by Alana Terry
“Yup.”
“Cool. Well, I’ll drop by and pick it up.”
“Okay.” Had they seriously spent this long talking about nothing more than a dirty flannel?
“So, three. Right? You’ll be home?”
Another shrug. “Even if we’re not, the barn’s always open.”
“Right. The barn. You said the shirt’s in the barn.”
She nodded.
“Great. That’s awesome. No, that’s really cool.”
Swell, she thought to herself and came up with a few more fitting adjectives she could lend him if he ran out.
“Well, see you later. I mean, if you’re there at three. In the barn.”
She turned away before he could see her roll her eyes. At the same time, some woman hustled up and grabbed him by the arm and hissed into his ear. Jillian didn’t hear it all but caught enough to make out with that girl, and then they were gone.
Jillian watched them leave, figuring with a mother like that it’d make sense for anyone to run up a church aisle just to get away from her for a few seconds.
Studying her fingernails, she waited, counting down the minutes until her aunt finished yakking with her friends and they could all go home and get something to eat.
CHAPTER 13
“HAVE ANOTHER HELPING.” Connie heaped more stew into Jillian’s bowl. “We certainly don’t want you going hungry. Not when you’re eating for two.”
Uncle Dennis had already retreated into his den to read his newspaper. It was only her aunt and her grandmother with her at the table. She’d known both women since she was a baby, so why did she feel so awkward?
Grandma Lucy didn’t have much to say. Apparently, she’d used up her quota of words preaching at all the members of Orchard Grove Bible Church. Didn’t she know how rude it was to take up everyone’s time, make them all late ...
Thank God for crockpot meals. Jillian didn’t think she could have waited even ten more minutes before getting something into her system. She’d spent nearly the entire first trimester queasy. Now, her body was making up for lost calories. She’d need a third helping of stew before she could say she was fully satisfied. Of course, the itty-bitty glass bowls Connie served it in were partially to blame.
“So, dear, what do you have planned for the week?” Connie asked.
Jillian stared and blinked once or twice. What did she have planned? Did her aunt seriously think she came to Orchard Grove with some sort of itinerary?
“Remind me to call the clinic and make you an appointment when they open tomorrow. Your mom says you haven’t been to the doctor yet.”
No, she hadn’t. Just a long chat with the nurse at the center in Seattle where she’d gotten her free pregnancy test. Some pee on a stick, four minutes of waiting, that thin pink line, and her life was put on hold.
What kind of parent kicks their adult daughter out of the house just for getting knocked up? Didn’t her mom and dad realize how easily she could have gone and aborted her baby, and they could have kept up their appearances as a godly, righteous family? Who in the twenty-first century sends their daughter to live with her aunt until her baby’s born? It was like a plot from a century-and-a-half-old novel they’d make a bunch of unwilling high-schoolers read in English lit class.
Only this was Jillian’s life and not some piece of fiction.
But what could she do? She’d already resigned herself to six months of exile. Then she’d put the baby up for adoption, move back to Seattle, and get on with life as usual. Most of the people at church thought she’d hauled herself out here to help take care of her grandmother, who’d suffered some health concerns last winter.
The hardest part was not knowing how many people knew. It might just be her parents, that crisis pregnancy nurse, and her extended family at Safe Anchorage.
Or it might be half the congregation in Seattle and the entire congregation (and thus by extension the entire town) of Orchard Grove.
“Isn’t it a little early to need to see a doctor?” she asked. In what was probably not the wisest of choices, she’d avoided any research about pregnancy except for a couple pamphlets she picked up at the center. Call it denial or something else, but she still didn’t feel like she needed to see a doctor. Not yet. Her belly was hardly swollen, and she hadn’t felt the baby move at all.
If it weren’t for her sluggish appetite the past three months and that little pink line she saw in the pregnancy center counseling room, she’d have a hard time believing there was a real child in there at all.
Maybe it was a mistake.
Then she could go back home. Finish her classes ...
The more she thought about all she was missing, the angrier she got. What kind of parent would rather hide a pregnancy than see their daughter succeed in school?
It shouldn’t surprise her, though. The McAllister family was all about keeping up appearances.
Keeping up appearances when her dad had the audacity to have that affair.
Keeping up appearances whenever they went interviewing at churches around Seattle.
Keeping up appearances when her brother was in rehab, and she was schooled and drilled and trained to only give the vaguest of replies when people asked where he was or how he was doing.
And now it was all about keeping up appearances so her parents wouldn’t suffer the embarrassment of having two children who turned out to be spiritual failures instead of just one.
Jillian had thought things were tough when the folks at Orchard Grove kicked her dad out from behind the pulpit. But then her friends weren’t even allowed to play with her anymore. As if the sinful McAllister influence might stain their children and ruin their innocence.
She’d been young when it happened, but not too young to understand they were being treated unfairly, especially her mother, who was most to be pitied out of everyone involved. Instead of surrounding her and showing their love and support, women her mom had considered her closest friends snubbed her, treated her as if she were some sort of spiritual pariah for daring to marry a man who claimed to be a preacher yet would go out and cheat on his wife.
That’s why Jillian had sworn so many times to never set foot in that church again, except here she was, and now she was the outcast. Or she would be once the truth came out. The pastor’s kid with an illegitimate child. If these short-sighted gossips knew a fraction of what she’d gone through ...
But it didn’t matter. Explaining her side of the story wouldn’t change a thing. She just had to ride out the next six months, make arrangements to find an adoptive family to take her child in, and then life could go back to normal.
Hopefully at least.
CHAPTER 14
“I STILL DON’T UNDERSTAND what gave you the compulsion to stand up and walk in front of everybody like some kind of lunatic.” Mom had opened her mouth in the church parking lot and hadn’t shut it yet twenty minutes later after they made their way to the restaurant at the Main Street Hotel, found their seats, and waited for their drinks to come.
She leaned forward, trying to keep her voice low since part of being a righteous and godly woman meant never expressing your frustrations or anger in public. “Did you stop and think what type of message you were sending everyone else about our family?”
“No. I wasn’t thinking about any of that. I already told you.” The longer his mother talked, the more Ricky realized that she’d never experienced God’s presence or power the way he had during Grandma Lucy’s closing words. If she had, she’d be congratulating him instead of lecturing him about how his actions may have projected badly on their family.
“What will people say? Now everyone will think I raised you godless. That you didn’t know the Lord until some crazy old woman stands up and says a few words into a microphone. Tell me. What did that woman say that your Sunday school teachers or I haven’t been teaching you for years?”
“Nothing. It’s just that ... Something felt different this time.”
She let out a huff.
“Felt different. And what exactly do you think will happen if anyone who gets any sort of inkling or urge to get closer to God just decides to stand right up and say a prayer right there in front of everybody? Do you know what people will say?”
Ricky stared at his menu. Mom could rail all she wanted, but he knew he’d done the right thing. The mature thing.
The first major decision in his adult life that hadn’t been made for him.
And it felt good.
“You know what?” He hesitated for just a moment. After all, this was her celebration lunch. If he ruined the mood, she’d make sure he heard about it for weeks to come.
This time, it was a chance he was willing to take.
“You know what?” he repeated. “If you want my opinion, this whole town cares far too much about everyone else’s business. What’s that Jesus says about removing the speck of dust from someone else’s eye when you have a plank stuck in your own?”
Mom crossed her arms. “Oh. So now that you and Grandma Lucy are so close, you feel that gives you the right to start reciting Scripture to your mother who taught you how to read the Bible in the first place? Is that it, Big Britches? You know, I told your father there was a rebellious streak in you. I did, and he said I was overreacting, but I told him time and time again, That son of yours is going to cause us problems one day. You mark my words. Well.” She clapped her hands together, apparently forgetting her own advice on how demure little church women are supposed to act.
“Well,” she repeated in a more subdued tone, “you might think you’re a big man now, but I’ll tell you what. Any fool can walk in front of the church and have a little old lady pray for him. And what do you think? That your father and I don’t pray for you already? What’s wrong with our prayers, I’d like to know. Don’t you think they count?”
He raised his eyebrows, startled both by the intensity of his mom’s outburst and his own refusal to cower before her. “You do know that me going up that aisle has nothing to do with you, right?”
She scoffed again. “Don’t deceive yourself. It has everything to do with me, and you and I both know it. You think I did a poor job raising you, that my prayers for you aren’t as special because I’m not some Holy Ghost fanatic like that Grandma Lucy. Like her silly little spectacles or those gaudy blouses she always wears somehow make her holier than the rest of us.”
“Wait,” Ricky interrupted. “What in the world do her blouses have to do with anything?”
“Apparently a whole lot, because that’s the only reason I can come up with for why you would throw away every shred of dignity your father and I have tried to instill in you since the day you were born. You come from a long line of respectable men and women, and you’re expected to carry on the family name as well as the family legacy, which includes hard work and a righteous and godly lifestyle. Not leaping down a church aisle like you’re some sort of teenager at a co-ed dance.”
He wondered if his mom had even attended one of these so-called co-ed dances, but he knew enough to keep his mouth shut.
“All I’m saying,” she finally concluded, “is I want you to remember that you’re not just representing your father and me and the family business. You’re representing all four of your grandparents and everyone who came before them too. And I can’t begin to tell you how many of your ancestors would be rolling in their graves if they were around to see the scene you made at church today. A scene I trust you’ll be wise enough in the future to never repeat. Right?”
“What?” Ricky had stopped listening. He was too busy trying to figure out where this spiritual fire in his soul had come from, wondering how his life had ever felt even close to complete without it and running through everything he knew about God and church and the Bible to find a way to make sure the feeling never left him now that he’d finally grabbed hold of it.
CHAPTER 15
“AND THIS IS OUR CASH register, but you’ll have to wait until the store opens up again tomorrow morning so I can show you how to work it,” Connie prattled.
The stench of scented candles and lotions was so strong that Jillian wondered how anyone could step foot in this gift shop without puking, let alone work here for an entire day.
“And back here,” Connie continued, “is where we keep the inventory. Dennis handles all that, so you won’t have to worry, but when it comes time to stock the shelves, I’ll show you how to make it look nice and tidy. I don’t trust my husband on that side of it. No eye for beauty at all, that man. But I’m sure you’re going to do just fine. Did I go too fast? Do you need me to repeat anything?”
“I’m sure it will be fine,” Jillian assured her. Just how difficult did her aunt think a single shift in the gift shop would be? Hopefully, it would give Jillian something to do to get her mind off her situation. If anything, she was worried that tomorrow morning would find her bored out of her mind behind the counter half an hour after opening.
“Of course,” Connie went on, “I’ll be around all day so if you run into any problems, you just need to holler. I was telling Dennis, now that we have you here to help, I can finally get working on that wedding album for your uncle Joseph and aunt Jolene. Wasn’t that a lovely ceremony?”
Jillian was hardly listening. It was partially cute and partially pathetic how big a deal Connie was making out of this simple job standing behind the counter and running a few credit cards a day. Jillian had worked retail before in Seattle’s busiest mall. The only thing she was really worried about was growing too bored. “Do you have WiFi here?”
“Why what?”
Jillian hoped her aunt didn’t see the way she rolled her eyes. What century did these people think they were in? “WiFi,” she repeated. “For the Internet.”
Connie puckered her lips into a pout. “What are you needing that for now? You know your uncle and I don’t agree with that online dating so many young folks have taken up with these days. Even one of the girls from our own church, sweetest thing you’d ever meet ...”
“I’m not looking for someone to date,” Jillian interrupted. “I just want to check email, see what my friends have posted.”
“Posted?”
Jillian shook her head. “Never mind. I’ll just use the signal from my phone.”
Great. While she was banished to the desert areas of Orchard Grove, the armpit of Washington state if there ever was one, Jillian would give her parents yet another reason to be disappointed in her when they saw how much data she was using up in their shared plan.
Oh, well. That’s what happens when you put family appearances above all else.
She was so sick of it. Up until the move itself, she’d been more worried about the pregnancy, about taking time off her studies and missing out on the social life she’d worked so hard to build. But now that she was here, she had nothing better to do but stew over how unfairly her parents were treating her.
Being in Orchard Grove itself didn’t help matters either. She’d tried so hard to forget this town, forget the church and how deplorably they treated her in the past. It wasn’t until she was forced to sit through an entire sermon after being bombarded by nosy questions from congregants who had shunned her and her family so many years ago that she realized how much bitterness she was still holding onto.
It’s one thing to fire a pastor who does something as stupid as her dad did. She had no problem with that. But why would the church turn and make her mom feel as if she were just as much to blame? Why would all those oh-so-proper mothers forbid their children to play with Jillian and her brother anymore? Did they think that lust was hereditary? Well, how did they think the human race had sustained itself through the millennia?
Back in Seattle, with the busyness of her college courses and a full social schedule, she didn’t spare Orchard Grove a fleeting thought. But that was impossible now she was stuck here for six full months, reminded every single day of the church that had forced her to turn her back on God in the first place.
If it hadn’t been for t
he way she and her family had been treated, Jillian probably would have continued on leading that little Sunday school life everyone expected of her. Hadn’t she been trained since the time she was a toddler to act like a proper pastor’s kid? Then her dad got himself kicked out from the ministry, and Jillian realized that all those people her family had tried so hard to impress weren’t even worth the oxygen they breathed.
What else is there to say about a group of so-called Christians who would make a little girl feel like she was shameful and unclean just because her daddy did a Very Bad Thing?
Sure, she had made some stupid choices herself since then, but didn’t the root of it all point back here?
“Well, now,” Connie declared, “I’ve got some bread rising that I need to check on, and then after dinner I’ll show you how we put the kids down for the night.”
It took Jillian a few seconds to realize her aunt was talking about the goats.
Connie grabbed the keys to the store and turned off the lights. “You don’t know what an answer to prayer this is for me. I was telling your uncle just today how much I’ve been praying for a little help around the store.”
Jillian accepted her aunt’s hug stiffly.
“I’m so very excited to have you with us here,” Connie sighed.
That makes one of us, Jillian thought to herself.
CHAPTER 16
“COME ON, PEACHES,” Jillian pleaded. “Just get in here so I can tuck you in for the night.”
There she went again, talking to these animals as if they were tiny human beings. Connie had run back to the house to pull some bread out of the oven. They had managed to get everyone into the pen, all except for Peaches, who wouldn’t come near no matter how much grain Jillian held out to coax her indoors.
“You know, I have a good mind to make you sleep outside just to teach you a lesson.”
“Someone throwing a temper tantrum before bed?”