Follow the Dotted Line by Nancy Hersage Read Free Book Online

disappointed. God has a plan.”
    Her mouth opened, but nothing came out.
    “I mean, He was probably just saving Tilda from His wrath.”
    It took Andy a minute to glean his meaning. “You were going to deliver the wrath of God?” she asked, incredulous.
    “That was my likely purpose,” he said, as if he were only the messenger. “But now we’ll never know because He obviously didn’t want her to hear what I had to say. The important thing is that God is working on a plan for you and Tilda.”
    “We have a joint plan ?” she winced. “Are you kidding me?”
    The pudgy hands came together in one of those prayer-like gestures that portend a lesson for the listener. Andy’s hand shot up in front of her like a protective shield.
    “Enough, Harley!” she erupted. She counted to three. Then added an extra three before going on. “Thank you. But enough.” She turned her chair back toward the computer.
    Undeterred, the future preacher went on. “The Lord works in mysterious ways, His wonders to perform, Aunt Andy.”
    Evidently, Tabernacle U had a class in Christian clichés, and Harley was acing it.
    “Well, He doesn’t seem to be working all that much, if you ask me,” Andy quipped, opening her email. “I’d say it’s time to take those wonders to the next level, because I’m pretty much back to square one.”
    To her surprise, he said nothing. It was the first time the boy had actually taken sarcasm for an answer. She waited, and still he was silent. Finally, she glanced over to see if she’d caused any permanent psychological damage.
    His body was slouched forward, elbows on knees, hands folded, head tilted, and laconic eyelids drooped in reptilian sadness. “I don’t understand why you hate God so much, Aunt Andy,” he said.
    “I don’t hate God, Harley,” she replied, dreading where this was headed. “I’m just not all that interested in God.”
    “You don’t mean that.”
    “I do.”
    “But you do believe in God, don’t you?”
    There it was, the question she’d been dodging since his arrival and the hobgoblin of Harley Davidson’s little mind. Resigning herself to the discussion, she vowed to make it as short as possible.
    “It’s not so much that I don’t believe in God. It’s more that I don’t care. Think of it as a kind of divine neglect.”
    He tilted his head the other direction and let his lids close. She waited.
    The lids opened again. “I don’t think I understand. How can you neglect the Almighty?”
    “Never mind. It doesn’t matter.”
    But she could see it did.
    He continued to ponder. Finally, he tried another approach. “Well, if you’re not interested in God, what are you interested in?”
    She shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m not really a joiner, Harley.” She knew she needed lunch because her combative impulses were waning. “Maybe that’s why I became a writer. I kind of like sitting on the sidelines.”
    “What sidelines?”
    She searched for an answer that was honest but probably outside the teenager’s immediate sphere of interest. “Well. Politics, I guess. That’s probably my favorite spectator sport.”
    The way he nodded made her nervous.
    “Politics,” he repeated. “That means you must believe in the Constitution then, right?”
    She groaned regretfully. “Please, Harley, I need to eat some lunch.”
    “Like the Second Amendment?”
    Don’t go down this path, Andrea, she told herself. Stop now.
    “You have an opinion on the Second Amendment, Harley?” she sneered, without even a hint of impulse control.
    “Not yet,” he said, sitting up, eyelids perking. “We don’t really cover ‘concealed carry’ until our sophomore year at Our Savior’s.”
    She gasped. “You actually talk about this stuff in class?”
    He was transformed by her interest. “We sure do,” he agreed. “It’s all laid out for us. So we can understand everything. The Constitution. Politics. Science. History. Even America itself. We see it all as it was