The Homecoming of Samuel Lake

by Jenny Wingfield

fellows never saw so much free liquor, so it just

Folks wanted it to stay the way it was, because once you change one part of a thing, all the other parts begin to shift, and pretty soon, you just don’t know what’s what anymore.

Lovely truism

he didn’t, she considered the two of them immediately bonded. Swan yearned to get close to somebody.

but if you pinned her down, she wouldn’t lie. She was Moses, through and through.

So far, they hadn’t seen anything worth looking at, and they’d have given the project up if it hadn’t been forbidden. But the fact that it was had to mean something, so they’d kept after it.

Child reasoning

Her parents certainly loved God. Swan did, too, she was sure, even though she bent His rules with some degree of regularity, and prayed only When It Was Important. She’d never been one to wear God out with small talk.

Good idea

nothing makes grown-ups quite so mad as finding a child safe when they’d been scared silly that they might find that child dead.

Truism

The hard part about this plan was going to be coming up with a good enough lie to explain why she’d been where she’d been, but Swan had tremendous confidence in her lying ability. And if worst came to worst, she could always tell the truth.

If worse comes to worse

But when a person loves you so much that he asks for nothing in return, it’s only to be expected that that’s about what he gets. It’s like a Law of Nature.

A Law of nature

her daddy didn’t have a church, so she wasn’t technically a preacher’s kid anymore, and now she could be normal.

Normal again

And she knew Life well enough to know that if one person in a house gets really miserable for any length of time, the misery spreads like smallpox.

MiserY spreads

When Samuel came back from conference, the kids always immediately stopped breaking all the rules they’d been breaking while he was gone.)

Swan had always secretly thought that sounded just a little too convenient. She didn’t say this out loud, of course. You don’t go around questioning the Bible, not if you want to go to Heaven one of these days. Besides, once you start picking holes in things, it’s hard to figure out which parts to throw away and which parts to keep.

Which parts to keep

Samuel pretty much had the air of a man whose longings had been recently satisfied.

If she asked for help, she’d have to explain about breaking the rules, and that would take more courage than she had in her. You have to figure the percentages in these things.

Percentages

Sometimes a sense of loss can be so great that anyone who offers comfort seems to be making small of it.

Grief

It seemed to her that, when you’re constantly seeking God’s will, you may just be ignoring the obvious.

Obvious

he’d have gone to sleep that night in one world and woke up the next morning in another.

Murder

something everybody has to find out about for themselves. Telling them about it doesn’t make them believe.