The Extraordinary Deaths of Mrs. Kip by Sara Brunsvold

Author:Sara Brunsvold
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction;Christian fiction;FIC042100;FIC044000
Publisher: Baker Publishing Group
Published: 2022-04-27T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 17

Hearing Mai’s name unexpectedly on Aidyn’s lips was one of the most startling—and most beautiful—moments Clara had experienced in a long time.

Her heart leapt at the thought of what this would mean for Aidyn. God was connecting the chapters he was authoring in the girl’s days. Threads weaving seamlessly as only the Master can do. The breeze from his busy hand tickled Clara’s soul.

“Oh, Miss Kelley,” she breathed. “The Lord is up to something. Even now.”

Aidyn frowned. “What?”

Eventually she would understand. Someday.

“Never mind my babble, honey. Tell me how you found out about Mai.”

“Actually, I sort of just happened upon her name in connection with yours. I don’t know much about her, other than she was a friend of yours and you two did some big things together.”

“Big things, huh?” Clara chuckled. “Anything we happened to achieve was God, not us. Of that I can assure you. We were bumbling fools half the time. More than half the time, really.”

Aidyn readied her pen. “Sounds like a story I’d love to hear.”

Her eyebrows were pointed up in anticipation, her eyes open to see, her ears open to receive. No doubt she would indeed treat the story with love, as Bella Woods had predicted.

It was the story Aidyn had been meant to find.

Clara settled into the wheelchair and began. “I met Mai in the hallway of KU Med in May 1975.”

Over the course of the next several minutes, she laid out the events in the first months after meeting Mai with as much accuracy as she could muster, thanks to the journals. She explained the sordid Vietnam-era politics between America and Laos, and how two parents found themselves completely at the mercy of a foreign government they didn’t understand or necessarily trust. She spoke of the long nights holding Mai’s hand, kneeling in prayer. The waiting. The crying. The sore knees. She told of the agencies involved and the daring escape plan. She shared what she knew of the horrors in the refugee camp, where the two terrified children stayed for weeks with only a single change of clothes and lonely dreams of their parents’ voices.

Then, in joyful crescendo, she told of the miraculous day the children finally stepped off the plane, safe and relieved, and leapt into their parents’ aching arms.

Recounting it welled up all the old emotions, as if the events were as fresh and real as when they first happened. More than ever, Clara longed to reunite with Mai, wherever she was.

When Clara finished, she turned to Aidyn, who sat stock-still, jaw hanging loose, taking it all in.

“Wow,” Aidyn said softly.

Her reaction made Clara giggle. “You bet, wow. That’s a big-God wow right there.”

The girl shook her head, clearly still in amazement. “I had no idea anything like that happened back then.”

“Many times over, honey.”

“What happened after the kids arrived in Kansas City?”

Though she kind of hated to do it, considering the massive headway they had just made, they did have an agreement, one Clara was bound to keep.

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