The Unfinished Gift by Dan Walsh Read Free Book Online

ever touch this again. You hear me?”
    He was already in the attic, his voice trailing off. Patrick wanted to run down the stairs and straight out the front door and never look back.
    “Can’t leave you alone for one hour,” he heard his grandfather say, followed by what sounded like two swear words. “No respect at all. Guess I know where you got that from.”
    What should he do? Patrick hated this place. Why had Miss Townsend brought him here? Couldn’t anyone else take care of him until they found his father? He’d rather live in an orphanage than here. He ran down the stairs, then across the hallway to his room. Once inside, he closed the door and jumped on the bed, bursting into tears, but cried into the pillow as quietly as he could.

    He didn’t know how long he had cried, but Patrick reached a point where he knew he was done. He felt a strange comforting feeling come over him just then. He sat up and looked into his mother’s smiling face in the picture. In his mind he could hear her talking to him again, strong and clear. “It’s okay, Patrick. You’re not alone.”
    Patrick wanted to argue the point, but he didn’t want the feeling of her nearness to leave. “But I feel like I am alone,” he whispered. “You’re in heaven; Daddy’s at the war. And this man hates me, and I don’t even know why. Nothing I do is right.” He started breathing heavily, like he was about to cry again.
    Through his mother’s eyes a thought seemed to surface. She wasn’t speaking it, but it was almost as strong. He remembered a bedtime story she’d read him one night during a terrible thunderstorm, about a time when the disciples were out on a boat. The wind had started to howl, and the waves began tossing the boat every which way. A storm much worse than this one, she had said. They had all began to fear the boat would capsize, and they would all drown.
    The most amazing thing was that Jesus was sound asleep in the back of the boat. “Can you imagine that,” his mother had said. “Being sound asleep when everyone else was afraid for their lives?”
    Patrick remembered the disciples had woken Jesus up, saying something like, “Lord, don’t you care if we die?” His mother had said sometimes we feel like we’re all alone when we’re afraid or in danger, but really we’re not, not if the Lord is with us. Jesus woke up, walked to the edge of the boat, and ordered the wind and the seas to be calm and still. Instantly, they obeyed.
    His mother had finished the story by saying that Jesus could sleep easily, even during a scary time like that, because he knew his heavenly Father had everything under control, and that he had authority even over things as powerful as the wind and the sea.
    Patrick felt that same calm come over him just now. His grandfather was scary all right, but he wasn’t more powerful than the wind and the sea. When Patrick’s mind drifted back to the present, he was still staring at his mother’s beautiful face. Then he heard the doorbell ring downstairs.

    Collins didn’t hear the doorbell ring the first time. It was normally loud enough to reach the rafters but not louder than his thoughts. This attic had always proved to be a place of conflicting emotions for him. Everywhere he turned he collided with memories, mostly painful ones.
    Everything having to do with Ida just reminded him of how lonely he’d become since her passing. Everything to do with Shawn reminded him of either the pain of the last seven years or of the good times they had before the rift, times they could never have again.
    Collins held the wooden soldier in the light and remembered the day it began as a block of wood from a pile behind the garage. It had been an overcast day late in the fall, before Shawn had ever met that woman he married. He had just headed back to college after yet another difficult visit back home. Collins decided to carve the soldier for Shawn as a peace offering. Shawn’s room was filled with