Page 16 of The Missing Half

At 8:30 the next Sunday morning, Jenna picks me up from my apartment to take us to Holy Mount Presbyterian.

“You look nice,” she says as I climb into her truck and stuff my backpack into the space by my feet. I have a shift after the service, so it’s fuller than usual today with my uniform.

“Thanks.” I’m wearing the nicest thing I could find in my closet—a purple cotton dress with tiny white flowers that, from afar, look like spots. I couldn’t get myself to put on heels though, so I’ve paired it with my high-top Converse.

Jenna, on the other hand, looks like she’s made a real effort. She’s done her hair in loose ringlets and painted her lips pink. Her outfit though—a midnight blue satin halter dress and black slingback heels—makes me think she’s never been to church before. And the way she’s drumming her fingers nervously on the steering wheel seems to confirm it. I know with a sudden clench of dread that the good Christian socialites of this town will take one look at her and know she’s playing a part.

“Hey, do you want borrow a cardigan or something?” I say.

“Why? Do you think I need one? Is this not appropriate?”

“No, no, no. It’s not that. You look great. But these churches, they’re fucking cold.”

She lets out a relieved breath of laughter. “Okay. Sure. Thanks.”

I run back up to my apartment and grab a white, loose-knit cardigan from my closet. At least now the whispers won’t have the wordslutin them. I wouldn’t care if they said it about me, but for some reason it bothers me to think of Jenna on the receiving end of that kind of petty cruelty.

“So,” I say after I’ve made it back to the truck and tossed the sweater into her lap. “You and Jules didn’t grow up going to church, huh?”

“No. I can’t imagine our mom ever stepping foot into a church. She never really believed in anything but herself.”

This is the same woman who rages at Jenna for not being Jules, the same woman for whom Jenna is doing all of this. It shouldn’t make any sense, but I understand. Family is complicated.

“What about you?” she says. “You and Kasey go to church when you were kids?”

“For a while. Kasey was better at it all than I was.”

Back when our parents still loved each other or at least pretended to, back when drinking was more of a hobby for our mom instead of the priority it eventually became, she used to wrangle us to church. We were never going to be an every-week sort of family, but every third Saturday or so, Mom would announce we were going to service the next morning. I didn’t know what the hell it meant to be Christian, but I did know that church meant putting on an uncomfortable dress and sitting still as some man droned on about God and Jesus and the Holy Spirit, who were all the same person but also weren’t. Oh, and money. There was always a special part of the sermon to ask for money.

“Quit squirming,” Mom would say every time we went. “Quit tearing that program to shreds.” Even during the half hour after church when our parents would talk with the other adults and Kasey and I would play on the church’s playscape, I managed to get in trouble—for cursing, for getting my tights dirty, for messing up my hair. One Sunday morning, when our mom shepherded us to the car,I refused to get in. I was probably nine or ten at the time, and I stood in the driveway, arms crossed over my chest. “I’m not going.”

“Nicole Monroe,” Mom said. “You get in that car right now.”

I shook my head.

My mom looked to my dad, who just let out a weary sigh.

“Nic, you are a Christian and that means you are going to church.”

But I stamped my foot and used the word I’d learned only a few weeks earlier during, ironically enough, Sunday service. “I am atheist,” I shouted. “And I’m not going.”

This time, my mom looked to Kasey, the only one in the house I really listened to. “What do you want me to do?” Kasey said with a shrug. “Apparently, she’s an atheist.”

It wasn’t long after that that our parents gave up on church.

Holy Mount Presbyterian is one of the older churches in town, gray stone with ostentatious columns out front. We pull up beside an enormous magnolia sprawling over the lawn, its waxy leaves casting stark shadows in the summer sun. People are still milling around outside, but the men are glancing at watches while the women call out to their kids. It’s almost time for the service to start.

“I don’t see Lauren,” I say to Jenna as she walks around the truck to join me on the sidewalk. “Or Matthew or the kids.”

“They’re probably inside already.”

We file through the church’s double doors with the rest of the congregation, looking exactly like the wide-eyed tourists we are. People are shooting sideways glances at us and smiling too broadly when I catch their eye. We sit in the back, and I crane my neck to search the pews. There are dozens of women I think could be Lauren, but I watch each until they do something, turn their head or laugh, and I realize they’re not.

A man with thick dark hair and unnaturally white teeth stands in front of the crowd and welcomes everyone, inviting us to join him in a song of worship to get started. It’s then, as the congregation stands to sing, that I see her—a head of blond hair, an eyelet white dress, a baby in her arms. I elbow Jenna and nod in Lauren’s direction.

After the sermon, something about unconditional love that I onlylistened to pieces of, Jenna and I hurry outside and wait at the bottom of the stairs on the front lawn, where every person in the church will walk by on their way out. We wait for what feels like forever for Lauren and her family to emerge through the double doors, and I start to get antsy. I don’t have long before I need to leave for work. Finally, we see them.

“Lauren,” I call, waving a hand.

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