Matters of Faith by Kristy Kiernan Page A

“It’s okay. Just take it easy. Now, everything was fine, until when?”
    â€œThe cookie.”
    â€œWhat cookie?” I asked.
    â€œWe got—Ada got cookies at the produce stand.”
    â€œWhat kind of cookies, Marshall?” Cal asked, his face beginning to turn red, his voice lowering. My stomach bottomed out, but I fought the growing certainty, recalling the cookies with the little hash marks in them, the exquisite smell of the peanut butter coming right through the plastic wrap, the extraordinary kindness of Sandy, whom I would never again be able to look at the same way. Meghan wouldn’t eat a cookie with peanuts, and Marshall wouldn’t let one near her. There was no question. There had been some horrible mistake, a bit of peanut had worked its way into a chocolate chip cookie, peanut oil on the wrapper, something.
    â€œChocolate chip,” Marshall said, his voice dropping to a whisper. We waited. “And a peanut butter.”
    Cal exploded. He dragged Marshall up from his seat and thrust him back so his shoulders were pressed against the wall while he fought to keep his feet in front of his chair. I was on my feet just as quickly, pulling on Cal’s arms, as terrified of what he might do as I was of what Marshall was saying.
    â€œWhat did you do?” Cal yelled. “What the hell did you do?”
    Marshall broke, his face crumpled, and he sagged against the wall as Cal struggled to hold him upright. “I didn’t think—”
    â€œYou didn’t think? You didn’t think what? You didn’t think your little sister would die? What the hell? I don’t even know what you’re saying here. You let your girlfriend buy a peanut butter cookie and then sat there while she fed it to her? While she tried to kill your sister?”
    â€œNo, no, I—she said it was organic, and that it was such a small bit—” He broke off again, obviously too horrified to continue. Cal abruptly let go, and Marshall dropped into the chair and folded in upon himself, sobs shaking his body. “I tried the EpiPen, I did, and it worked at first, but then she stopped breathing again, and I couldn’t find another one.”
    This time he looked at us accusingly, hurt and bewildered. “I looked,” he cried. “I looked, and there wasn’t one there, and then Ada said, she said we could...”
    I leaned over him, my hands rubbing his back. “That you could what, honey? What?” I asked. I had to hear this. What horrible experiment were they performing with Meghan’s life? Marshall whispered something and both Cal and I leaned closer to hear. “What?”
    He lifted his face to us, agony etched across it, and said, “She said we could pray.”
    There was more, but I didn’t hear much of it after that.
    LATE that night, while Cal slept fitfully in a chair beside Meghan’s hospital bed, and I spoke softly to her, holding her hand, a police officer arrived and waited outside the door while a nurse whispered in my ear. I’d already told the story over and over again, to doctors, nurses, to everyone who asked how she’d gotten something with peanuts in it, and it did not strike me as strange to be telling the story one more time in the hallway while a uniformed officer took notes.
    How they, the children, Ada and Marshall, had broken a tiny piece of the peanut butter cookie off and mashed it into the top of a chocolate chip cookie and given it to Meghan. How Ada had explained to Marshall that it would be okay, that it was organic, that the exposure to such a tiny bit would help her build her immunity. And how Meghan had seemed fine, until she started pushing on her lips with her fingertips, until she started to panic and gasp for breath.
    And how they’d prayed. How they’d watched Meghan struggle for air and clutched each other and raised their voices in prayer. Until Marshall finally broke, broke and