Excerpt: Sweet Embrace

Inkling
I love me some words. Every time I got something to write, I try to wrap it up in one word or phrase. That’s why Ms. Simms likes me so much. I will sit down and read the dictionary for fun. No lie. So that Tiara reading a book thing really burned.
The other stuff. Well, it is what it is. But them dismissing me like some type of intellectual charity case, that was a knife right in the ego.
Got home and I hear Grandma and Ms. Lange praying up a storm. The praying part never bothered me. That’s just Grandma. She loves Jesus like I love words, and her and Carl’s mom connected over God like some women bond over tea.
I didn’t want to stick around cuz I couldn’t face Ms. Lange. She lets me call her Petra, but these days, considering the circumstances, I’ve gone back to Ms. Lange in my head, and nothing from my mouth cuz I haven’t seen her since…well, I’ll get to that.
I can not face her. Especially after she’s all prayed up.
I hear Grandma say, “And bring our boys back from Iraq, Jesus.”
And Ms. Lange is saying, “Yes, Lord.”
I turn to leave, but the door creaks, and I hear Grandma finish up her prayer with “In the Lord’s Holy Name, Amen, and then a “Tiara? That you? Come here and say hello to Petra.”
Ms. Lange comes up and hugs me tight. “It has been a long time,” she says.
“Sure has,” I say looking at the floor.
Ms. Lange gets inklings. Grandma says the Lord is with her. The moment she hugs me, I feel her get inklings about me. Read right into me, and I want to die a million deaths.
Cuz there are some people you should never betray, and Petra Lange is one of those people.
“Now, why can’t you look me it the eye, Tiara Singleton?” she asks, and I feel worry forming in Grandma.
I wonder if Grandma knows. She can sense when I’ve been creeping sometimes. She don’t say nothing, but every now and then I catch her praying for the Lord to spare me.
Petra Lange puts her hand on my cheek. She makes me look at her, but I can’t keep her gaze. I feel anxiety rise in her. “Why won’t you look at me?” she whispers, but I sense she knows. Maybe, not exactly, but she knows something about me and Carl. I think of inklings. I think how the word ink is in it. Like a mark. Petra gets inklings from the invisible marks Carl left behind. He’s gonna be pissed when she goes home and starts asking questions, but what can I do?
I meet her eyes to the best of my ability. “You all just so holy,” I say meekly.
Grandma and Petra circle around me like protection, both hug on me. “No one’s holy. Only God,” Grandma says.
I love her for that.
Petra Lange kisses me on the forehead. Hugs me tight again. Tells me to read Luke 18.
Petra Lange gives lots of goodbyes and kisses to me and Grandma, and then she is gone.
I don’t realize until after I see her car pull out of the driveway that there is a warmth in my soul and tears in the corner of my eyes.
Grandma and Petra Lange are filled with the fire of God.
They melt the ice inside of sinners even when they ain’t trying to.