Genesis House Inspirational Romance and Family Drama Boxed Set: 3-in-1

by Angela Benson

  Sylvester sighed deeply, rubbing his hand down his face. “No, Dawn, you’ve been perfectly clear about what you want from me and what you don’t. I don’t think my expectations could get any lower. Go on up to bed. I’ll clean up down here and come up later.”

  Fighting the urge to smooth the worry lines from his forehead, she muttered a “Thanks, Sly,” walked around him, and raced up the stairs to their room.

  Chapter 4

  Francine lay in her old bed staring at the ceiling. Her room was just as she’d left it, almost as if it had sat waiting for her return for five years. Same burgundy draperies, same dark oak sleigh bed, same Varnette P. Honeywood prints. All symbols of the stability and certainty that had been hallmarks of her life. Yes, the room was the same, but she wasn’t. This room belonged to the pre-Temple Francine, a woman who no longer existed. Today’s Francine, post-Temple Francine, was a brand new person. Today was literally the first day of the rest of her life. And how was she going to start the day? She rolled onto her side and reached over to the nightstand for the small, blue, spiral-bound notebook that served as her personal journal. The journal that held the list of amends she needed to make. She frowned as she looked at the daunting list of people she had wronged. Like a 12-stepper, her recovery required that she go to each one personally and make amends. She opened the drawer of the nightstand, found a pencil, and drew a line through Cassandra’s name. She’d thanked her for calling Dawn and that’s all she owed her. Though her questioning hadn’t led to a satisfactory end, she had gotten all her answers confirmed. That done, she placed the journal back in the nightstand and pulled out her Bible so she could begin her morning devotions.

  She glanced at the clock after she finished her devotions and saw that it was five-thirty, much too early to get started, but she really didn’t see herself going back to sleep. She got up, pulled on her favorite navy terry cover-up, and made the trek downstairs. She found Sylvester seated at her grandparents’ old oak dinette table sipping on a cup of coffee. Dawn was nowhere in sight. Checking to make sure she was fully covered, she joined her brother-in-law. “Morning, Sly,” she said.

  He flashed her a smile. “Good morning to you. Sleep well?”

  “Very well. It must have been sleeping in a room without bars on the windows that did the trick.” She laughed at her own joke, but the sound was hollow to her ears.

  Sly reached for her hand. “I’m sorry you had to go through so much, Fancy,” he said. “I never wanted to hurt you.”

  She looked down at their joined hands, remembering the life they had shared together as well as the one they had planned to share. “I never wanted to hurt you either. I’m sorry I left the way I did, Sylvester. You deserved better.”

  He dropped her hand. “You’re right. I did, but things have a way of working themselves out.”

  “I’m glad you and Dawn found each other.”

  “So am I,” he said, a winsome smile on his face. “You know, before you left I never thought of Dawn as anything other than your bratty twin sister.”

  She quirked a brow.

  “Okay, maybe I thought she was a pain in the butt.”

  Francine laughed. “Now you’re being honest.”

  “She’s nothing like you,” he continued. “Maybe that’s what attracted me at first.” He lifted his eyes to hers, allowing her to see his pain. “You hurt me, Fancy, really badly. I won’t lie to you. I expected to spend the rest of my life with you, have children with you. And you walked away as though I meant nothing to you. Recovery was a long time coming.”

  A cup of coffee in hand, Francine sat down next to him. “I loved you, Sly, but I guess I didn’t love you enough. After my grandparents died, I couldn’t think right. I felt trapped, like my life was slipping away. What I saw before me, even being your wife, didn’t seem to be enough. I needed purpose.”

  “That church gave you purpose?”

  She scooped two teaspoons of sugar into her coffee and stirred. “For a while. For a long while, in fact. I know you’re not going to understand this, because it’s hard for me to understand, but I had some really good times there.”

  His nose crinkled above a frown. “You’re right. I don’t understand, but I want to.”

  Francine studied him closely. Dr. Jennings was the only person to whom she had described the details of the goings-on at Temple. She wondered if Sly could handle hearing about some of what she’d experienced. Something in her spirit told her that he could. “I don’t know where to start,” she said.

  “Try the beginning. What made you go with them?”

  She closed her eyes briefly and then opened them. “It was a lot of things, but mostly it was the way all the young people handled the Bible. I’m talking people our age and younger. These weren’t people at the end of their lives, deciding it was now time to follow God, but people at their prime. Take Cassandra for instance. She was beautiful, smart, she had everything going on for her, but she chose to be with God and the people of God.” She gave a self-deriding laugh. “Now I know I was only seeing what I wanted to see.”

  Sly tipped her chin up. “Don’t do that. You aren’t the first one to be fooled. The Bible talks about people like those coming along to deceive God’s people.”

  “Yeah, I know it does,” she said, thinking of the passage in Mark. “I just never thought I would be one of the ones deceived. When I first met them, the people from Temple Church, I remember thinking that they must really love God if they knew the Bible the way they did. It seemed reasonable that they knew it so well because they read it so often.” She glanced at Sly. “I guess that was pretty stupid,” she said. “The Bible says clearly it’s not knowing the Bible that makes a difference, but living it. Demons know the Scripture but that doesn’t make them lovers of God.”

  “You’ve got that right,” Sly said. “But there are a lot of people in a lot of churches who talk the Bible but don’t live it.”

  “You know, that’s what I think got me. I thought Temple was different. I guess I thought it was the real thing, a church where everybody had a heart to follow God. You know I loved Faith Central and Pastor Thomas, but some of the folks up in there were ‘bout as crazy as the day is long. I thought it was different at Temple.”

  “But it wasn’t.”

  She nodded. “Actually, it was different. It was worse because the intentions of the leaders and many of the followers at Temple were evil. Bishop Payne knew the Scriptures and pretended to love God, but deep in his heart, he only loved himself. When I think of the way he preyed on Toni and the other women, it makes me ill. But he preyed on many others as well. He was an equal opportunity predator. Some people were used for sex, like Toni, while others were used for money, like me. And I’ve got the stack of overdue credit card bills to prove it. But we were all used for Bishop Payne’s pleasure, not God’s. Bishop Payne presented an imitation of life in Christ, and I bought it, hook, line, and sinker. I still can’t get my mind around how I allowed it to happen. I’m not sure I ever will.”

  “You’re too hard on yourself. Just be glad that you got out when you did.”

  She sobered. “But look at the cost—Toni’s life. That cost is too high.”

  They sat silent for a few minutes. Then, observing Francine over the rim of his cup, Sly said, “You’ve changed.”

  “I hope that’s a good thing.”

  “It is. I was worried about you even before you left. You weren’t yourself and I kept wondering where my Fancy was. I wanted her back.”

  “Do you see her now?” Francine asked, not sure what she wanted the answer to be.

  He shook his head. “No,” he said sadly. “My Fancy is gone, forever, I think. The Francine in front of me now is somebody new.”

  “Look what a few months in a mental institution will get you.”

  “Don’t joke about it.”

  “I have to. Otherwise, I’ll go crazy. Literally. No pun intended.”

  “Was it awful?”

  She roc
ked her coffee cup from side to side. “Not really. The surroundings were the last thing on my mind when I got there. In fact, nothing was on my mind. I wanted to disappear.”

  “Suicide?”

  She shook her head. “After seeing Toni—I don’t think so. I just wanted life to end. I wanted to fade away, or hide away. That image of Toni—I don’t know if I’ll ever get it out of my mind. You know, living around a funeral home all my life, I’m used to dead people. But Toni, the blood. I don’t think I’ve ever been that close to death before. The bodies I’d seen had all been long dead. Toni was fresh.” The pity in his eyes made her stop talking. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I know you don’t want to hear this.”

  “It’s all right. Death is our business, or part of it. If we can’t talk about it, who can?”

  “I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to look dispassionately at a body again.”

  Sly pressed a hand to her shoulder. “I understand. You do what you have to do to take care of yourself. That’s all Dawn and I want.”

  She placed her hand on top of his, grateful for his friendship. “Last night you mentioned something about a business idea you wanted to talk over with me. I’ve got time now, if you do.”

  “Are you sure? It’s funeral home business.”

  She smiled at the caring that was so much a part of who she knew him to be. She may have changed, but he hadn’t. “I think I can talk about the business without too much distress. So what is it?”

  He lowered their joined hands to the table. “I have this idea about starting a collective of family-owned funeral homes.”

  “Why would you want to do that?” she asked as she got up and poured herself another cup of coffee. “We’ve always been family owned and operated.”

  “That wouldn’t change,” Sly explained, “but the funeral business has changed, Fancy. Smaller funeral homes are being bought by these major corporations, left and right. In fact, we’ve had offers from Easy Rest, the conglomerate that’s sweeping through the Southeast.”

  “You aren’t thinking of selling out, are you, Sylvester?”

  He smiled. “Now you sound like your sister. It would probably be the smart thing to do. Our finances are not at their best right now.”

  “When did things get bad?” Francine asked, “Before I left—” She met his gaze. “Is that when the trouble started, when I left?”

  “It’s not your fault. I was out of it for a while after you first left, and I let some things get by me. Our reputation slipped a little.”

  Francine sat back in her chair. “My ranting all over town, calling people sinners, didn’t help, did it?”

  He folded her hand in his. “It’s not your fault. That died down.”

  “You know, Big Daddy always said that in the funeral business, your reputation was money in the bank. What have I done to ours?”

  “Nothing that can’t be fixed,” he assured her. “In fact, things are looking up from that perspective, but the marketplace is changing, and we have to change with it if we’re going to thrive and not merely survive. If I had spent the last few years looking to the future, instead of trying to recover from the past, we wouldn’t be in this situation, but that’s water under the bridge. We have to go on from here.”

  Francine felt responsible, no matter what Sly said. “How can I help?”

  “This collective idea, will you think about it with me? You always could help me think through situations and scenarios. I missed that when you were gone.”

  Francine laughed at the memory of their work discussions. “Yeah, I remember, all right. Two heads were always better than one when one of them was yours.”

  Sylvester laughed over the long-standing joke they shared. “So you’re smarter than I am. I’m man enough to admit it and not have my ego bruised.” He’d always accepted that Francine’s mind was much quicker than his. Rather than her intelligence challenging his ego, he’d enjoyed sharing ideas with her and getting her opinion. He had to admit that together they’d done a much better job of running the funeral home than he and Dawn had been able to do. Though, he realized now, he’d never really encouraged Dawn’s participation in the decision making. She seemed content to follow his lead, and he was content to let her. In fact, now that he thought about it, the way she trusted him to take care of the business gave him a rush, a sense of importance and strength that fed his ego. Looking at his dark brown hand linked with Francine’s lighter one, he wondered at the different roles the sisters had played in his life and the roles he had played in theirs.

  “Morning.”

  Dawn’s voice from the doorway surprised both Sylvester and Francine, and they pulled away from each other. The look that passed between Dawn and Sylvester was one that Francine couldn’t identify, but the tension that emanated from them was very real. “Morning, Dawn,” she said. “I interrupted Sylvester’s morning coffee with my sob story and we ended up talking business. I promise not to start each day this way. I’d hate for the two of you to dread seeing me in the mornings.”

  Dawn came fully into the room. She was dressed in a provocative rose floral pajama outfit. The top had spaghetti straps and clearly showed that she wore no bra, while the short bottoms did little more than cover her rear end. “Don’t be silly, Francie,” she said.

  Francine noticed her sister didn’t look at Sly as she poured herself a cup of coffee.

  “Do you have plans for the day?” Dawn asked.

  “I thought I’d drop by Mother Harris’s bookstore,” Francine said, giving up on trying to identify the source of tension between Sly and Dawn. “She’s still in the same place, isn’t she?”

  Dawn nodded. “She’ll be glad to see you. I told her you were coming home and she made me promise to tell you to come see her. She’s always asking about you, Francie. She missed you when you were gone.”

  Francine felt a pain in her heart. Mother Harris had been like a second grandmother to her, and she’d left town and not even looked back. “She’ll be my first stop.”

  Sly chuckled. “If I know Mother Harris, she might also be your last stop. That woman knows she can talk.”

  Francine laughed because what Sly said was true. “It’ll be a good way to spend the day. I always liked going down to the bookstore, spending the day with her. She’d put me to work and we’d talk about everything under the sun. It’ll be fun.”

  Sly pushed back his chair and rose to his feet. “Speaking of fun, I guess I’d better head to the funeral home.” He looked at Dawn. “Are you coming in today?”

  She looked at him for the first time since she’d entered the kitchen. “A little later. Is there something you need me to do?”

  He shook his head. “I just wondered.” He leaned over and pressed a kiss on her forehead. “I’ll see you when you get there then.” He turned to Francine. “Give my best to Mother Harris. And don’t forget to let me know what you think about that idea.”

  When he was gone, Francine turned to her sister. “I’m glad you two found each other,” she said.

  Dawn put down her coffee cup. “Are you really?”

  Francine was taken aback by the accusation in her sister’s question. “Of course I am. Why would you even ask such a thing?”

  Dawn shrugged. “He was yours first.”

  “But he’s yours last and that’s what matters. I hope you don’t think I have any ideas about Sly, because I don’t. The best thing about my leaving town is that we didn’t get married. I’m not sure I could have made him happy, and I’m not sure he could have made me happy.”

  Dawn pulled out a chair and sat down across from her sister. “Why do you say that?”

  “I don’t know exactly. You probably know Sly better than I do, but he’s not the easiest man to know. He doesn’t share his feelings very well and that used to drive me crazy. You have to remember the fights we had about it. We could talk business until the cows came home, but getting Sly to share his feelings was worse than pulling teeth.”

  “Yea
h, I do remember those arguments now, but you know, I’d forgotten.”

  “I remember them clearly. He would brood but he wouldn’t talk. It irritated me no end.” Something in Dawn’s eyes made Francine wonder if Sly was as closemouthed with Dawn as he had been with her. “I hope he doesn’t still do that.”

  “Sometimes. It’s a part of who he is, I guess. The stress of the funeral home gets to him sometimes, but he doesn’t talk a lot about it.” At least, not to me. “We’ve been getting some pressure to sell out to this corporation. Sly thinks it’s the best thing for us, but I couldn’t bear it, Francie. This funeral home is ours. It would be like selling Big Daddy and Big Momma. I can’t do it. What about you? What do you think?”

  “I’ll go along with whatever you and Sly want. It doesn’t seem fair for me to even have a say, since I haven’t contributed to the work in such a long time.”

  “Big Momma and Big Daddy would roll in their graves if we tried to cut you out. It was always their plan that this be ours together.”

  “Do you think they’d want us to sell?” Francine asked.

  “I’m not sure. Sly thinks they’d be more concerned about us being happy. I don’t know what to think. I just know that the idea of selling makes me almost physically ill.”

  “Have you and Sly been arguing about this?”

  Dawn met her sister’s gaze. “Why do you ask?”

  Francine shrugged off her concern, not wanting to make a big deal out of nothing. “I just wondered. Don’t mind me. I’ve made so many mistakes in my own life that I don’t want to see other people making them.”

  “You think arguing with Sly about the funeral home would be a mistake?”

  “Maybe not a mistake, but definitely a waste of time and energy. I look back on the last five years of my life and I see a big waste sign—wasted time, wasted money, wasted energy. That’s an awful feeling, Dawn. I’d hate for you to look back on this time with Sly with that same feeling.” Francine put down her coffee cup and stood. “Hey you’ll have to ignore me. I’ve been in intensive therapy for the last three months so I’m prone to overanalyzing.” She pressed a kiss on her sister’s forehead. “I’m going to get dressed. I’ll bet Mother Harris still gets to the store early, and I want to surprise her.”