Dream A Little Dream

managed to ask him. 'Chocolate or vanilla?'

He didn't say anything. She felt him lag, but she kept tugging him toward the window, refusing to show any weakness to these people. 'I'll bet you'd rather have chocolate.'

The young man standing behind the window had buzzed hair and a bad complexion. He stared at her, looking confused.

'Two small cones,' she said. 'One vanilla, one chocolate.'

An older man appeared behind him. She remembered him as Don Brady, the cafe's owner, and a Temple supporter. He pushed the young clerk out of the way and regarded her with distaste. 'Window's closed.'

'You can't do that, Mr. Brady.'

'For the likes of you, I can.'

The wooden partition slammed down.

She felt sick, not for herself so much as for Edward. How could they do something like this in front of a child?

'Everybody hates us,' he whispered at her side.

'Who cares about them?' she replied loudly. 'This place has lousy ice cream anyway. I know where we can get something really good.'

She pulled Edward away from all of them and headed back to the Escort, forcing herself to move slowly, so it wouldn't look as if she were running away. She opened the door for Edward, then leaned down to help him fasten his seat belt, but she was trembling so hard, she could barely hold it in place.

Something brushed her shoulder. She straightened and saw a chubby middle-aged woman in bright-green slacks and a white overblouse standing behind her. A green parrot pin perched on her collar and matching wooden earrings swung from beneath tightly curled salt-and-pepper hair. Her face was round, her features blunt, and she wore large glasses with flesh-colored frames that swooped down at the sides.

'Please, Mrs. Snopes. I need to speak to you.'

Rachel expected to see hostility on the woman's face, but all she saw was worry. 'I'm not Mrs. Snopes anymore.'

The woman barely seemed to hear her. 'I need you to heal my granddaughter.'

Rachel was so taken aback she couldn't respond.

'Please, Mrs. Snopes. Her name is Emily. She's only four, and she has leukemia. For six months, she was in remission, but now…' Behind her glasses, the woman's eyes filled with tears. 'I don't know what we'll do if we lose her.'

This was a hundred times worse than the nightmare at the ice-cream window.' I-I'm sorry about your granddaughter, but there's nothing I can do.'

'Just lay your hands on her.'

'I'm not a faith healer.'

'You can do it. I know you can. I used to see you on television, and. I don't care what anyone says, I know you're a great woman of God. You're our last hope, Mrs. Snopes. Emily needs a miracle.'

Rachel was sweating. Her navy dress stuck to her chest, and the collar felt as if it were choking her. 'I-I'm not the person to give you a miracle.'

If the woman had been hostile, it would have been so much easier to endure than the deep suffering that lined her face. 'You are! I know you are!'

'Please… I'm sorry.' She pulled away and hurried toward the other side of the car.

'At least pray for her,' the woman said, looking lost and hopeless. 'Pray for our baby girl.'

Rachel gave a jerky nod. How could she tell this woman she never prayed now, that she had no faith left?

She sped blindly back to Heartache Mountain with her stomach twisted into a knot. Old memories came back to her of Dwayne's faith healing. She remembered a woman who'd had one leg longer than the other, and she could see Dwayne now, kneeling before her, grasping her longer leg at the shoe.

In the name of Jesus Christ, heal! Heal, I say!

And everyone watching on television saw the leg get shorter.

What they didn't see was the small action Dwayne had performed when he'd first knelt before her. As he'd lifted her longer leg, he'd surreptitiously slipped the back of her shoe down on her heel, and when he'd cried out to heaven, he'd simply pushed it back up. From the audience it looked as if her leg were getting shorter.

Rachel remembered exactly when her love for her husband had turned to contempt. It was the night she discovered that he wore a tiny radio transmitter in his ear during the healing services. One of his aides sat backstage and whispered the details of various illnesses audience members had noted on the cards they filled out before the broadcast. When Dwayne called out the names of people he'd never set eyes on, as well as precise facts about their illnesses, his fame as a faith healer had spread.

It had spread to a woman with wooden parrot earrings who somehow believed Dwayne Snopes's widow could heal her dying granddaughter.

Her fingers convulsed on the steering wheel. A short time earlier, she'd been daydreaming about making love with Gabe again, but reality had just hit her in the face.

She had to get out of this town soon, or she'd go crazy. The chest was a dead end. She needed to find Dwayne's Bible and pray that it would tell her what she wanted to know.

Except she didn't pray anymore.

Edward's soft sigh drew her back. They'd pulled up in front of the cottage, and she realized she had forgotten about the ice cream. She regard him with dismay. 'Oh, baby, I forgot. I'm sorry.'

He stared straight ahead, not protesting, not saying anything, merely once again accepting the fact that life had handed him the short end of the stick.

'We'll go back.'

'Don't have to. It's okay.'

But it wasn't okay. She turned around and headed straight to the Ingles grocery store where she bought him a Dove Bar. He dropped the wrapper in a trash can by the front door, licked the chocolate, and they set off across the parking lot toward the Escort.

That was when she saw that all of its tires had been slashed.

12

Rachel got up before six the next morning, even though she hadn't slept well. Barefoot and wearing her customary sleeping attire, a pair of panties and a man's work shirt she'd found in her closet, she padded into the kitchen.

As she put on a pot of coffee, she watched the buttery early-morning light splash through the back windows and make a crosshatched pattern on the scarred old farm table. Outside, dew sparkled in the grass, and the daylilies turned up their bright-orange trumpets. The pink crepe myrtle tree at the edge of the woods seemed blurred in the morning light, rather like a fanciful older woman in a feathery boa.

After the ugliness of last night, her eyes misted at the simple beauty around her. Thank you, Annie Glide, for your magical cottage.

If only this beautiful place could fix her troubles. She had no money to replace the Escort's tires, and she didn't know how she'd manage. Getting to work wouldn't be a problem. It was a long walk, but she could make it. But what about Edward? Last night Kristy had come to get them, and each day she took him to and from the day-care center, but she'd be moving soon, and then what?

Rachel had to find the Bible.

The morning was too precious to spoil with any more worry, especially when she knew she'd have plenty of time to do that later on in the day while she worked. The coffee was done, and she poured it into an old green mug that still bore the remnants of a Peter Rabbit decal, then carried it toward the front of the house.

This was her favorite time of the day, before Edward awakened, when everything was new and fresh. Sipping her coffee in the creaky wooden rocker on the front porch while the rest of the world slept was more precious to her than all of the luxuries of her old life with Dwayne. Then she could dream her new dreams, the little ones. A small