Catch Me When I Fall by Westerhof Patricia

had no brothers, nor had she babysat for the neighbours as the other girls did. While he scrubbed his skin, the worries chafed. Ruthie could teach him to throw a ball; she was athletic. And who knew? Maybe Beth was good at that sort of thing too. Ruthie might even take him fishing, although there wasn’t any good fishing in Calgary. The Glenmore Reservoir didn’t count. A stocked pond. Buildings all around it. Maybe Ruthie would take him camping in the Rockies. He found himself imagining fishing with the boy. No Couldn’t happen. He wrung out the washcloth.
    What about when the boy reached adolescence? Who would tell him about the changes he could expect? How girls addled your brains. Wet dreams. Or maybe he would turn out gay like his mother. Or if not gay, peculiar, with only women raising him. Klaas felt cold in spite of the warm, almost hot, water falling on him.
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    On Sunday after the service, he saw Harvey VanEng and old Reverend Post, the retired minister, lighting their cigarettes in the parking lot. Klaas strolled over. “What do you think of tough love?” he asked Reverend Post.
    â€œYah,” said Reverend Post in his heavy Dutch accent. “I tink it is tough to luff.” He leaned forward and laid his hand on Klaas’s forehead. “A blessing for you,” he said. He ambled off with his cigarette.
    Harvey VanEng tossed his butt onto the pavement. “Think he’s losing it?”
    â€œMaybe,” Klaas answered, feeling oddly lighter. “Or maybe he’s never heard of tough love.”
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    Klaas walked to the car with his second-youngest granddaughter, Lexi, holding his hand tightly. She was singing a Sunday-school song. “‘Jesus loves the little children, all the children of the world.’” She stopped suddenly. “Do some children come in red and yellow?”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œYou know.” She sang, “‘Red and yellow, black and white, they’re all precious in his sight.’” She gazed at him, waiting.
    â€œNot really,” he said. “Those are shades, not colours. You know, like a reddish shade of beige, or a yellowish shade.”
    â€œOh. And Jesus loves all the shades. Jesus likes colours. That’s why flowers come in colours. Can we look at the kittens when we get to your house?”
    â€œYes, but remember they’re not tame,” he said. “They’re just barn cats.”
    â€œWhat colours are they?”
    â€œOh, I don’t know. Different colours.”
    â€œAre you going to drown them?”
    â€œNo.” He looked at her, confused. He’d never drowned barn cats. Even when the population was embarrassingly large, he couldn’t do it. He was too soft. He hid the weakness by telling his hired men he liked fresh batches of kittens for the grandkids.
    â€œMy dad says you should drown some of the cats.”
    His mouth twitched. “What did you say?”
    â€œI couldn’t say anything because I was supposed to be in bed, not listening in the hallway.”
    He smiled down at her. “I don’t mind the cats,” he said. “I don’t think I could drown any.”
    Alida strolled over in her flowered Sunday dress and white sandals, and they climbed into the car. As they drove homeward, Lexi sang in the back seat: “Grandpa loves the little kittens, all the kittens in the world . . .” Amusement spread through him and turned, unexpectedly, to joy. It began in his chest, uncoiled the rusty conviction he’d been holding there, and radiated outwards. What if he had things skewed? What if what he saw as weakness was actually strength?
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    In bed that night, he turned to Alida. He was nervous—would she feel the same? “You know that money we talked about sending each month?” She shifted her foot from off his leg where