Page 129 of At Her Will

Not knowing the answer to that question herself was one more blow she couldn’t handle facing. Not right now.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

When he walked out of the room, Rev felt like he was walking away from home.

His Mistress was home. Especially right now. She was the only thing that made sense to him.

But that was no good. He had to get his head right, to know how to be there for her, not to lean on her too much when she’d had such grievous hurt done to her.

The day he’d helped out at the shelter, there’d been a volunteer counselor handling a session with one of the guests. Rev had found her daughter sitting somberly on a chair outside the closed door of the little room. She’d been too worried to go play with the other kids, and was holding a container of glitter in both hands. He’d pulled up a chair next to her.

“What’s that?” he asked.

“Fairy dust. When you sprinkle it on people, it gives them magic. Sometimes the ability to fly. Want to see?”

“I was hoping you’d offer.”

He’d obligingly bent forward so she could sprinkle a pinch on his head. He’d widened his eyes, stood up and stretched out his arms to do a zooming plane maneuver up and down the short hallway. “Why, look at that. It do work. Isn’t that something?”

She smiled and cradled the container against her. “You were praying with Lucas and his mom in the playroom,” she said. “Is there magic in that, too?”

“Yeah.” Rev took a seat beside her again. “It a lot like fairy dust. It touches those who need it, gives them the ability to lift themselves up.”

He glanced toward the door as it opened. The mother’s eyes were red, but she looked like the session had helped. Her daughter rose to hug her, and they walked away, hand in hand.

The counselor leaning in the doorway had coffee-colored hair, one blond lock twisted like a ribbon against it. She also had the look of the TRA women to her. That Domme look. Her green gaze slid to his glitter-anointed hair, and a smile curved her mouth.

“Maureen,” she said, offering a hand. “Known as Dr. Mo around here. You’re Rev, Vera’s man.”

He rose and shook. “I like the sound of that.”

“Good. I think she does as well.”

“You help the kids too?”

“Yes, sometimes. My approach with them is more like yours. I sit with them, play with them. Listen and use what they give me to nudge them toward healing and healthy emotional responses. Some sessions I don’t make much progress, or I feel like we’ve taken a step backwards.”

She glanced at the mother and daughter, now on a couch in the living room, the little girl in her mother’s lap. “Time in a safe mental and physical space contributes most to their healing. Too many questions, too much prodding and poking at the wrong time, can feel like more of the same thing they left behind.”

Yeah. So Rev knew he’d messed up, saying anything to Veracity at all about his family and what had happened. Her telling him not to call her Mistress tore out his heart. He’d tried not to show it, but how she turned her face away from him toldhim he had. She couldn’t handle his feelings right now, and she was the most generous person he knew.

It was one thing to see the terrible thing done to her. Another to see how it had dug deep into her, upsetting all she knew about herself, what she believed about the world.

It put a weight and hurt on his heart he didn’t know what to do with. He got on a bus, but he didn’t get off at his home. He kept riding, staring through the window sightlessly. He couldn’t pray, which he knew wasn’t the right thing, but it didn’t change it. He had things in his mind that rejected everything. What he wanted most, to be with her right now, wasn’t right either. She needed him with her, even if she’d pushed him away, but she needed the man who wanted to serve her with his whole heart, not a man toting around a tortured, angry wreck of a soul.

He saw boys playing basketball. It was a bad neighborhood, but the court was part of a church’s grounds. The stone structure had been here for over a century, but funds had been found for some long-needed renovations. Nothing fancy, just what was needed to keep it up, and the front stoop was clean, the landscaping tended. Jesus didn’t care about stone and a roof. He cared that the door was open and welcoming.

When Teena Joy had first started their church in a big tent on the property where the building now stood, she’d told him that.

He exited the bus and went to the church steps. The outer doors were unlocked, because one of them rested an inch or two in front of the other. It was unusual for a church to be unlocked this early in the morning, well before time for the pastor or church secretary to arrive.

He looked at the door, then at a bench in front of the chain link fence around the basketball court. He could sit over there. Think.

One of the songs he’d practiced with Sy and Trey had been “Some Things I’ll Never Know” by Teddy Swims. The far-too-true and sad words were in his head now.

His feet took him up the steps and inside. It was a non-denominational church like his own, with a mix of Christian practices represented. Like a table of candles on one side of the transept, and a wooden cross centered before the chancel. A painted wooden lamb rested beneath it in a manger of straw. Statues of the Virgin Mary, St. Francis and Buddha were placed behind the cross in the chancel.

Near the candle table was a well-tended olive tree, hung with mementoes. A bracelet, a pet collar, a small family photo. A shrine for loved ones. Photos were stuck in potted flowers, grouped around the tree’s sizeable wooden planter. He guessed it had been built by a devoted parishioner. Words were carved along the planter’s wide top lip.Psalm 96:All the trees of the wood rejoice before the Lord.

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