Chapter 5: Open Door

The Open Door Fellowship held its fall bake sale on the lawn behind the church, and by noon on Saturday there were two hundred people on it.

Levi parked across the street.

He wore a plain flannel shirt with no badge, and he had told me in the truck to keep my hood down.

"If she sees you first, she runs," he said.

"She won't run," I said. "She'll smile."

He looked at me, and for the second time that week I watched him decide not to ask.

We walked up the sidewalk together.

There were tables under white tents, and a children's choir was singing on a plywood stage.

Women in cardigans handed out lemon bars and cider.

A banner over the main tent read EVERY CHILD HAS A HOME HERE.

"Eighteen kids in the foster ministry," Levi said under his breath, reading the program. "Eighteen in the last ten years."

"That's a lot of children."

"Yes," he said, "it is."

I saw her before he did.

She stood behind the pie table with her silver perm and her pink cardigan, laughing at something a man in a tie was saying.

She was older, softer in the face, and her hands had spots on them.

She had one hand on the shoulder of a small girl in a yellow dress.

The girl had her eyes on the ground.

My feet stopped.

Levi stopped with me.

"That's her?" he said.

"That's her."

I couldn't tell him anything else.

I was six, and my braids were wet, and that voice was telling me good girl.

Marlene lifted her head and looked straight across the lawn at me.

I watched it happen.

The smile did not slip.

It grew.

She said something to the man in the tie, patted the little girl's head, and came around the pie table with both arms out.

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