Page 135 of At Her Will

His gaze slid over her in the robe, and the corner of his mouth quirked. “Is life offering me you, Mistress?”

She nudged him. But she got up and went to her bread box. Bringing forth one of Cyn’s giant muffins, she cut it in half and put his portion next to his soup. When she slid back onto her stool, she made sure she was close enough their hips and shoulders brushed. Even if it meant she might elbow him while eating her soup.

“I don’t have a lot of answers tonight,” she said.

“Is it all right that I’m here with you, being with you?”

“Yes,” she said simply. “This part is good.”

“Then that’s enough, and I’m grateful for it.” He gripped her hand. “I been feeling like I have a knife in my lungs, because even breathing hurts, and when you touched me here,” he put his hand on his chest, “you took it out.”

She put her other hand over his. She couldn’t say anything, because his words made her own heart hurt. But this time, it was the right kind of pain.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Rev stood at the pulpit, gazing at the polished wood top. Unlike Witford, he had no notes in front of him, no carefully reviewed pages. The congregation waited, and he drew in their energy. Uncertain, unbalanced by what had happened. Much like he’d felt, all the way up to this moment.

He hadn’t asked, but Veracity had said she might come. She hadn’t, and he understood. But it sure would have been nice to see her in the sea of expectant faces before him.

“Let’s pray first thing,” he said. “I think it will help.”

And it did. He did what he did in the garden behind the church, offering up everything, hiding nothing. Asking for guidance, showing gratitude for his blessings. Hoping he served God’s will in all he did.

When he lifted his head, he was calmer. He looked at the people before him, and he smiled. “It all right,” he said. “Things happen. We all get lost.”

A few murmurs of assent. “I see hope in your faces. Hope that I have some answers. I don’t think I do. But that’s okay, because God give us the answers we need.”

He thought of Tisha and Witford. He felt their absence keenly. “We get lost in fear, in hatred, in anger. We get lost whenwe put store in the wrong things, and forget the only things that really matter.”

He lifted his gaze. “And what are those things? Honoring and caring for others. Forgiving when forgiveness is needed. We hurting because we don’t understand what happened to Tisha and Witford, to Simon and Tyson. But we know if they look to God, if they ask God to help them find Him again, He will. God’s forgiveness is limitless. No matter how short we fall on it, we have to try to be like that.”

He drew a few random lines on the wood before him. “I always had family, but they come and go too often. My momma, Teena Joy. Now Witford and Tisha. They not passed on, but they apart from me right now, and I don’t know if they’ll find their way back. It hurts, almost as bad as from them dying.”

When his attention slid over the elderly members of their church, he saw understanding. They’d lived long enough to know what he was saying. They would help him with the younger members of the congregation, would take his words and use them to help heal others.

“I not sure if I done right, if I missed things I should have seen. If I should have done things I didn’t. We can all ask God’s help today. Faith isn’t always an easy path. But love carries us down the right road. Love for each other, our families, families we born into and those we choose.

“When we hate, we separate ourselves from one another. That’s when we get lost most of all, and when we invite evil in. We think it belongs to the person we’ve separated ourselves from, when really it’s infected us, too.”

His gaze lifted as the rear door opened. Veracity entered the nave, wearing a form-fitting golden orange suit with black trim. The colors reminded him of a monarch butterfly. Her pillbox hat was black with a little gold net over her eyes. Her black gloves had sparkling orange lace at the wrists.

As she took a seat, the vise around his chest dropped free with a resounding clank.

Vera had been drawn as tight as a gallows rope when she drove into the parking lot. She walked up to the doors and stopped, perilously close to bolting back to her car. No usher came out to change her mind. She should take that as a sign and do just that.

But it was Rev’s first sermon in front of a congregation. She’d come this far. Gotten dressed up and everything.

She put her hand on the door, opened it, and was standing in the narthex. She clasped her hands together, head down, and listened to his words, coming through the next set of doors. They reached for her, brought her closer to the entry. Maybe his words opened them, or maybe her grasp on the handle did it, but it didn’t matter. She was in the nave, and sliding into her preferred back row pew.

He kept talking, but his eyes touched her with a light that told her just how glad he was to see her.

She saw Ray, a couple pews away from her on the other side of the aisle. No phone on his knee, but no collection plate either. His expression was troubled, fixed on Rev. She expected Rev had told them today wasn’t going to be about collections, or keeping an eye on the parking lot. It was about being fully present for the service.

“Repentance is important, because to be forgiven by those we love…there’s a grace there more priceless than anything made by man. ‘I once was lost, but now I’m found.’”

As he sang the “Amazing Grace” line, straight from the pulpit, the effect was immediate, a spring rain on parched earth, the promise of the morning sunrise. Vera could feel the way itsank into all of them, the worst parts of the tension and worry easing, heads lifting, shoulders dropping, gazes exchanged, hands clasped.

He left the pulpit, still singing. He repeated that line in the way a blues song would do it. Strong like a declaration. Then soft and fragile, a man weeping before a cross. Quiet, the sound of a brook, all of them resting on its grassy banks, at peace. With rejoicing, with laughter, strong and lifting up to the heavens.

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