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Chapters (54)
  1. Cover
  2. Colophon
  3. ALSO BY RICHARD PAUL EVANS
  4. Title Page
  5. Copyright
  6. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
  7. Dedication
  8. AUTHOR’S NOTE
  9. Epigraph
  10. Grace
  11. THE LITTLE MATCH GIRL
  12. CHAPTER One
  13. CHAPTER Two
  14. CHAPTER Three
  15. CHAPTER Four
  16. CHAPTER Five
  17. CHAPTER Six
  18. CHAPTER Seven
  19. CHAPTER Eight
  20. CHAPTER Nine
  21. CHAPTER Ten
  22. CHAPTER Eleven
  23. CHAPTER Twelve
  24. CHAPTER Thirteen
  25. CHAPTER Fourteen
  26. CHAPTER Fifteen
  27. CHAPTER Sixteen
  28. CHAPTER Seventeen
  29. CHAPTER Eighteen
  30. CHAPTER Nineteen
  31. CHAPTER Twenty
  32. CHAPTER Twenty-one
  33. CHAPTER Twenty-two
  34. CHAPTER Twenty-three
  35. CHAPTER Twenty-four
  36. CHAPTER Twenty-five
  37. CHAPTER Twenty-six
  38. CHAPTER Twenty-seven
  39. CHAPTER Twenty-eight
  40. CHAPTER Twenty-nine
  41. CHAPTER Thirty
  42. CHAPTER Thirty-one
  43. CHAPTER Thirty-two
  44. CHAPTER Thirty-three
  45. CHAPTER Thirty-four
  46. CHAPTER Thirty-five
  47. CHAPTER Thirty-six
  48. CHAPTER Thirty-seven
  49. CHAPTER Thirty-eight
  50. CHAPTER Thirty-nine
  51. EPILOGUE
  52. A LETTER FROM RICHARD PAUL EVANS
  53. JOIN THE RICHARD PAUL EVANS MAILING LIST, GET A FREE GIFT AND HELP A CHILD
  54. ABOUT THE AUTHOR

She frowned. “Maybe it will give someone hope.”

I guess I was just too selfish to think of that.

CHAPTER Twenty-three

They say that following the path of least resistance
makes rivers, and men, crooked.
I suppose that’s why there’s so many crooked rivers and men.

GRACE’S DIARY

As I look back, I realize just how much things have changed since those days. America was a different place. More private. Children were considered the property of their parents and what happened in someone’s home was no one’s business but theirs—not the school’s, not the neighbors’, not the church’s, and especially not city hall’s.

While we lived at my Grandmother’s house there was a family across the creek from us. The Williamses. They had, I think, twelve or thirteen kids. I was never really sure how many; counting them was like counting fish in a pet store tank. Biggest family I had ever seen.

The kids, singularly and collectively, were meaner than wolverines. It seems that at least one of them got in a fight at school every day, though oftentimes with each other. Teachers at Granite used to say, “Someone needs to discipline those children,” but I don’t think that was the problem. Their dad taught Sunday school at the church we went to. His pet sermon was that if you spared the rod, you would spoil the child, as if anyone wanted his advice on child rearing.

I think Mr. Williams spoiled his children with the rod or belt or whatever else he could get his hands on when the spirit moved him. The Williams children would come to school with more bruises than a two-week-old banana. I figured their fights at school were just their way of making everyone else look, if not feel, like them.

The only time my father ever beat me was when I was eleven years old and we were still living in California. One summer my mother’s cousin from Phoenix came to stay with us. She had two of the most obnoxious boys I’d ever seen. Our parents were visiting and so they told us to go outside and play. Joel and I took them out to play basketball in the driveway. They shoved and pushed a lot. Then one of them tripped Joel on purpose. Joel hit the concrete and skinned up his knees and palms badly enough to draw blood. Joel was only seven at the time and he started to cry. I was already mad at the boys for tripping Joel, but then they started teasing him for crying. Before I knew it, I punched the older of the boys right in the nose. He let out a yelp as blood ran from both his nostrils.

“You’re gonna get it,” his little brother said. “We’re gonna tell.” Then the two of them scurried inside to tattle.