A Song for Issy Bradley by Carys Bray Read Free Book Online Page B

in anticipation of being selected, something she’d learned during her first week of school. “Yes, Issy.”
    “Doing as you’re told,” she said.
    “Well done! How important is obedience?”
    “Very important,” she said.
    “Yes! Obedience is the first law of heaven. Do you know why? Obedience to the commandments makes us free. Free from sin and free to receive blessings from Heavenly Father. The key to freedom is obedience. Now, that was President Carmichael on the phone.”
    “Was he fantastic?” Zipporah asked.
    “He was.”
    “So what did Captain Fantastic want?”
    “Don’t be disrespectful, Alma. He’s asked me to go to a missionary meeting on Saturday morning.”
    “But it’s my birthday party,” Jacob protested.
    “It’s a small sacrifice when you think about it,” Ian said gently.
    Claire sighed, stood up, and began to stack the dirty plates. She started to walk toward the kitchen but stopped in the doorway, holding the tower of dishes like a waitress. She opened her mouth, appeared to think better of it, and closed it again.
    “Let me help you with those.” He got up from the table and followed her into the kitchen.
    “It’s no sacrifice for you,” she said as she dumped the dirty plates in the sink and began rinsing the gravy away. “You just got out of supervising fifteen seven-year-olds at a party. I only organized it because you promised you’d help.”
    He leaned against the counter next to the sink and nodded sympathetically while she adjusted to the news.
    “Nothing I say will make any difference, will it?” she asked, staring out the kitchen window and into the back garden.
    He reached out a tentative hand and stroked the soft flesh of her arm.
    “Right, then,” she said, and she dried her hands on a towel and padded back into the dining room. “Who wants rhubarb crumble?” he heard her ask. There were shouts of “me,” and when he returned to the dining room a moment later she was fine.
    Ian glances at his watch as the dock road bridges, merges, and stretches into the suburbs. The missionary meeting ran overtime and he is later than promised. Claire will be upset. A spurt of acid burns his esophagus. He holds the steering wheel with one hand and rummages in his suit pocket for the little plastic box of indigestion tablets. He can’t reach past the wad of missionary pass-along cards, so he tugs them out of the pocket and places them between his knees. He has promised to distribute them as part of the Church’s new advertising campaign. He isn’t very good with nonmembers, but the missionary meeting has inspired him to be bolder. President Carmichael challenged all the bishops to a competition to see who could give the cards out the quickest. Then he shared a story about a General Authority who sat next to Mick Jagger on a plane in the 1980s and told him he’d go to hell if he didn’t turn his life around. That’s boldness for you! Ian finds the box and when he stops at traffic lights he flicks it open and knocks back a couple of capsules.
    He’ll make up for his lateness by stopping at McDonald’s. He’ll buy a milkshake for Jacob and they can have a nice father-and-son chat. Afterward he’ll make notes for the talk he will deliver at church tomorrow, a talk he has been mentally preparing for the past few days. He’ll speak about sacrifice, he’ll mention missing Jacob’s party as an illustration, and he’ll also tell a story about the children that will go some way toward making up for not seeing much of them this weekend. He likes to use real-life stories in his talks because they have a greater impact on the congregation. Plus, he looked up self-sacrifice on the Internet last week during his lunch hour and all that came up was a list of tattoo and body-piercing providers.
    The children will pretend to be embarrassed, but he knows they’ll be secretly pleased to have been mentioned. He’ll tell thestory of the time the tall ships came to Liverpool and he