Minnie Goes to Heaven (4)

a novel 

There was proof that worrying helped. All three children grew up without dying.
And, Billy did fall into the brook that meandered through the brush and across their property. He got a soaker. He came into the house to put on dry clothes, only to fall in the brook again, and fall in the brook again and again, until he ran out of dry clothes, so she dressed him in his pyjamas and tied him to the clothesline. Unfortunately that was the day the pastor picked to pay a visit. She hadn’t thought to worry about that. What were the chances?

She did worry about what the pastor thought of her. Did he think she was an insufficient mother. Who hangs pyjamas on the clothesline with the boy still in them?  She worried about this every time she sat in church, until three years later when that pastor moved on to another congregation. By then she was preoccupied with different worries.

It turns out a crazy driver never hit her children, but a man in a blue car stopped to offer them a ride to school. They refused the ride as Mary proudly related at supper time. 

After that Minnie worried about 18 different ways her kids could be kidnapped. 

Sometime later a classmate of the children was picked up on her way to school. After three hours she was pushed out of a blue car and onto the school yard. 

Minnie and John found out from the teacher that this child had indeed been molested. They didn’t tell the children, as they didn't want to worry them. Worrying was for grown-ups.