Page 130 of My Vows Are Sealed

There was another pause before Brendan spoke again.

“Hang on just a second. I’ll let you tell her yourself. She’s right here. I’m going to put you on speakerphone.” He pulled the phone away from his ear and hit the button to put it on speakerphone. “Okay, you’re on speaker.”

“Darla?” came Peter’s garbled voice through the crappy speaker on the cell phone.

“Yeah, I’m here,” I mumbled.

“I’msosorry, sweetheart,” he said apologetically. “I should have called you from my cell phone instead of the office number. I should have known.”

I felt a pang of guilt that he was blaming himself for my neurotic episode. He shouldn’t have been apologizing because I was acting like a crazy person.

“No, I’m sorry,” I told him. “You couldn’t have known.”

“How are you feeling?” he asked.

“Well, I have two broken ribs and a broken arm, and the strongest thing I can take for pain is extra-strength Tylenol, so…” I trailed off. “They gave me a little morphine at the doctor’s appointment just so I could get through them setting the bone, but it’s wearing off.”

“Oof,” he chuckled humorlessly. “That’s no fun.”

“Not so much, no,” I agreed, chuckling weakly.

“I hate to ask this when you’re still recovering, but were you two planning on coming to church tonight?”

Oh, my God. It was Wednesday. My life used to be so centered around church that I could always tell what day it was based on how long ago I’d gone to church. And now the days were all starting to run together and I’d lost all concept of time. How had that happened?

I wished I could find the strength to go tonight. I hadn’t set foot in a church in over three months, and I missed it. A lot. I missed the people. Ireallymissed seeing Nathan. I missed leaving there feeling just a little closer to God than when I’d walked in. But just going to the doctor to get my arm set and put in a cast had completely exhausted me and I was still loopy and tired from the morphine too. Plus, I wasn’t sure if I was ready to deal with the looks and the judgment that would come with going back to that church. My father had been telling everyone who would listen his version of events for months, and it would probably take a lot of convincing for them to believe that he was the one who had done this to me. And even if they did believe that, I was still a pregnant, not-yet-married seventeen-year-old. There would be looks and judgment aplenty just for that.

“I don’t know if I’m up for it,” I mumbled. “I’m sorry.”

“You don’t have to apologize. I was…I was just hoping you were coming, because some new information’s been uncovered about your father’s case, and I thought it might be easier if it came from me. I was hoping we could talk before the service.”

What? What information could have been uncovered thatPeterwould have found out about? This made absolutely no sense.

“What information?”

“Darla, this really isn’t a conversation we should have over the phone.” Peter’s voice broke, like he was having a hard time keeping his composure. “If you don’t think you’re up for it today, maybe we can meet up tomorrow or the next day?”

Maybe it was the morphine or the pain, but I couldnotunderstand what he could possibly have to tell me that he didn’t want to say over the phone. But I did know that, whatever it was, it had to be serious.

As tired as I was, and as scared as I was of the looks and the judgment and the ridicule, we had to go. Peter wanted us there for some reason, and he and Marie had done so much for me over the years that I couldn’t say no to him now. And, really, the longer I put off going back to church, the worse it would be when I finally did set foot in there again.

“No, we can come tonight,” I sighed. “We’ll see you in a little while.”

* * *

When Brendan and I walked into the church lobby, it was eerily quiet. Being the pastor’s daughter, I’d been in here plenty of times while no one else was around, but today, it was different somehow. I didn’t feel the usual sense of peace that usually accompanied the solitude. This was more like the eye of a hurricane. Like a little moment of calm just before all hell broke loose again.

Brendan walked over and opened the door that led down a hall to all the offices, and it was a complete contrast from the dead silence out in the lobby. There were at least half a dozen people all but tearing apart the entire alcove where the offices sat, and Peter was standing there next to the two detectives who were handling my case, looking completely shell-shocked.

“Peter?” I asked. “What’s going on?”

Every eye in the entire place turned and focused on me, and I shied away from the intense scrutinization by burying my face in Brendan’s chest. He enveloped me in his arms and dropped a kiss on my head.

“I’m sorry, but we’re going to have to ask you two to leave,” an unfamiliar voice said. “This is a crime scene.”

“It’s okay, Agent Thomas,” I heard Detective Michele saying. “This is Mr. Jones’s daughter and her fiancé. We’ll use Mr. Schultz’s office, since you’re done in there.”

What in the world was going on? Why was the church office a crime scene? I mean, yeah, I’d told Detective Michele that my father had whipped me with his belt in his office, but I didn’t think that would rise to the level of them needing to declare the entire office alcove a crime scene. Would it?

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