Matters of Faith Read Online Free PDF

manner of disarray across every inch of this room. Classmates, teachers, movie stars, the woman who delivered the mail. Even, occasionally, friend’s mothers.
    Actually, Ira’s mother had appeared frequently. She still did sometimes. He’d never noticed her in more than an Ira’s mother who makes us brownies from scratch after school way, until after Ira died. She’d held him so often after that, rocking with him, whispering in his ear. Taking as much consolation as she gave.
    But he was no longer fourteen, and Ada was nobody’s mother, and she was here, in his room. His skin felt tight, not just the insistent pressure against his zipper, but everywhere. His wrists felt thick, strong, the back of his neck, his calves, the muscles he was rarely conscious of full and ready to move in some new way he had never even considered.
    Ada, still hipshot against the dresser’s top edge, reached out and flicked the row of necklaces with her index finger, sending them tinkling against each other, flashing silver and gold.
    â€œSo what’s all this?” she asked. Her voice was light, but he saw the tension in the set of her jaw, the crease between her eyebrows, the way her eyes roamed over the books on the shelf. He stood and moved in behind her, inhaling the scent of her hair, before he reached past her and stilled the necklaces in his fist. They felt fragile, like childhood, and he picked up the cross, opened the top drawer, and dropped it in with a clatter.
    The necklaces tangled there in the bottom of the drawer, messy, unimportant, and he slid the drawer closed while she kept him at a distance with that hip and a turned head.
    â€œNothing,” he murmured.
    She twisted away from him and shut the door, startling him with her assumption of what was allowed and appropriate in his parents’ house, his house. He resisted the urge to open the door again, to call down the stairs that it was all right, they weren’t doing anything.
    â€œSo it’s easy like that?” she asked, leaning her back against the door. “How many of those are there? Did you really believe in all that, all those?”
    â€œHey, what did I do? You know, I’ve told you—you know I’ve been searching for the right thing, the right path.”
    She narrowed her eyes at him and it didn’t matter, it did not slant her face toward ugly, no matter the emotion under it. She was simply, differently, perfectly perfect.
    â€œYeah. You told me,” she said.
    He moved toward her and she allowed him to come. She uncrossed her arms and let them drop to her sides, placing her palms flat against the door, turning her head so her throat was vulnerable to him. He placed his hands on her hips, pressed her into the door, and leaned down to kiss her neck just above her collarbone. She didn’t move anything but her head, turning it slightly toward him again and then spoke softly, her breath lightly ruffling against his ear, the promise of her lips nearly unbearable.
    â€œHow do I know you won’t just leave me like you left them?”
    â€œNo,” he whispered, moving his lips up her neck to her ear.
    â€œNo, I won’t leave you.”
    She swiveled her head back and forth slowly, her hair brushing against his face, and then pushed him away from her, picking up her suitcase, turning, and opening the door all in the same liquid motion. He was left in the doorway, watching her walk down the hall away from him in his own house with a suitcase in her hand, as though they had already been married for forty years and she was leaving him.
    Just before she turned into Meghan’s room she threw a final comment over her shoulder.
    â€œFaith in our Lord requires sacrifice, Marshall. Not jewelry.”

Three
    I PEEKED at the vegetarian tomato alfredo sauce while keeping one ear tuned to the footsteps and doors opening and closing above me. We’d never had a noisy house, not even when the kids