Covenant Child (Paperback)

Copyright © 2002 Terri Blackstock.
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 0-8499-4301-9

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Chapter One

There's a question that haunts me in the blackest hours of night, when wasted moments crowd my dreams and mock the life I know. The question is this: How could a child born of privilege and promise grow up with nothing?

    I was Somebody when I was born. Lizzie, my twin, says we were heiresses all along. "Our grandfather was a billionaire," she says. "Just think of it, Kara!" There were newspaper articles about us when we were three. They called us the "Billion Dollar Babies."

    But these Billion Dollar Babies wore Goodwill hand-me-downs. We ate dry cereal most nights for supper, right out of the box, picking out the raisins to save for our school lunches the next day. In my memory, we never formally observed a birthday, because no one around us considered that day worthy of celebration. We were worthless no accounts to most of the people in town.

    But all along we had an inheritance that no one told us was ours.

    I sometimes try to remember back to the days before we were three, but my memories are tainted with the lies I've been taught and the pictures I've seen. I can't quite sift out real recollections from my faulty assumptions, but I do know that the things I've laid out here are true. Not because I remember them, but because I've studied all the sides, heard all the tales, read all the reports ... and a few things have emerged with absolute clarity.

    The first thing is that my father, Jack Holbrooke, was the son of the Paul Holbrooke, who did something with microchips and processors, things I can't begin to understand, and amassed a fortune before he was thirty. My father, Jack, got religion in his teens and decided he didn't want to play the part of the rich son. He became a pilot instead, bought a plane, and began flying charter flights and giving lessons. He disowned himself from the Holbrooke money and told his father that, instead of leaving any of it to him in his will, he preferred that he donate it to several evangelical organizations who provided relief and shared the gospel to people all over the world.

    My grandfather tolerated his zeal and noted his requests, then promptly ignored them.

    My mother, Sherry, was a teen runaway, who left Barton, Mississippi, at fifteen to strike out on her own. She wound up living with a kind family in Jackson, and she got religion, too. She met my father in Jackson, when he put an ad in the paper for some office help at his hangar, and they fell in love around the time she was nineteen or so. They got married and had Lizzie and me less than a year later.

    She was killed in a car wreck when we were just weeks old. Our father raised us himself for the next three years. I've seen pictures of him, and he looks like a kind, gentle man who laughed a lot. There are snapshots of him kissing us, dunking us like basketballs in his father's pool, chasing us across the lawn of the little house we lived in, reading us books, tucking us in. There are three birthday photos of our father lying on the floor with two cake-smeared redheads tearing into boxes of Barbies and Cabbage Patch dolls.

    Sometimes I close my eyes and think hard, trying to bring back those moments, and for a while I convince myself that they are not just images frozen on paper, but they're live events in my head somewhere. I even think I can smell that cake and feel my father's stubbled face against mine. I can hear his laughter shaking through me and feel his arms holding me close.

    But in truth, my memories don't reach that far back.

    I don't even think I remember Amanda. Lizzie says she has more impressions of her than memories, that the snapshots just bring those impressions into clearer focus. I guess that's true with me, too.

    But I wish I could remember when she met our father and us, how she wound up being his wife, how she was widowed and robbed of her children, and how she spent her life trying to keep a promise she had made to him ... and to us.

    But, according to Lizzie, truth is truth, whether it lies in your memory banks or not. So I'll start with Amanda's story, the way it was told to me, because it is very much the beginning of mine.

Chapter Two

My father was playing guitar the first time Amanda saw him. He sat on a metal folding chair at the corner of the crowded rec room, watching the animated faces and soaking in the laughter around them as he strummed some tune that she didn't know. She would later tell that her eyes were drawn to the red hair that was in dire need of a cut; the open flannel shirt, its tails draping down along the sides of the chair, a plain white T-shirt beneath it; jeans that looked as if they'd been washed a dozen times too many; and torn, dirty tennis shoes that spoke of age and overuse.

    Her best friend, Joan, who'd attended the Bible study for single professionals for several months, told her he was a pilot. But Amanda knew little else about him.

    When the group had been called to order, people found places to sit along couches and rocking chairs in the big, rustic room. Amanda chose a spot near the guitar player and sat on the floor with her arms hugging her knees. He smiled at her and kept strumming.

    The leader turned the meeting over to him, and he began to lead the group in praise songs and rock-rewed hymns, and she finally heard the voice, deep and gentle, unadorned, as it brought them all into worship. When he'd finished singing and playing, he put the guitar down and took a place beside her on the floor. His presence birthed a sweet homesickness inside her for something she couldn't name. She had known right then that he held some treasure that belonged to her, one she longed to unearth and possess.

    When the meeting was over, he held out a hand. "Name's Jack."

    "Nice to meet you, Jack." She shook his hand, feeling the guitar calluses on his fingertips against the bottom of her hand. "I'm—"

    "Don't tell me. Let me guess." He held tight to her hand. "I once worked at a fair and did this for a living."

    "What? Played guitar?"

    "No," he said, "guessed names. Now don't tell me. I can do this. I'm psychotic, you know."

    She laughed. "You mean psychic?"

    "Yeah, that, too." He winked as he gazed into her eyes. "Let's see. I'm getting an A."

    Her eyes widened.

    "An M."

    She snatched her hand from his.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from Covenant Child by Terri Blackstock. Copyright © 2002 by Terri Blackstock. Excerpted by permission. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

---

Chapter One

There's a question that haunts me in the blackest hours of night, when wasted moments crowd my dreams and mock the life I know. The question is this: How could a child born of privilege and promise grow up with nothing?

I was Somebody when I was born. Lizzie, my twin, says we were heiresses all along. "Our grandfather was a billionaire," she says. "Just think of it, Kara!" There were newspaper articles about us when we were three. They called us the "Billion Dollar Babies."

But these Billion Dollar Babies wore Goodwill hand-me-downs. We ate dry cereal most nights for supper, right out of the box, picking out the raisins to save for our school lunches the next day. In my memory, we never formally observed a birthday, because no one around us considered that day' worthy of celebration. We were worthless no accounts to most of the people in town.

But all along we had an inheritance that no one told us was ours.

I sometimes try to remember back to the days before we were three, but my memories are tainted with the lies I've been taught and the pictures I've seen. I can't quite sift out real recollections from my faulty assumptions, but I do know that the things I've laid out here are true. Not because I remember them, but because I've studied all the sides, heard all the tales, read all the reports ... and a few things have emerged with absolute clarity.

The first thing is that my father, Jack Holbrooke, was the son of the Paul Holbrooke, who did something with microchips and processors, things I can't begin to understand, and amassed a fortune before he was thirty. My father, Jack, got religion in his teens and decided he didn't want to play the part of the rich son. He became a pilot instead, bought a plane, and began flying charter flights and giving lessons. He disowned himself from the Holbrooke money and told his father that, instead of leaving any of it to him in his will, he preferred that he donate it to several evangelical organizations who provided relief and. shared the gospel to people all over the world.

My grandfather tolerated his zeal and noted his requests, then promptly ignored them.

My mother, Sherry, was a teen runaway, who left Barton, Mississippi, at fifteen to strike out on her own. She wound up living with a kind family in Jackson, and she got religion, too. She met my father in Jackson, when he put an ad in the paper for some office help at his hangar, and they fell in love around the time she was nineteen or so. They got married and had Lizzie and me less than a year later.

She was killed in a car wreck when we were just weeks old. Our father raised us himself for the next three years. I've seen pictures of him, and he looks like a kind, gentle man who laughed a lot. There are snapshots of him kissing us, dunking us like basketballs in his father's pool, chasing us across the lawn of the little house we lived in, reading us books, tucking us in. There are three birthday photos of our father lying on the floor with two cake-smeared redheads tearing into boxes of Barbies and Cabbage Patch dolls.

Sometimes I close my eyes and think hard, trying to bring back those moments, and for a while I convince myself that they are not just images frozen on paper, but they're live events in my head somewhere. I even think I can smell that cake and feel my father's stubbled face against mine. I can hear his laughter shaking through me and feel his arms holding me close.

But in truth, my memories don't reach that far back.

I don't even think I remember Amanda. Lizzie says she has more impressions of her than memories, that the snapshots just bring those impressions into clearer focus. I guess that's true with me, too.

But I wish I could remember when she met our father and us, how she wound up being his wife, how she was widowed and robbed of her children, and how she spent her life trying to keep a promise she had made to him ... and to us.

But, according to Lizzie, truth is truth, whether it lies in your memory banks or not. So I'll start with Amanda's story, the way it was told to me, because it is very much the beginning of mine.

Chapter Two

My father was playing guitar the first time Amanda saw him. He sat on a metal folding chair at the corner of the crowded rec room, watching the animated faces and soaking in the laughter around them as he strummed some tune that she didn't know. She would later tell that her eyes were drawn to the red hair that was in dire need of a cut; the open flannel shirt, its tails draping down along the sides of the chair, a plain white T-shirt beneath it; jeans that looked as if they'd been washed a dozen times too many; and torn, dirty tennis shoes that spoke of age and overuse.

Her best friend, Joan, who'd attended the Bible study for single professionals for several months, told her he was a pilot. But Amanda knew little else about him.

When the group had been called to order, people found places to sit along couches and rocking chairs in the big, rustic room. Amanda chose a spot near the guitar player and sat on the floor with her arms hugging her knees. He smiled at her and kept strumming.

The leader turned the meeting over to him, and he began to lead the group in praise songs and rock-revved hymns, and she finally heard the voice, deep and gentle, unadorned, as it brought them all into worship. When he'd finished singing and playing, he put the guitar down and took a place beside her on the floor. His presence birthed a sweet homesickness inside her for something she couldn't name. She had known right then that he held some treasure that belonged to her, one she longed to unearth and possess.

When the meeting was over, he held out a hand. "Name's Jack."

"Nice to meet you, Jack." She shook his hand, feeling the guitar calluses on his fingertips against the bottom of her hand. "I'm-"

"Don't tell me. Let me guess." He held tight to her hand. "I once worked at a fair and did this for a living."

"What? Played guitar?"

"No," he said, "guessed names. Now don't tell me. I can do this. I'm psychotic, you know."

She laughed. "You mean psychic?"

"Yeah, that, too." He winked as he gazed into her eyes. "Let's see. I'm getting an A."

Her eyes widened.

"An M."

She snatched her hand from his.

"Amanda!" he blurted.

"How did you know that?"

"I told you."

"I know. You're psychotic. But really. How?"

Grinning, he picked his guitar back up. "I asked somebody when you came in."

Her face grew warm as he rose, took her hand, and pulled her to her feet. He was a good seven inches taller than she.

"So how do you feel about chocolate milkshakes?" he asked.

"Tell you the truth, I haven't given it a whole lot of thought."

"Well, you should. Now aren't you grateful I came along to get you thinking about it?"

"Are you asking me to go have a milkshake with you?"

"I was trying to be a little more suave than to ask straight out, but yes," he said, "I was asking you for a date."

Though he'd charmed her quickly and thoroughly, he grew more serious over their shakes as he showed her pictures of Lizzie and me. Her heart sank that a man so young already had the baggage of divorce to drag around. "So how did you get custody?"

"Custody?" He frowned, then his eyebrows arched. "Oh, no, you don't understand. I'm not divorced. My wife died."

The smile on her face collapsed. "I'm so sorry."

"It's okay." His voice was soft, and he swallowed as if the memories still went down hard. "It happened three years ago, when they were just babies. Car accident. I've gone through all the textbook stages of grief. I'm in the acceptance stage now." Though his words sounded flip, she could see in his eyes that they didn't come easily.

"So you've been raising the twins alone ever since?"

"That's right. But they're doing great."

Quiet beat out the seconds between them, and finally, he said, "So how's the shake?"

"Everything I hoped." Her face grew warm, and she had to look away.

He took her back to the retreat center and held her hand as he walked her to her car. "If you'd agree to let me buy you dinner this weekend, I could introduce you to Stapley's Steak-on-a-Stick. It's the favorite of all your best amateur guitar players."

She was twenty-five years old, but felt as giddy as a fourteen-year-old with a crush. "I'd love to have dinner with you, Jack. And as good as the Steak-on-a-Stick sounds, I'd rather be introduced to your girls."

He laughed then. "No kidding?"

"Why would I be kidding?"

"Because they don't exactly make for a quiet, peaceful meal, if you know what I mean."

"I love children," she said.

"Okay, but you asked for it. Tell you what. You can come to my house, and the girls and I will cook dinner for you. How's that sound? We make a mean spaghetti."

She fished through her purse for something to write on. "Just give me an address and a time, and I'll be there. Only let me bring something."

"The girls would be downright insulted if you did. Besides, how can we impress you if we let you help?"

She started the car, still laughing under her breath. "All right. I'll see you then."

He wrote down the address and gave it to her through the door, then took her hand from the steering wheel and kissed it with Rhett Butler finesse.

She wore a silly smile as she drove away.

That night, she lay awake in bed thinking about this man with two little girls whom she hadn't expected to enter her life. He wasn't the kind of man she was looking for. Her checklist of "Mate Traits" did not include a previous marriage or three-year-old girls. But here she was, her mind and heart lingering on him, keeping her from a moment's sleep.

She couldn't wait to thank Joan for taking her to the Bible study.

"It'll be a good boost for you, Amanda," Joan had said. "It's kept me grounded for a long time now, and it's fun. You need. to get out and meet some people, get your mind off of your problems."

Amanda's problems weren't that easy to put behind her, however. They were significant, and lingering, and there were times when she found herself sinking into a mire of depression. Her lifeline had been the Scripture passages she had committed to memory.

"When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; And through the rivers, they will not overflow you. When you walk through the fire, you will not be scorched, Nor will the flame burn you. "

Isaiah 43:2 had proven true in her life, just as Deuteronomy 31:6 had: "Be strong and courageous, do not be afraid or tremble at them, for the Lord your God is the one who goes with you. He will not fail you or forsake you."

When she'd found herself going under, she had grabbed hold of those words, and they had slowly pulled her out until she could breathe and look up with gratitude, instead of down with self-pity.

The uterine cancer was behind her now. Surgery and six months of chemo had taken care of that. Her hair had grown back in just as thick and blonde as it was before the cancer, and it had finally reached a length that didn't advertise her condition. The color had returned to her face, and she no longer looked emaciated and sick.

But the effects of the disease remained. She would never have children, at least not of her womb. It was the one thing she'd wanted in her life-a real family of her own, one that could erase all the longings of her past and make her feel safe and part of things.

She was reconciled to adopting children when she was ready ... but her fears remained. After all, what man would want to marry a woman who couldn't bear him children?

Her father tried to turn her plight into a positive. "Honey, this is a great filter for the men who don't deserve you. Either they love you the way you ought to be loved, or they hit the road. The Lord knows what He's doing."

Could it be that the Lord had a guitar-playing pilot with twin daughters in mind for her?

That question stayed with her for the next several days as she waited for Saturday to come.

* * *

My father prepared us for her visit the way one would prepare a classroom for a visit from a queen. He told us that a "very nice, very pretty lady" wanted to meet us, and that she was especially fond of little girls with curly red hair.

By the time Saturday night came, we were ready and waiting, decked out in our best garb and all atwitter with anticipation.

She rang the bell fifteen minutes early.

My father opened the door, that trademark grin on his face. We stood just behind him, peeking through his legs at the woman who was everything he'd described. "Thank goodness," he said. "I forgot to ask for your phone number, so I couldn't confirm that you were coming. I figured you would have come to your senses by now and backed out, but I was praying you'd show up anyway."

Amanda pegged us right then as Anne Geddes material, with our big blue eyes and red mops of Shirley Temple curls.

Lizzie wore a Cinderella dress and a tiara on her head. My tastes were more eclectic: a straw fedora, a hot pink feather boa, a brown sweater, and cobalt blue leggings.

"They dressed up for you." My father had a laugh on the edge of his voice. "Lizzie's Cinderella, and Kara's some cross between Crocodile Dundee and Zsa Zsa Gabor."

She stooped down and got eye level with us. "Look at you," she said. "You look exactly alike. I'm glad you dressed up so I could tell you apart."

"We made ba-sketti." Lizzie grabbed Amanda's hand and pulled her inside. "Wanna see?"

"And we're off." My father laughed as he closed the door and followed our lead.

Amanda would remember for years how the bubble of delight floated up in her chest as she followed us into the kitchen. She saw one chair pulled up to the sink, and another to the counter. Lizzie climbed onto the chair in front of the sink full of suds.

"Lizzie likes to wash dishes," my father said with a wink, "so I have her washing these jars of spaghetti sauce. Not that we used them, you understand."

"No, of course not."

"And Kara likes to stir. They're both very helpful." He smiled a little too brightly and crossed his eyes.

I leaned a little too far, and the chair began to scoot away. My father dove to rescue me as I fell. I didn't miss a beat, but went back to stirring my salad.

"I'm impressed," she said. "How many rescues like that do you handle at each meal?"

"Oh, four or five ... dozen." He winked at her and popped a piece of French bread into his mouth. "That's the beauty of a tiny kitchen. I can reach either of them without too much effort."

I've driven by that little house we lived in and watched the children who live there now run and tumble in the yard behind it.

Continues...