Image by <a href="https://pixabay.com/users/geralt-9301/?utm_source=link-attribution&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=image&utm_content=64170">Gerd Altmann</a> from <a href="https://pixabay.com//?utm_source=link-attribution&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=image&utm_content=64170">Pixabay</a>

https://cdn.pixabay.com/photo/2012/11/05/14/13/wave-64170_1280.jpg

“OK, so this is the family God sent me to and they are all my cousins but the little ones are going to be my siblings and these are going to be my adoptive parents and these over here are still going to be my cousins but my new cousins because my branch of Ludlows doesn't have any Lees in it but this branch that I'm in now has a Lee bonus, and then there are the Trent and Stepforth friends bonuses with bonus brown grandparents and they're going to be on in a minute because I told them what you've been teaching me and they all said they are going to check it out – and here they all come – so, yeah, I'm in a totally better situation because Jesus told me after the lesson about Abraham to get out and go to a new place and He would show me while I was going and He did and God is good all the time, Sis. Smith!”

Sis. Mosette Smith of the Ghent Street Baptist Church of Shortport had prayed and prayed and prayed for years about Glendella Ludlow's situation – she was still doing Sunday School on Zoom during the pandemic and praying Glendella was all right after watching her grandparents' home burn down on Uppity Foolery Watch … so she could not hold back a tear of joy when Capt. R.E. and Thalia Ludlow got Glendella online to get to her Sunday School class and brought all their Ludlow grandchildren and friends with her, doubling the size of the online Sunday School.

Capt. Ludlow sat back holding his composure with every ounce of his being when Sis. Smith said, “We know your Big Cousins Robert and Thalia, Glendella – and God bless you both.”

“Oh, He does, Sis. Smith,” Capt. Ludlow said. “He does – God is good.”

“All the time,” Mrs. Ludlow added, but after seeing her husband out of the corner of her eye, and the blood vessels twitching in his head, she quietly wrapped an arm around him and sat down with him on the sofa off camera as he had all kinds of flashbacks, good and bad.

Life was coming full circle. Mrs. Mosette Smith was Capt. Ludlow's stepdaughter by his first marriage, the daughter his first wife quietly had before they met. Had the young cadet known that, he would have known how readily that same wife would dispose of their last two children once their marriage collapsed. Alexandra Holmes Bell had a cruel streak. Since the boy who had gotten her pregnant would not marry her, she had the child and sent him and his parents pictures of that child left in the wilderness for the wild animals where she was, and came on home to Lofton County without concern. The boy broke, mentally, and did not see his 20th birthday. The parents were glad enough not to be bothered with the grandchild, and, well, they had other sons beside the one they lost.

But Millie Lee-of-the-Mountain had ears that could hear a baby crying from a mile off – she found the child about to drown in a heavy rainstorm and named her Mosette – “because I drew her from the waters, like Moses” – and adopted the baby as her own, raising her among the Lees-of-the-Mountain in the Blue Ridge. Thus, Millie Lee's great-aunt, Hilda Lee Slocum-Bolling, returned to the mountains after being widowed, also participated in the bringing up of Mosette – and since Hilda Lee was Grandee Lee, and since only the king of fools would challenge anything she said was going on the mountain, Mosette was set for life. 

Grandee Lee also had a remarkable young Ludlow grandson – Cadet R.E. Ludlow, visiting whenever on leave, and enjoying time with the little children. Baby Mosette was now family, and grew up many days hearing Cadet Ludlow and then Lieutenant Ludlow telling stories about the world and singing in his huge bass voice. Then he got married, and brought his little ones up to play with their cousins … so Mosette actually knew her half-siblings although nobody knew but the first Mrs. Ludlow after a little asking around that in fact, Mosette was her daughter. Mosette, too, was gorgeous, a big blue-eyed brunette model of her own mother at that age. The child's father, the real target of abandoning Mosette: dust. Then-Lieutenant Ludlow: well in hand and still without a clue. All was still going according to her plan at that point.

(In the long run, that is why the first Mrs. Ludlow left her last two children alive. They were too beautiful in her eyes – blond-haired, blue-eyed – and she knew, subconsciously, that someone would pick them up.)

Mosette missed all the Ludlow drama to come, marrying and moving down to Shortport with Mr. Tony Smith – they had five beautiful children and were living well and worshiping at Ghent Street Baptist, the poorest but the kindest church in town. They still went up to visit Millie Lee regularly, and this is how the thing was found out: the sun was glancing off Mosette's hair, and Capt. Ludlow on a visit saw her and quietly sat down and passed out, for there was blond Alexandra Ludlow, somehow still alive!

After the details all came out and were matched up – for Millie Lee still had her notes and drawings of the day she found Mosette, and Capt. Ludlow had done the math on the year-long gap he had overlooked in his first wife's life – the heart of the captain and the heart of his stepdaughter had been knit together, for he had always treated her with tender paternal affection, as if somehow he had always known.

“I didn't,” he said, “but God knew that I would step up.”

Turns out that Ghent Street Baptist was the only church in Shortport that had Sunday School with breakfast, and one day, lonely little Glendella Ludlow had seen a flyer and asked her grandparents if she could go. They were glad to drop her off, and Sis. Mosette Smith had read that whole situation and stepped up. She and her husband were getting ready to call CPS on Astor and Big Glendella, but the grandparents had gotten moved out of the way... and Sis. Smith's stepfather, who she knew had stepped up for his own grandchildren, had also stepped up for Glendella. It was the answer to prayer that nobody saw coming – but –.

“God is good!” little Glendella had said, and that was that.

“Hey, Papa and Grandma,” ten-year-old Andrew Ludlow said when class was all done, “can we just start going to Sunday School on Zoom with Glendella because that was really good – she tells Bible stories and explains a lot like you and Grandma do!”

“Yes, we will,” they said, and all the little Ludlows happily went on their little break before service at the Good Neighbors Fellowship.

“Robert,” the second Mrs. Ludlow said, noticing he was doing the thousand-yard stare … his mind was almost 40 years back … sitting at a campfire with all the little ones, for it was his task to sing them all to sleep that evening. None could resist the sweet, dark velvet of his voice … baby Mosette was a little colicky but her face would get all smiley when he sang … the future Col. H.F. Lee was there as five-year-old Harry, all tangled up with six-year-old Hoppy Lee his cousin and snoring along with the music … and so many others … and now Harry and Mosette were grown up and loving all eight Ludlow little ones … full circle.

“Hey!” said five-year-old Lil' Robert Ludlow on the yard, “if your church feeds breakfast, Glennie, can they put it through the Zoom screen?”

“Naw, Rob – we need to get the big screen for that!” nine-year-old George said, and both his grandparents sprang off that couch …

“George's grandfather was on him in five seconds!”  nine-year-old Milton Trent said from next door.

“Only the king of fools would leave George to his own devices for six seconds, Milton,” Sgt. Vincent Trent said to his younger son, “and you see I have you right over here by me today, because your father is no fool either.”