Unfortunately, some pre-publication versions of “The Child of the Cloth” have a chapter missing due to a printing error.

If you are on page 12 of this version of the book, here are the missing 8 pages:

Blackburn, England 2016

The koi pond shimmered with late autumn light, its surface glassy beneath the willow tree’s golden litter. Joshua sat on the stone edge, legs swinging like a much younger boy, his reflection rippling beside the bright fish.

Grace watched from a nearby bench, a book open but unread in her lap. These hospital visits had become one of their quiet routines. Safe corridors, kind faces, no real risk. She told herself she was only keeping an eye on him, but Anne and Peter had started calling her “Aunt Grace” without irony, and Joshua never seemed surprised when she appeared at their door with books or a tin of biscuits.

Joshua wandered inside, drawn by the warmth of the lobby and the faint smell of toast from the cafeteria. He moved with that light, unhurried way only children have in sterile places. A volunteer assumed he was a patient’s brother. A nurse smiled and let him pass. No one stopped him.

Grace lost sight of him for perhaps ten minutes.

When he returned, his eyes were quieter than usual, distant.

“Where did you go?” she asked, gathering her coat.

He blinked at her, then looked down at his shoes.

“There was a little boy in a blue room,” he said. “He was sad. He didn’t know what it felt like not to hurt.”

Grace’s stomach tightened. Tomas. The janitor’s son had leukaemia. Everyone on the ward knew the blue room was where he was waiting to die.

“Did you talk to him?”

“A little. I just said I liked his socks.”

She gave a nervous laugh. “His socks?”

“They had stars on them,” Joshua said. “His arm was cold.”

She took his hand, warm and soft, the way she had done on a dozen other outings, and led him outside into the sharp autumn air.

The next morning, the hospital was buzzing. Conversations spilt from usually quiet corridors. Doors opened too quickly. Nurses gathered at the admissions desk, voices low and urgent.

Tomas had sat up that morning. Just sat up. His fever had broken overnight. Vitals stable. White cell counts rising toward normal. The boy had asked for scrambled eggs.

Grace arrived early and nearly dropped her coffee when she heard the news. Two nurses stood at the desk, eyes wide.

“It’s Tomas,” one said. “He’s… better. The counts are normal. Not just stabilised. Normal.”

The other nurse lowered her voice. “They’re calling it a miracle.”

Grace turned on her heel and left without a word.

That night, she couldn’t sleep. She kept turning over Tomas’s file, the bloodwork, the chemo schedule, the grim predictions. She’d seen those charts. She’d signed off on the end-of-life protocol herself.

And now he was well.

He touched him, she thought. He touched Tomas’s arm.

She poured a glass of wine, then another, while the rain ran down the window.

She didn’t tell Zacharia. She didn’t tell anyone, but she kept thinking of another child. Alice. Eight years old. The daughter of her closest friend, Sarah. Dying slowly from Batten disease. No cure, no hope left. Only the slow loss of dignity.

Two nights later, Grace finally picked up the phone and called Sarah.

Sarah Withers. From university. The one who used to talk about poetry in physics class. The one who had never stopped calling her “Einy,” short for Einstein’s daughter, either for her smarts or as a joke about her looks.

Alice had dimples and a giraffe backpack, and she painted butterflies that made no sense, all sharp angles and impossible blue wings. Diagnosed two years ago. Sarah had never asked for help. She knew there was none to give.

Grace had something now though. Someone.

“We’re managing,” Sarah said when Grace finally called. Her voice was thin but steady. “She’s still painting. Still smiling.”

“You said… her eyesight’s going now?”

“Yes.”

A long silence stretched between them.

“You sound like you want to say something,” Sarah said.

“I do,” Grace replied. “But I’m afraid if I say it, I’ll cross a line I can’t come back from.”

Alice

Grace didn’t sleep that night. She paced the rooms of her house, then stood at the window watching rain slide down the glass. At one point, she opened the drawer where she kept the old Bible Zacharia had given her years ago. Its edges were worn, its spine cracked. She hadn’t opened it in years.

At sunrise, she did.

It fell open to the Book of James.

“If anyone knows the good they ought to do and doesn’t do it, it is sin for them.”

She closed the book and wept.

Her decision was made.

Grace gripped the steering wheel tighter than necessary. The sky was the colour of pewter, heavy with the promise of rain. The road to Lancaster hospital stretched long and empty ahead, but her mind was crowded.

She hadn’t told Joshua where they were really going, or why. He was ten. Too young to carry this. She had told the Mallorys it was just an errand – delivering books. Books. As if that made any of it feel clean.

He sat beside her in the passenger seat, small and quiet. His backpack at his feet, and a folded paper plane resting loosely in his lap. He hummed a little tune he had made up, then stopped abruptly, as if he had forgotten how it went.

The silence pressed in.

Grace stole another glance at him, guilt thick in her chest. She was betraying him. Even if no one ever found out. Even if nothing happened today, she was using him for something he had never chosen. Could never choose. And the danger. She was risking everything. What if people notice?

It was for Alice, though. Alice, who was slipping away piece by piece. Alice, whose mother had once called Grace her sister in everything but blood. Alice, who used to draw flowers upside-down just to make people laugh.

The car pulled into the hospital car park. Even turning off the engine felt like another small betrayal.

Joshua turned his head and looked at her.

“Your heart feels loud,” he said gently.

Grace startled. “What?”

He shrugged, offering a small, solemn smile. “It’s shouting, but only on the inside.”

She stared at him, words caught in her throat.

Then he added, in the serious, innocent tone of a concerned child, “Your heart shouldn’t be troubled. Trust me.”

Grace froze.

He looked back out of the window as if he had said nothing unusual.

Grace swallowed. Hard.

“Let not your heart be troubled.”

John 14:1.

She knew the passage. Knew the weight of it.

“You believe in God; believe also in me.”

He hadn’t quoted the whole thing. Just the part that mattered. The part she couldn’t bear to hear from him. The part that felt like his forgiveness, forgiveness for the hurt she was yet to do to him.

As she opened the car door, Joshua began to hum again.

She closed her eyes tightly for a moment, braced herself and stepped out of the car.

Alice was unconscious when they entered the room.

The lights were dimmed, and the curtains were drawn halfway against the grey daylight. Machines hummed their steady rhythm. Tubes ran from Alice’s thin arms. Her small body barely moved under the blanket. Only the slow rise and fall of her chest showed she was still there.

Sarah sat slumped in the chair beside the bed. One hand held her daughter’s fingers. The other braced her forehead. When she looked up and saw Grace, a tired smile crossed her pale face.

“Einy,” she breathed. “You came.”

“I said I’d drop the books off myself,” Grace replied. The lie tasted bitter.

Sarah’s gaze moved to Joshua. “And you brought help.”

Joshua stood quietly beside Grace, backpack still over one shoulder. He didn’t speak at first. He looked over at Alice. His face was calm – too calm, Grace thought, for a ten-year-old walking into a room like this.

Before Grace could stop him, he stepped forward. His shoes made almost no sound on the polished floor. He stopped at the edge of the bed, the toes of his shoes just beneath the hanging blanket.

Then, slowly, he reached out and brushed a lock of hair from Alice’s forehead.

“You’re not done yet,” he whispered. “You still have butterflies to paint.”

Sarah drew in a quiet breath.

For a moment, the room was completely still.

Joshua turned and walked back to Grace. He folded his arms across his chest as if he were cold.

Sarah wiped a tear from her cheek and smiled faintly. “He’s sweet,” she said, her voice raw. “So gentle.”

Grace nodded. She couldn’t speak. Her heart was a drumbeat in her throat, loud and sickening.

She had done it.

She had brought him here.

There was no fanfare, no sudden beeping of monitors. Just a child’s soft voice and a flicker of peace.

Sarah leaned forward and stroked Alice’s hand. “You know she used to paint butterflies all the time?” she said. “Even when her hands started shaking.”

Joshua replied with a small nod.

They remained only a few minutes longer. Joshua didn’t say anything else. When they left, his shoulders had slumped a little. On the drive home, he fell asleep in the passenger seat, head against the window. Grace kept both hands on the wheel and stared straight ahead.

Nothing dramatic had happened. No sudden gasp of breath. No light from heaven.

But something had shifted in the room. She felt it.

The line had been crossed.

All she could do now was wait.

Two days later, Sarah called.

“She’s awake,” she sobbed into the phone. “She’s laughing. She asked for her paints, Einy. She ran across the room.”

Grace stood frozen in her home office, the phone pressed hard to her ear, hairs rising along the back of her neck.

“It’s impossible,” Sarah said, half laughing, half crying. “But it’s real.”

Grace tried to feel the joy. For a moment, she did – bright and sharp. Then the dread rolled in behind it, heavy and cold.

People had already started talking about Tomas. The story was moving through online groups and faith forums like a spark in dry grass. A child healed overnight. No new drug. No prayer vigil. Just a quiet boy seen slipping in and out of the ward.

Now Alice had woken up. Scans clean. Brain activity normal. The same boy had been seen in both wards. Someone had remembered his voice. Another recalled the kindness in his eyes when he said, “Pain shouldn’t live in someone that small.”

It was only a matter of time.

Grace sat at her desk long after the call ended, staring at her own reflection in the darkened monitor.

She had betrayed him.

One decision made in the grip of guilt and compassion, and years of careful secrecy had begun to unravel.

She had watched too many children die. She had told too many parents there was nothing left to try.

And then there was Joshua.

At least one little girl would live another day to paint her butterflies.

Grace closed her eyes.

The world would know soon.

And they would come hard.