Dancing with the Sun by Kay Bratt

Author:Kay Bratt [Bratt, Kay]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781503904811
Publisher: Lake Union Publishing
Published: 2018-11-26T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER ELEVEN

As the hours passed, Sadie’s mind played tricks on her. Several times she thought she heard voices drifting in from far away, only to sit up and hear nothing more. Lauren was tucked into the shelter, and Sadie lay squeezed in beside her, as much as the small space would allow.

After she’d carved off more shards from the stick of heart pine, it hadn’t been that difficult to relocate their only source of warmth. Sadie had quietly gathered more rocks for protection against flying embers, tucked kindling in, and then layered it all with bigger branches. Using another sliver of heart pine, she let a page of the book be the torch as she brought the flame over.

For a change, something had gone smoothly. Sadie had even found it easier to see, as though she’d suddenly been given night vision.

Her fingers burned from pulling some of the bigger sticks from their old fire to add to their new one. And unless that heart pine was truly a miracle, she didn’t think the kindling was enough to last the night. But to get more would mean moving farther from camp, which meant losing sight of Lauren.

So she waited. And the silence gave her a lot of time to think. And to cherish the moment. As brutal as the situation was, they hadn’t been so close physically since Lauren had been a child. It had taken more than six months of having Lauren home with them before Sadie had finally felt like Lauren was hers. In the adoption community, it was talked about in hushed conversations, in private Facebook groups, or within the trusted circles of close friends: the adoption journey didn’t always end with a happily ever after. The well-kept secret was that not every adoption was an immediate love connection. Sometimes the child one had waited for this long felt like a stranger even long after they were officially adopted. Some mothers even felt like they didn’t love their new addition—possibly would never love them. Some children rejected their adoptive family in the beginning and for months and even years afterward.

But all of their initial problems had been because of Sadie, not Lauren.

The veterans all counseled the newbies to fake it till you make it. And that was what Sadie had done. Now she knew it had been because she’d put up walls, but in the beginning, Lauren hadn’t automatically gravitated toward her as she’d expected. As she’d hoped. That had made the bonding even more difficult. Combined with the crushing ongoing grief of losing Jacob, Sadie had struggled maybe more than some.

But then the moment had come. Lauren had come down with an especially vicious strain of the flu, and in the wee hours of her worst night, when it had been Sadie’s shift to tend to her daughter, she had prayed that God take the sickness from Lauren and give it to her, if need be. Her own prayer had astonished her as soon as the words had been muttered.

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