Relief flooded over her like a soothing tide. She reached out and hugged him desperately.
“I’m so sorry,” he whispered in her ear. “So very sorry.”
She turned her wet face up to him. “The worst part is that she didn’t know Christ,” she whispered. “I didn’t work hard enough to lead her to him. I thought there was plenty of time.”
“So did I,” Nick said. “Believe me, I haven’t slept a wink since I heard about her death. I’ve been beating myself up like you wouldn’t believe. Don’t do that to yourself. The truth is, it was her choice. We both tried.”
She sucked in a sob. “But it’s so tragic.”
“That it is,” he said. “This is gonna be the hardest funeral I’ve ever done.”
He hugged her quickly again, then whispered in her ear. “Stan said to send you his love.”
The words were like an injection of hope and promise, of joy and peace, and even comfort. “How’s he doing?”
“He’s doing well,” he said. “He’s really tired and weak, and the doctor apparently advised him to stay at home. I hear he got out a little too much yesterday and was seen around town a couple of places. It must have taken a lot out of him. The doctor warned him that he was gonna put him back in the hospital if he didn’t start taking it easier.” He looked at her with concerned eyes. “How are you doing?”
“I’m fine,” she said. “Just a little tired. And my family…well…they’re not too thrilled to have me here.”
“Yeah, I know. I’ve kind of encountered that, already.”
She hated the fact that her own preacher had to know of her family’s indifference toward her. Nick let go of her and stepped toward her parents. “If you’re all ready, the music has begun and all of the congregation are filtering in. If you don’t mind, I’d like to lead us in a prayer.”
Her parents were not praying people, she knew, but in a time like this, she supposed that everyone prayed. She wondered if they ever prayed for her.
They formed a circle, but it was a broken circle. No one was bound by held hands. Even their eyes did not meet. Nick led them in a prayer that was short, but poignant, and Celia found herself crying again, harder. She didn’t know when the tears were ever going to end.
When it was time, they walked into the chapel and took their places in a secluded section of the room where people couldn’t stare at them. She was thankful for that. She sat at the end of the row, next to David, with no one on the other side of her.
She wished for a Kleenex. Had Stan been here, he would have had some in his pocket. He always remembered to bring them to funerals and weddings, because he knew how easily she cried. He would have held her close and reminded her that she was loved. He would have helped unwind the knots in her stomach, and nursed the bruises on her heart. He would have made the pain easier to bear.
But he wasn’t here, and no one had brought Kleenex for her. No one held her hand. No one offered comfort.
So she returned to the silent, strong arms of the Creator who’d comforted her last night in places too deep for human love to reach. And in his arms, she found hope and peace where she’d been certain there was none.
Chapter Fifty-Six
From up in the closed-off balcony of the funeral home that smelled like rotting wood and dust, Aunt Aggie sat watching the funeral. She had to sit at the back, in the shadows, so that Nick could not see her from the pulpit. Sid Ford stood by the balcony door, presumably to keep anyone from coming in and spotting Aunt Aggie, though Aggie felt sure he was mostly there to keep her under control, in case she got a notion to yell something down to the mourners. She had been here for hours, for they didn’t want her to take the chance of being seen coming or going.
She could see the congregation through a lattice railing, though they couldn’t see her. She could see the uniformed firemen designated as pall bearers sitting in the front row, and the others scattered around the room, wiping their own eyes. Someone from Celia’s church sang a hymn that Aunt Aggie couldn’t identify. She wondered if Jill had suggested it.
Mark Branning got up to say a few words, and Aunt Aggie leaned forward, listening hard. She didn’t want to miss a syllable.
Mark wiped his eyes as he reached the podium, and he was quiet for a moment, as if trying to find his voice. “We all at Midtown fire station loved Aunt Aggie,” he said. “She was one of the sweetest, most caring women we’ve ever known, and she was a heck of a cook.”
She heard some soft chuckles around the room, and she smiled.
“Aunt Aggie didn’t put up with much, but she was fiercely loyal to the people she loved. I respected that about her. I’m gonna miss her.” His voice broke. “There’s gonna be a huge void in this town. But I wanted to tell a few stories about the Aunt Aggie that I knew. Last summer, Aunt Aggie…”
She heard a commotion somewhere in the congregation beneath her, and Mark’s voice faded out. She fought the temptation to get up and lean over the balcony railing to have a look. Instead, she stood up in the shadows, straining to see. Several people were standing up, and she couldn’t see who they were hovering around. Someone was sick.
“Uh…excuse me.” Mark’s voice rippled with panic. “My wife…will someone call our doctor, please?”
Mark dashed from the podium, and Nick took his place. “Allie seems to be in labor,” Nick said. “We need to get her to the hospital.”
Aunt Aggie caught her breath. Allie Branning had the gall to go into labor during her funeral? Couldn’t she have waited just another hour? She wasn’t due for another month, after all. She pushed the resentment back down, then told herself that was ridiculous. When a baby was ready to be born, it was ready to be born. Couldn’t nobody stop it.
She saw Mark walking her out a side door, saw several people run out with them. Aunt Aggie sat back down, trying not to resent being upstaged.
After a few minutes, the crowd’s roar died down, and Nick took over. “Well, I guess Mark won’t be making those comments, after all. But I have some things to say. Aggie Gaston was a woman unlike any woman I’ve ever known,” Nick began. “Everyone in town called her Aunt Aggie, though only Celia Shepherd was related to her.”
Aunt Aggie smiled. It was brave how he’d mentioned Celia’s name, even though he knew a murmur would follow. And it did.
“Aunt Aggie was a giver. She was one of the kindest, gentlest, most giving people that I’ve ever known. Twice a day, she brought meals to the firefighters on duty at Midtown. Why? Because she thought they needed what she called ‘good eats.’ She led a long, prosperous, contented life,” he said.
She could see how carefully he was choosing his words. It was hard for a preacher to preach a funeral for someone who didn’t believe. She almost felt sorry for him. Too bad they couldn’t have had the sense to find an atheist to preach her funeral. Either an atheist or a liar, who could pretend they’d all see her again someday in heaven, if that’s what they wanted to hear. But she supposed that wasn’t done.
She wondered if this was gonna be one of those times when Nick was gonna look everybody in the eye and tell them what a pity it was that Aunt Aggie wasn’t going to heaven. Would her death become the launch point for a fire-and-brimstone sermon?
“I wish Aunt Aggie could have known the abundant life offered in Jesus Christ,” he said solemnly. “’Cause I think she would have been a glorious servant for the Lord. With her giving spirit, and her love for so many people, and the wisdom that came with her age, and her inner beauty—not to mention her outer beauty. I know that she could have made great strides in the kingdom of God.”
“There he goes,” she whispered to herself. The God stuff had to come sooner or later, she supposed.
“Her greatest sorrow in life,” he said, “was when her dear niece Celia was accused of attempting to kill her husband. But Aunt Aggie needn’t have worried,” Nick went on, “because Celia has the peace of the Lord. And even though she was sitting in a jail cell all alone, she had the joy of the Lo
rd, because she was in tune with him, and he was speaking to her.
“When I first heard about all the stuff with Celia and Stan,” he said—as if he was talking to a room full of close friends—“I thought that it was possible that Celia was guilty. But then I went to see her, and I saw the Holy Spirit in her eyes, in her face, and I saw Jesus in her heart and in her attitude. I saw peace, the kind that someone who’s entered into a new level of spirituality can attest to. I saw a woman who knew God and, despite the circumstances, was trusting him.” He looked around at the other faces in the room. “I wish Aunt Aggie had trusted God, because he loved her dearly. I wish she had known how precious that love of God can be.” His voice broke, and he looked down at his notes. He was having trouble going on.
Aunt Aggie watched, captivated. Something in her heart deflated, and she wished she hadn’t come. Jill had been right. It was crazy. What had she expected? She had wanted grief…didn’t everybody want to know they were missed when they died? But she hadn’t quite expected the grief that had to do with her religious beliefs—or lack thereof. A heavy weight came over her, making her feel suddenly very, very old and very tired. The finality of this whole death business began to dawn on her, and she realized many of the tears being shed in the room were not because she was such a wonderful person, but because she didn’t believe in God. She thought of standing up and shouting out to everyone in the room that death hadn’t conquered her yet, and that it didn’t matter if she believed, that she was happy, and she was good, and she was a philanthropist and generous with everything she had, and that she met people’s needs when she saw them. What more did they want from a person?
But she didn’t. She sat quietly, as she had promised she would, because she wanted so much for Celia to be cleared. Still, she felt a tightness over her chest, and wondered if she died right here, right now, if they’d let this dismal funeral suffice. Was this all there was after a life well-lived?
She saw Celia sitting at the end of the family pew, being shunned by the rest of them. She couldn’t wait to give Celia’s parents a piece of her mind when she resurrected, tell them what she thought of them, coming to her funeral and acting all mournful, then treating her Celia like a leper.
Soon the funeral was over, and she realized that Nick hadn’t had much good news to offer the crowd on her behalf. He couldn’t tell them that they would see her again, because he didn’t know that they would. She thought it probably would have been nice for him to say anyway.
It was she who felt the worst, sitting here, viewing something that most people never had the chance to see. She wasn’t enjoying this like she thought she would. In fact, she was ready to go home, to try to wipe out of her mind all the things she had seen and heard here today. But she couldn’t leave. She had to sit through until the end, hear every word. It had been her choice, after all.
She glanced at Celia again and wished her little heart wasn’t breaking over some imaginary spiritual condition that Aunt Aggie had never understood. And then she thought of Celia that night when Aggie had been in jail, too, singing a hymn, telling her that things were going to be all right, as if she’d forgotten she’d been accused of trying to kill the man she loved most in the world. Aunt Aggie just couldn’t fathom it. Either Celia was stupid, or she had been brainwashed so deeply that every fiber of her own being believed in the things she said she believed. And suddenly, Aunt Aggie realized that it wasn’t with every fiber of her being that she believed there wasn’t a God. The idea of God was just something beyond her grasp, something she had never experienced before, something she thought was a bunch of hooey. For the first time, it occurred to her that these people, who were crying at her funeral because they thought they’d never see her again, might know something she didn’t know.
She wiped at a tear in her own eye, surprised that she would cry at her own funeral, when she’d expected to laugh her head off. She hoped Jill would come quickly to get her after the service. She didn’t know how much more of this she could take.
The funeral broke up, and in moments, Jill was in the balcony with her. “Aunt Aggie, the funeral director said there’s a van out on the side with blackened windows. He’s gonna be driving it, and you can sit in the back if you want to go to the burial site.”
She shook her head. “No, I think I’ve had enough.”
“Really?” Jill asked. “Well, I thought you’d want…”
“No, never mind. I’ll jes’ stay here and wait till you come back.”
“All right. It shouldn’t be that long. Just stay right here and don’t come out, and no one will see you. Sid is staying with you.”
Jill ran back out, and Aunt Aggie could hear below her as everyone filed out of the room, talking quietly, no doubt, about the tragedy of her death and the scandal of Celia’s plight. She stared down at that pulpit where Nick had done her eulogy. This was good experience, she told herself. As soon as she came back to life, she was going to write her own eulogy, maybe videotape it, so nobody would have to endure the likes of this again. Yes, it was a very good experience, she thought. She just wasn’t sure why it didn’t feel so good.
Chapter Fifty-Seven
Lee Barnett was the first person Issie saw when she walked into Joe’s Place that night. She told herself that she hadn’t gone there to see him, that she just wanted a drink to unwind after the funeral, but that didn’t explain the elation she felt when he spotted her and patted the empty stool next to him. She felt like the high school cheerleader who had a crush on the town’s bad boy.
As she took the stool, he ordered her a glass of wine, the same brand she’d been drinking the other night. “How’s it going there?” he asked.
“Fine,” she said, trying to seem nonchalant about seeing him.
He grinned. “Don’t pretend you’re not glad to see me. You know you are. I could see it in your face when you came in.”
Something about that bold appraisal charmed her. “You’re pretty confident for somebody in a lot of trouble.”
“I’m not in trouble,” he said. “Haven’t you heard? I met with Celia’s husband. Convinced him I’m a Boy Scout. ’Cause I am, you know.”
She smiled. “Yep. That was my first thought about you. A real Boy Scout. Especially the other night when my preacher had to rescue me from you.”
“Another few minutes, and I’m the one would’ve needed rescuing,” he said.
She started to tell him he had a lot of gall, but she hadn’t exactly been fighting him off. Besides, she liked gall in a man.
She sipped on the wine Joe put in front of her, and decided to change the subject. “So did you hear about Aggie Gaston?”
“Who?”
“Celia’s aunt. She died. She was buried today.”
“Arsenic poisoning?” Lee asked.
Issie frowned and shook her head. “No, she had a heart attack.”
Lee nodded. “Good.”
“Good?”
“I mean, I’m glad it’s not arsenic. There’s a little too much of that going around, if you know what I mean.”
Issie supposed he was right.
Across the crowd of people, R.J. sat at the back table pretending to read the paper. He knew he wasn’t fooling anybody. Lee Barnett had seen him come in, and he knew he was being watched. Still, he kept up the pretense, if not for Barnett, then for everyone else in the room. His cellular phone vibrated, and he pulled it out of his hip pocket. “Albright.”
“Where are you?” It was Sid’s voice.
“Joe’s Place.”
“Albright, are you drinkin’ on the job?”
“No,” he said, shoving the empty beer bottle across the table as if Sid could see through the phone.
“Where’s Barnett?” Sid asked.
“Right here. Got my eye on him. Thing is, he knows I’m watching him.”
“Well, that’s a big help.”
R.J. bristled at the sarcastic tone, as if he didn’t have enough police savvy to do the right thing. “I w
as just fixin’ to leave,” he said. “You don’t have to tell me how to do my job, Sid. I think I can handle it.”
He clicked off the phone and dropped it back in his pocket, then left the paper on the table and got up to leave. Barnett, who was bantering flirtatiously with Issie Mattreaux, winked at him as he left. R.J. felt like throttling him. He didn’t like being taunted, even silently. He went out across the street and headed to his car parked in the police parking lot. He could see the front door from there. With the aid of his binoculars, he could watch Barnett come out, then follow him to wherever he went. Fun detail, he thought sarcastically. It was going to be a long night.
Two hours later, Lee Barnett had had too much to drink. Once again, he’d passed his limit, and he knew it. But he was doing so well with Issie Mattreaux. The knockout brunette was laughing and flirting, and he knew that he had a much better chance of getting her to go home with him tonight than he’d had the time before, and he’d been really close then.
He leaned into her, too close, he knew, but she allowed it. He reached out and stroked her arm.
“Hands off,” she said in a teasing voice. “I’m not into public displays of affection. The town’s already buzzing about Issie spending time with Celia’s ex-con.”
“How about private displays?” he asked against her ear.
She didn’t say no, so he took that as a yes.
“Come on, Issie. Who are you kidding? You know you want to go home with me.”
“You’re awfully cocky for somebody who’d let a preacher knock him down.”
She was still teasing, but he was less amused. “Hey, I can take on the preacher.”
“Yeah, if you’re not drunk, maybe.”
“I ain’t drunk,” he argued, sliding one hand under her hair to cup the back of her neck. “I’m in love.”
She laughed then. “In love? Is that what you call it?” She took his wrist and removed his hand.
He grinned. “If you don’t want me touchin’ you in public, then let’s go someplace private. I’m gettin’ tired of these games.”
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