by Beth Moore
“Mary closed her eyes and listened, stealing time like a hidden metronome. As high and as wide as she dared to think, she still could not begin to comprehend. She, a common child of the most humble means, who had never read the Scriptures for herself, was embracing the incarnate Word. The Son of God Most High rested in her inexperienced arms, sleeping to the rhythm of her heart.”
David’s eyes nearly popped out of his head when a children’s choir, cherub-faced and robed in white with big red bows, filed onto the stage to share the spotlight with a soloist. Adella grinned, knowing precisely what was coming. She knew that woman’s voice could melt the bones of a bull moose and give the likes of Mariah Carey a run for her money. With no small satisfaction, she watched David close his eyes and press his palm to his chest as if the sound transcended what a human heart was built to bear. With the fever pitch of the final lines, David looked so overwrought Adella thought he might throw himself into the aisle in a fit of somersaults.
The spotlight returned to the stable, where the young woman sat beneath the twinkling stars, the baby snug in her arms. Sister Liz Anne spoke one last time. Adella didn’t mind, seeing how Flo Deever’s girl was doing such a fine job up there on the stage. She intended to tell Flo—and mean it—that she’d never seen a better Virgin Mary.
“This time Mary hummed a song she did not know, a song being sung by the choir of angels hovering over her head but hidden from her carnal senses. The deafening hallelujahs of the heavenly hosts were silent to mortal ears except through the voice of a young woman who had unknowingly given human notes to a holy score. The glory of God filled the earth. Heaven hammered a bridge, but one young woman sat completely unaware of all that swelled the atmosphere around her. The tiny baby boy had robbed her heart. So this is what it feels like to be a mother, she mused. She crept back into the stable, wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in the manger. Just down the path, the sun peeked gently over the roof of an inn full of barren souls who had made him no room.”
The mic went to Brother Cecil, whose commanding voice popped the words right off the page of Saint Luke’s second chapter, gave them legs, and sent them leaping into the atmosphere and landing on eager listeners.
“‘And in the same region there were shepherds out in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And an angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were filled with great fear. And the angel said to them, “Fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. And this will be a sign for you: you will find a baby wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger.” And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased!”’”
With that the narration ceased, and more than two hundred voices and twenty instruments burst into song with volume enough to blow the halos off the heavenly hosts. Notes shot heavenward like fireworks.
O come, all ye faithful, joyful and triumphant,
O come ye, O come ye to Bethlehem;
Come and behold Him, born the King of Angels;
O come, let us adore Him,
O come, let us adore Him,
O come, let us adore Him,
Christ, the Lord!
David jumped to his feet, sending the supplements rolling. All over the room people stood and applauded and raised their hands. Some of the women waved white hankies. Mrs. Winsee yelled, “Bravo! Bravo!” and nobody acted like she shouldn’t. David grabbed Jillian’s hand and pulled her to her feet, wrapped his arms around her and squeezed her tight.
Everyone stood as far as Adella could see. Everyone except Olivia.
Olivia sat with her jaw fixed, her back rigid, and her hands firmly planted on her knees. Suddenly her head dropped forward and a sound came out of her mouth with a volume that could have curdled blood if not for all the clapping.
Startled, Adella bent over her and asked with ample volume, “Are you alright?” When Adella put her hand on Olivia’s shoulder and felt her breath break and spasm, the realization hit her hard. The concrete dam had broken wide open and so had the heart of a mother of an only son. Olivia began to wail.
Adella whirled around and glared panic-stricken at Emmett. “Do something!” she said. So he did. He stepped around Adella, sat down next to Olivia, put his arm around her, and gently pressed her head to his shoulder. She buried her face in the lapel of his suit coat and cried the kind of cry that erupts from somewhere way down deep after being pent up way too long. He pulled a white handkerchief from his inside coat pocket and handed it to Olivia while Adella patted him on the shoulder to keep him at it.
Whether or not the rest of the row was fully aware of the spectacle was unclear to Adella, the way Mrs. Winsee had gone to hula dancing. Adella never saw Olivia look Emmett in the face or speak a word to him but she knew that man of hers. He had need of neither. Toward the end of the song, Emmett took Olivia by both her shoulders and prompted her upward to her feet. He braced her by one arm just in case.
Pastor Sam walked onto the stage with an infectious smile that stretched a country mile. Brother Cecil handed him a mic, and he greeted the joyful throng saying, “Glory to God!” with every syllable standing on its own, none weaker than the last: “GLOW-REE TO GOD!”
The congregation broke into a rousing applause of unpretentious love.
“Welcome, congregation, friends, and guests! How many of you are glad that you came to this house of the Lord tonight?”
The audience cheered. Well, most of it did. Adella spied the whole row and surmised that if Trevor Don and Tonya even knew where they were, she was a monkey’s uncle. Caryn and AJ laughed and high-fived. Adella intended to find out what that was all about when she got that boy back in the truck. David looked one breeze shy of a bodily rapture. Jillian’s eyebrows were raised and her expression uncertain, but she didn’t look unhappy. Mrs. Winsee, having grabbed Emmett’s sopping wet handkerchief from Olivia, was waving it with enough vigor to black somebody’s eye. Olivia had recovered somewhat and reset her stoic jaw, and Emmett was standing tall and looking straight ahead like nothing had ever happened.
Adella put her arm around his waist. “Remind me,” she whispered up toward his ear nice and loud, “to marry you all over again.”
Accompanied by the keyboard, Pastor Sam said to the congregation, “I’ll just keep you good folks on your feet for a moment if you’d be so kind. We’ve come under this roof for one reason tonight. We’ve come to celebrate the birth of King Jesus, the holy Christ, the Son of God.”
Amens and hallelujahs sprang like leaks from pipes bursting with living waters.
“But Jesus didn’t come just to live,” Pastor Sam continued. “Jesus, the spotless Lamb of God, came to die. By divine plan from before time began, Jesus came to give his perfect life on a cross, bearing all our sin and shame, so that whosoever will—”
Cheers of “Whosoever will!”
“I said, whosoever will!”
Folks looked around at one another, nodding. “He said whosoever will!”
Pastor Sam picked it back up. “So that whosoever will, let him come, turning from his own way and believing on Jesus’ name, embracing his free gift of grace that no one can earn. . . . Does anybody in the house understand what I’m saying to them tonight?”
Shouts of affirmation all but shook the chandelier.
“That man or that woman, that boy or girl, whosoever will confess Jesus as Lord, in that very moment will be saved. And nothing—no demon from hell—can snatch you from his Father’s hand. No matter what you’ve done, where you’ve been, what you’ve seen, or who’s your kin, I mean you. Has anybody in this house besides me found out the hard way that your own way led you the wrong way? Anybody in this house besides me found out you can’t save yourself? Anybody in this house besides me f
ound out that no other human on earth, try as he may, could save you either?”
Hands waved wildly.
“We’ll not tarry long,” the pastor promised, “but we’d be terribly remiss not to give you a chance to respond. In the apostle Paul’s letter to the Romans, he told us just what to do.” Pastor Sam opened up a Bible and read it word for word, his eyes sparkling as bright as the lights on the black velvet backdrop. “‘If you openly declare that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is by believing in your heart that you are made right with God, and it is by openly declaring your faith that you are saved. As the Scriptures tell us, “Anyone who trusts in him will never be disgraced.”’ The tenth chapter and the thirteenth verse says it just like this: ‘Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.’ Did I say everyone, congregation?”
“You said everyone!”
“But nobody can come to Jesus for you. Brother Isaac is going to keep playing that keyboard for a few more minutes, and if the gift you want this Christmas is Jesus, he’s yours for the taking. Whether you’ve done well at love or failed at love, you’ve never in your life been loved like Jesus loves you. Will you receive it today? Will you have the boldness to step out of that row and walk right up front, right now? We won’t embarrass you. I’ll just pray a simple prayer with you and bless you to go on your way, a new creation, saved and secured by the blood of the Lamb.”
Adella normally loved this part. But now she fidgeted, shifting her weight from one foot to the other, wondering if Pastor Sam’s version of “not tarrying long” was causing anybody else’s ankles to swell. She glanced up to see Emmett smiling and nodding, so she knew folks were going forward. She saw a light come on in her purse and opened it with the toe of her shoe. It was a text from AJ. She knew that because she’d enlarged the text font till she could have read it on a billboard a mile off. I’m starving. When is this going to be over?
She leaned forward to give him the awful look he’d earned and there was Jillian, looking past Mrs. Winsee to mouth something to Olivia. Adella squinted her eyes to see if she could read the girl’s lips.
Come with me.
All Adella could see of Olivia was the back of her head, but even from the back, she could tell that head was shaking. Jillian mouthed the word please, and this time, Olivia’s head didn’t move at all. Adella’s jaw nearly came unhinged when Jillian excused herself in front of David, Caryn, AJ, Trevor Don, and Tonya and stepped into that aisle.
Before Adella could get her wits reassembled, Mrs. Winsee trailed right behind Jillian down the row and out into the aisle. Adella threw her hands on her hips, knowing good and well exactly what had happened. Lodged between Jillian and Olivia, she’d thought Jillian was talking to her. David looked like he’d seen a ghost and Caryn leaned forward and mouthed, Want me to go grab her?
“Good Lord.” This came from Olivia, who stepped on nearly every pair of feet between her and the aisle before heading down front in hot pursuit.
No one dared ask what happened up front when Jillian, Mrs. Winsee, and Olivia returned, particularly since Olivia hadn’t made it in time to fetch Mrs. Winsee back to her seat before Pastor Sam led them in prayer. They all avoided looking at each other even when Pastor Sam told them to extend the right hand of fellowship and say Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night.
As the residents of Saint Sans joined a sea of congregants in the aisles toward the exits, the choir sang a most robust benediction with a glorious gospel music flair.
Joy to the world! the Lord is come;
Let earth receive her King;
Let ev’ry heart prepare Him room,
And heav’n and nature sing,
And heav’n and nature sing,
And heav’n, and heav’n and nature sing.
Joy to the world! the Savior reigns;
Let men their songs employ;
While fields and floods, rocks, hills, and plains
Repeat the sounding joy,
Repeat the sounding joy,
Repeat, repeat the sounding joy.
No more let sins and sorrows grow,
Nor thorns infest the ground;
He comes to make His blessings flow
Far as the curse is found,
Far as the curse is found,
Far as, far as the curse is found.
CHAPTER 55
“I KNOW YOU HATE TO SEE HER GO.” Adella was in the kitchen with Olivia, who was looking over an e-mail of an estimate for the cost of pouring a new driveway. She knew Olivia wouldn’t want to talk about it but somebody had to.
Olivia kept her eyes fixed on the screen. “Since I hated to see her come, I suppose it’s fitting. Did you have any idea cement could cost this much?”
“Olivia, you’ve done well.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. We both know better than that.”
Adella pulled out a stool and sat down right next to her. “I want you to listen to what I have to say to you, Olivia Fontaine, and see if you can find it in your heart not to make me walk away from here feeling like I wasted my breath.”
Olivia didn’t look up, but she did at least fold her hands beneath her chin and stare past the laptop screen.
“Do you remember six months ago when you walked into this very room and saw that young woman standing here, not three feet from where we’re sitting?”
“Unfortunately, my memories of that day are crystal clear.”
“That same young woman who stood in this room, a stranger to her father’s house and as hostile as a prickly pear cactus, will hug at least half a dozen people good-bye tomorrow in a puddle of tears. She will fly out of this city a different person than she came—and leave all of us changed.”
“I hate good-byes.”
“I know you do. I’m not all that kindly disposed to them myself, but as Emmett says, learning to say good-bye is a necessary life skill. And anyway, it won’t be forever.”
“Oh yes, it will. With the Nolan woman taking that preposterous plea bargain, there will be no trial requiring Jillian to return to New Orleans. She’ll get to San Francisco, go on with her life, and never look back. As well she should.”
Adella, like the rest of Saint Sans, had been horrified by the plea bargain. The prosecutor insisted that a guaranteed twenty-five years for Stella Nolan behind bars was better than taking the chance on a jury getting sentimental over how the Fontaines had wronged her and left her desperate. The woman insisted she never saw Bully in front of her car that night. The reason she’d been in a hurry, she said, was that she’d had a change of heart. She was rushing off to free Jillian and then turn herself in. All she’d meant to do when she took Jillian to the storage unit, she claimed, was to show her proof of the connection between their two families. Assaulting her and tying her up had been William Crawley’s doing. He’d supposedly threatened to kill Stella if she told anyone where Jillian was being held. It was he who’d planned to demand ransom money and run with it. It was also he who had found Rafe’s pocketknife in an alley. Stella had no earthly idea who’d stabbed Rafe. All she’d known was that it wasn’t her. She could never have hurt him. She loved him too much.
Adella knew better. The woman had been eaten alive by her quest for revenge. Like so many, she clung to the belief that money would fix the wrongs done to her and her family. Since her father’s wealth had gone to the Fontaines through Olivia’s husband’s shady business dealings, she tried to get her hooks into Rafe. Then when Rafe rejected her, she apparently determined to destroy him and his family. No telling how long Stella had plotted, and when Jillian showed up in town, the plan easily expanded to draw her in.
But Stella’s carefully woven claims won the day, especially since Crawley was in a psychiatric unit, unable to string ten intelligible words together. Of course, no one with half a brain believed a word of it, but the prosecution would be carrying the burden of proof in an oil-slick courtroom. The prosecutor’s concerns about
potential sentimentality seemed chillingly validated by a public outcry demanding special protection for Stella Nolan after her lawyer stated that she feared reprisals behind bars from members of law enforcement.
“The world’s gone crazy and we with it,” Adella had told Emmett the day the plea agreement was signed. “Her raggedy tail is getting away with murder.”
“You know better than that, Dell. There’s a higher court,” he’d said.
The consolation—and no small one—was that neither Jillian nor Olivia would be subjected to a long, drawn-out trial or the media circus that would surround it. Jillian would never have to lay eyes on Stella again and Stella wouldn’t soon lay eyes on Orleans Parish. The irony right that moment in the kitchen with Olivia was that this meant they might never lay eyes on Jillian again.
“She’s planning on coming back for Easter,” Adella reminded Olivia.
Olivia looked at her. “She thinks she will, but by that time, she’ll have moved on. She’ll have better things to do.”
“Better than the Easter cantata? What, I ask you, could be better than the Easter cantata? If you think the Christmas pageant was spectacular, just wait till you see this. Last year’s Jesus was so convincing, I nearly—”
“I’m still recovering from the Christmas pageant, Adella.” Olivia put her hand up as she said it, but Adella was almost positive she was suppressing something akin to a grin.
“I’ll shut up with this. When that stone rolls away right there on that stage and he comes strutting out of that tomb alive, well, we’ll just see if you can keep from throwing a shoe. You better have a spare pair because I’m telling you right now, it doesn’t get better than that. Jillian won’t miss it for anything. I’m going to pray about it. He who has begun a good work between the two of you—and I’m talking about the real Jesus here and not some actor—he will complete it.”
Olivia rubbed her chin and nodded. “Thank you.” She woke up her laptop and looked back at the estimate. “Well, we’ll make the best of it tonight.”