pot by myself, even two on the rare occasion when Theo was first struggling to sleep through the night. I have known sleepless nights. Trust me.” She laughed lightly, her hand touching my wrist in commiseration, and the ire within me began to melt away.

“I apologize. I am feeling a little more cranky than normal this morning. You’re right, I did not sleep well.” I had expected her to brush off my apology, to go on about her day as though nothing had happened. Instead, she led me back to the table, sitting beside me with her own cup of coffee — although I highly doubted she needed it, as chipper as she seemed to be today.

“Talk to me about it. What kept you up? Was it Samuel?”

“No, it wasn’t Samuel.” I looked down at my mug, fiddling with the handle in an attempt to dodge the conversation that lingered in my mind, the one that I had been having with myself all morning.

“I’m here to listen. Would you prefer I be a sounding board, or would you like advice?”

“I am not sure I understand your meaning.” My brow arched in confusion at her odd turn of phrase.

“It’s a phrase Levi and I have come to use often, as have some of the others. We learned it in therapy.”

“You and Levi went to therapy? Together?” I couldn’t help but stare at her in shock. I knew that therapy was something the modern world utilized, but I had been told so often that it was for weak, godless people who were searching for answers they refused to look to God for.

“We are still in therapy. It was Levi’s idea, actually. When we first left Zion, we went often, both together and separately. Now we still go together, but only about once a month, or as needed, if a situation arises.” She shrugged off my surprise like it was nothing, but it was everything. To think that a man like Leviticus Temple would go to therapy, and of his own volition, left me feeling completely flummoxed.

“I don’t know what to say.”

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