Bless Her Heart

by Sally Kilpatrick

  “It is what it is.” She shrugged. “Everything going well between you and Chadwick?”

  I nodded even though, no, no it was not going well.

  “Never pegged him for a preacher,” she said. “Goes to show you never know. Of course, he is new to the whole thing, isn’t he?”

  “Fairly.” New was a relative term. Chad had started Love Ministries over five years ago. Of course, in a town where most churches dated back to the late eighteen hundreds, I suppose his little fledgling congregation was new. He and a few members of First Baptist had splintered from the main congregation over a couple of points about marriage. After a bitter dispute, the church had made the unorthodox—but not unprecedented—decision to allow a deacon to retain his position despite the fact his wife had divorced him. Chad took that opportunity to double down on the importance of not divorcing and of the man’s responsibilities as the head of the household. He also emphasized giving support to widows and widowers so they wouldn’t feel compelled to remarry and to Paul’s passage about remaining celibate if you could. Hence Love Ministries consisted of mostly widows and widowers, a few spinsters, and a handful of devoted couples.

  “Well,” Nurse Radford said as she passed the clipboard for me to sign. “Just remember that you are always welcome back at First Baptist should something happen.”

  Blood ran icy cold in my veins. “What would possibly happen?”

  “Nothing,” she said a little too quickly. I looked down at the clipboard and saw Courtney Rawls’s name toward the top. Maybe Naomi had been upset about her daughter when she went to see Chad. The nurse shrugged and turned her attention back to her newest charge. I walked over to Rain and gently touched her shoulder. “Come on, and I’ll take you home.”

  “Can you guide me?” she asked in a small voice. “The light really hurts my eyes.”

  And so I led my little sister out of the high school while she held a damp washcloth over her eyes. She kept up the charade for at least a block before she remembered. “You don’t have a car, do you?”

  “Nope.”

  Down went the hand with the washcloth, and she tossed her long, glossy black hair over her shoulder. “Well. That really puts a crimp in my style.”

  “You had news for me?” I had to almost shout over the roar of the passing cars.

  “Take me to McDonald’s, and I’ll tell you over a sausage biscuit.”

  “You’re supposed to be sick.”

  She slapped the cloth back over her forehead. “Trust me. A sausage biscuit will miraculously heal this migraine. I’m sure Mom’s vegetarian meal plan is one of my triggers.”

  I guided her in the direction of the McDonald’s. “Have you heard the one about the little boy who cried wolf?”

  “He’s a rank amateur.”

  And I had to be an easy mark because not only had I picked up my sister from school, but I somehow also ended up buying her breakfast. I opted for hash browns and another coffee for myself—decaf this time.

  “Thanks, sis,” she said as she crumpled up the wrapper. “I really was hungry. Cereal doesn’t go that far.”

  “Rain, would you just tell me what’s so urgent?”

  She looked over each shoulder, but the only other people there were a group of older men sitting in the back corner talking politics.

  “Okay, so when I got to school today, Courtney Rawls was having a sobfest in the hall, and I couldn’t miss it because I have to pass her locker to get to mine. So many people were crowded around her, I almost couldn’t get through. It was ridiculous. I mean, why are there all these sheeple who can’t watch what they’re doing and—”

  “Rain.”

  “Sorry. So, anyhow, as I was passing by, Courtney busts over and says, ‘Tell your sister I said thanks for nothing!’”

  “Me?”

  “Duh. You’re the only sister I have.”

  Rain chose that moment to take a long sip from her Dr. Pepper. Sun streamed through the window highlighting her olive skin, huge brown eyes, and dark hair—she looked exactly like her father, but she acted like no one else in the family. Well, maybe Granny. She, too, had a flair for the dramatic.

  “And?”

  “Okay, so then I’m all, ‘What did my sister ever do to you?’ and she’s all ‘Maybe if she’d kept her husband happy then he wouldn’t have run off with my mom.’”

  I put a hand over my mouth to keep my breakfast from making a return appearance. Finally, I managed to ask, “What?”

  “Your husband ran off with Courtney’s mom. I think I heard her telling her friends they went to Nashville.”

  The restaurant spun around me. “That’s impossible.”

  Even as I said the words, I remembered the note. A conference in Nashville? More like a tryst.

  “Well, she was mad enough to take a swing at me. I’ll tell you that.”

  “Rain!”

  My little sister held up both hands. “She missed, and I didn’t hit back. This time.”

  Fingers shaking, I took my phone from my purse. Still no message from Chad. I hit redial, but found myself in voicemail once again. “Do you have Courtney’s number?”

  “Ew, no.”

  I thought of the small card the nurse had pulled from her files to make sure I was authorized to pick up Rain. “You’re going back to school. I bet Courtney’s mom’s number is in the attendance office.”

  Rain wrinkled her nose. “Uh-uh.”

  “Oh, yes, you are. That sausage biscuit has miraculously healed you, and you are going to distract the nurse while signing back in so I can get a phone number for Courtney’s mother.”

  “Are you insane?” Rain asked, putting her hand over my forehead as if checking for fever. “I’ll get in trouble for faking and you’ll get in trouble for helping me.”

  “Do you have a better idea?”

  “Don’t you have her number somewhere in the church?”

  I thought of Naomi running and sniffling through Love Ministries the day before. I didn’t have her number, but I might be able to find it in Chad’s office. Anger, buoyed by purpose, simmered just under the surface of disbelief.

  “Does this mean I don’t have to go back to school?” Rain asked.

  I hesitated. She should go back to school, but, should he suddenly return, Chad wouldn’t say a word as long as I had someone with me. Hating myself for giving in to her, I said, “No. You can help me search Chad’s office.”

  Rain clapped her hands. “Oh, that’ll be fun.”

  We walked behind First Baptist and traipsed through a lawn or two to come to the little brick building that served as Love Ministries. Once upon a time, the building had been an office for vacuum cleaner sales and repairs. Then it had briefly served as a pawn shop. Now it housed Chad’s tiny little congregation, hiding behind one set of the buildings on Main Street.

  When the door didn’t open, I fished through my purse for my keys. Some secret part of me I hadn’t been listening to for quite some time felt lighter at his absence. Then there was another part of me that wanted to look over my shoulder and make sure he hadn’t just driven up.

  Remember the car. Remember Naomi. Remember that you’re the one who’s been wronged.

  The door finally opened. I stopped just inside, but Rain walked down the hall to Chad’s office. I stared at the reception desk with something akin to loathing.

  “It’s locked,” she said.

  “I don’t have a key for his office,” I said.

  “Got a screwdriver?”

  “A what?”

  “A screwdriver, you crazy woman. Mom and I had to take off a doorknob last week when Granny locked herself in the bathroom.”

  Once upon a time I had been a smart woman. What had happened to me? Now a teenager was thinking circles around me. “Um, I think there’s a tool set in the maintenance closet.”

  Rain met me at the tiny closet, and we found a little box. She took it and sifted through the tools until she came to a Phillips head screwdriver of the
appropriate size. With a bit of work and some foul words upon chipping her manicure, my little sister wrestled the door knob off and jimmied the mechanism until the door opened.

  “I really hope this works,” I said.

  Rain shrugged. “He’s not the brightest crayon in the box. I bet we’ll find her number on his desk blotter.”

  The same desk blotter where he’d been known to exercise his husbandly rights on occasion? Bile rose up in my throat. “I can’t look. Will you search for me?”

  “Oh, I got this,” she said with a beautiful grin born of mischief.

  I paced the hall while Rain rifled through Chad’s things. Twice I walked up to his office door, but I couldn’t bring myself to walk in there. Something also made me stand between the front door and the office as if guarding my sister. If my intense desire to toss my Oreos were any indication, I had to be pregnant. I couldn’t even think about that. There had to be a logical explanation for all of this.

  “Found it!”

  Paper ripped, and Rain dashed down the hall. Sure enough, she held a piece of the desk calendar. Chad had scrawled “Naomi” and a number. I looked at it. Could I dial this number? What if the whole thing was a big misunderstanding and Chad wasn’t the one who’d run off with Courtney’s mom? What was the etiquette in such a situation?

  Posey, there is no etiquette in calling the woman who ran off with your husband. She’s waived all rights to etiquette.

  With a deep breath I started punching in the number, dropping my little flip phone when it started ringing. I was still kneeling on the floor when I answered with a hesitant, “Hello?”

  “Ah, Posey.”

  Chad’s smooth voice made me stand up straight. I swallowed a couple of times to find my voice. “Where have you been?”

  “You got my note. I’m going to be out of town for a week. You might want to get your things from the house and the car.”

  “Too late for that,” I growled. “The car got towed this morning.”

  “Temper, temper. I needed some money, and the ministry hasn’t been doing too well. I’m sure you’ll manage while I collect on some debts.”

  Someone giggled in the background, and my blood boiled. “Don’t come back.”

  “What?” He had the audacity to sound confused and wounded, as if he were the wronged party.

  “You heard me. Don’t come back. I know you ran off with Naomi Rawls, and there’s no need for you to come back.”

  “Now, Posey.” His voice took on that stern timbre that usually had me backing away from him, but I took a deep breath and forged ahead. No need to back away from a phone.

  “No. Adultery is my limit. You are no longer welcome in my home.”

  He chuckled. “About that. I sold my house—you’ll recall it was in my name—so you need to get whatever you want to take before the end of the month.”

  I sank to the floor. “Why are you doing this?”

  “I told you. I need the money. I made a few bad investments. It’s true that Naomi is here, but she’s helping me straighten some financial things out. You can go to your mother’s house until I come back.”

  “I want a divorce.”

  My words surprised him into silence. Truth be told, they’d shocked me, too. Rain, on the other hand, was jumping up and down and silently clapping in glee.

  Chad cleared his throat, and I could imagine him rolling back and forth on the balls of his feet. No, he couldn’t be rocking because it sounded as though he were walking, as if he wanted to be out of hearing range of the giggling woman I presumed to be Naomi Rawls. Hate washed over me, and I thought for a minute I might throw up right there in the hall.

  “Posey, don’t be ridiculous. You know I don’t believe in divorce. If I tell you there’s nothing to worry about and that Naomi and I are here for business reasons only, then it is your job to believe me, to trust me, and to wait for me. I’m sure losing the car and the house has been a shock, but I am in charge, and I will handle things. When I get home, we’re going to have a discussion about your attitude, too.”

  I swallowed hard. A part of me wanted to believe he would take care of me. I told that part of me to take a long walk off a short pier because the stability he’d once given me wasn’t worth what I’d given up for him.

  “You made me a promise. You vowed to be faithful.”

  “I am being faithful in all matters of the heart.” His voice came out muffled, but his condescension had melted into charm just to keep me off base.

  My temper spiked. Matters of the heart left a lot of room for sins of the flesh.

  “You’re right,” I said in a jagged breath. “I should trust you.”

  Rain face-palmed, but I held out an index finger.

  “That’s more like it. You’ll wait for me then?”

  I slowly counted to five. “I’ll wait.”

  “That’s a good girl. He practically purred, and my skin crawled by how pleased with himself he was. Little did he know I was taking a page from my mother’s playbook: get someone cozy and then ask them an innocent question.

  “I missed you this morning. I didn’t know what to do when they took the car,” I said. Rain mimed ramming a finger down her throat in disgust.

  “That must’ve been stressful, and I’ve missed you, too.” I could almost hear the preening on the other end of the line, so pleased with himself for having his cake and eating it, too.

  “How was Bible study last night?”

  “What Bible study?”

  “That’s what I thought. So you had sex with me twice and then left to . . . run off with another woman. Does she know what you did before you left?”

  His silence spoke volumes. I tried not to look at Rain who was, unfortunately, hanging on my every word.

  Tears flooded my vision, but I managed to speak over the lump in my throat. “Do not come crawling back to me. I want a divorce by the end of the month or . . . or . . . or—”

  “Or what?” he asked in an eerily calm voice, the one that told me I’d gone too far. He was thinking about praying for obedience again. For the barest of seconds, terror raced up my spine, but then I remembered Naomi’s giggle in the background. I thought about my worry this morning when I couldn’t find him, about how he’d embarrassed me by allowing the car to be towed off and that was before anyone found out he’d left me.

  “Something bad. I’ll think of something.”

  He laughed, and my face burned with shame. I couldn’t even threaten my husband properly.

  “Oh, Posey. Don’t try to be someone you’re not. Be a good girl and go to your mother’s house. I’ll be back in a week to straighten everything out—including you.”

  My mother’s house? Of all of the places I could go he wanted to send me there? “Screw you, Chadwick Paul Love. You don’t know me at all. You never have, and now you never will.”

  My fingers shook as I tried to hit the button that would disconnect the call. I kept missing the button, but I could still hear him yelling for me so I hurled the phone down the hall. It broke into two pieces as it hit the reception desk.

  I bolted for the bathroom and heaved up my breakfast.

  chapter 6

  When I emerged from the bathroom, Rain leaned against the wall in the hall. She looked up from her phone, a shiny iPhone. “I have good news and bad news.”

  “Tell me the bad news, first,” I said. Might as well add on to the day.

  “Your phone is dead.”

  Of course it was. I had no way to get a new phone. I might not even still have a job. Chad signed the checks. How was I supposed to get paid if he wasn’t here? And I still had to get all of my things out of the house and—

  Posey, stop. Breathe.

  “What’s the good news?”

  Rain grinned and held a hand up high. “You found your spine and told that asshole off for once!”

  I numbly high-fived her. “I did? I mean, I have?”

  “Girl, it was epic. You really had me going there for a m
inute, but you were just doing that thing Mom does when she’s trying to get one of us to incriminate ourselves. It was badass!”

  I should be getting on to my sister for cussing, but being a badass sounded so much better than whatever I actually was.

  Liza’s question about whether or not I was happy came to mind. I needed to apologize to her. I needed to go to the bank to see about the car. I needed to check on that application with the school system since that job might end up being my saving grace. I needed—

  I wanted to go back to bed and pull the covers over my head.

  “Posey, earth to Posey!” Rain had been waving her hand in front of my face.

  “I’m sorry, what?”

  “Want me to call Mom to give you a ride back to your house? Maybe if you talk to her she won’t lose her mind over the fact I missed a little school.”

  Not that I would have a house to go home to much longer. “Maybe. I’m going to need to talk to her anyway.”

  Rain paused, immediately suspicious. “About what?”

  “Chad sold the house out from under me. I’ll be homeless in a month.”

  My jaded teenaged sister drew in a breath of shock. “That was . . . cold.”

  I could only nod. “I hope I’m doing the right thing.”

  “By what?”

  “By telling him I want a divorce. I mean, I don’t even have a job and I don’t know how to get a divorce and—”

  There I stopped because I didn’t want to say the words aloud, I didn’t want to jinx anything. While I was vomiting in the bathroom earlier, remorse had snuck into the room. After growing up without a father, could I do the same to my child? Even if the father in question was awful? Would I be able to get a divorce once Chad found out? Would he leave Naomi then? Would I want him to?

  Rain’s eyes narrowed. “And what?”

  I took a deep jagged breath. “I may be pregnant. Finally.”

  Rain squealed and hugged me tightly. “I’m going to be an auntie!”

  I held up both hands to stave off her enthusiasm, but I couldn’t hold back the smile. “I don’t know for sure.”

  “Well, then we need to get a pregnancy test and find out.” Rain grabbed my hand for the first time since she was seven, and she dragged me toward the door. “The drugstore is just across the parking lot. Let’s go!”