by Leigh Tudor
Both Mercy and Vlad smiled at one another, before Mercy slipped into the back seat beside Loren.
Loren checked out their ride. It looked to be a brand-new Range Rover with the new car smell and everything. “Vlad, is this a new rental?”
He cleared his throat. “I purchase yesterday. Not make sense to rent.”
Loren shot a glance at Mercy, who avoided her as Vlad closed the car door.
Cara bounced out the front door and down the steps as Madame closed the door behind them.
Ten minutes later, they spilled out of the Rover and made their way to the church’s main doors, closed due to the unusually cold November temperature.
Loren made her way down to the basement with Madame Garmond behind her. Everyone was there ahead of her, watching her intently with knowing smiles on their faces.
“We just heard a rumor. Is it true?” Lucinda Packet asked.
Before Loren could ask about what, Emmy Lou Roberts said, “Now Lucinda, the Lord’s house is not the place to spread gossip.” She squirmed in her chair, fluffing her hair. “Unless of course Loren wants to dispel any rumors.”
Loren moved to the front of the table and assisted Madame with removing her coat. “Yes,” her eyebrows shot up as she smiled at Madame. “I am chairing the Thanksgiving potluck committee this year, but the good news is, I brought reinforcements.”
“I’m not talking about this year’s potluck,” Lucinda stated, undeterred. “Is it true that you and Alec Wilder are dating?”
Loren caught Becky’s attention at the opposite end of the table with an expression that asked: “Really?”
“What? Don’t look at me,” Becky said, pointing at herself. “I didn’t have to tell them anything. You showed up together at Lucky’s, and now it’s all over Wilder that you’re a couple.”
Loren felt self-conscious as she placed her coat on the back of her chair and sat down. “It’s true,” she said pulling a notebook from her purse. “We are . . . exploring the possibility of a relationship.”
Sue Ellen popped up with: “I saw them at Lucky’s; they are the cutest!”
“I heard he hand-fed her grapes.”
Loren protested. “We didn’t even—”
“I heard he couldn’t keep his hands off her.”
She turned to Madame. “It was all very circumspect.”
Another woman, maybe in her early twenties who had recently attended one of Loren’s self-defense classes, but for the life of her, Loren couldn’t recall her name, piped up with, “I heard Marybell Simmons showed up,” capturing everyone’s attention, “and started coming on to Alec right in front of Loren.”
Everyone in the room gasped at the affront and turned to Loren for confirmation. Remembering Amarilla, and the look of devastation at her mother’s antics with the pool boy, Loren played it down. “Well, I wouldn’t say—”
The woman continued, “And that Loren took her dinner knife and split her skirt right up the back, past her skanky thong and everything!”
Madame regally turned her head toward Loren, her expression indicating that she was less than amused. Loren’s face turned a deep shade of shame. “Now that’s obviously a gross exagg—”
“And then they fought in the parking lot and Marybell grabbed Loren by the hair and pushed her to the ground—”
Loren shot out of her chair. “Now, that is an outright lie.”
The room quieted at Loren’s over-the-top reaction to being bested by the town skank. But come on, talk about blasphemy! Marybell probably possessed the sparring skills of a third grader.
She pursed her lips together and could actually feel Madame’s recrimination from less than two feet away. “What I meant to say,” she gingerly rearranged her skirt as she sat back down with as much Madame-approved ladylike aplomb as she could muster, “is that is all just nonsense.”
Lenore Sterling came to her defense, sort of. “That’s true. Nothing but nonsense. Why, I saw them leave early, with their food boxed up to go.”
Her face was on fire, knowing what that implied to the stern woman who had inspected her clothing choices for her first date.
“None of that happened . . .” She glanced at Madame, who seemed to look right through her. “Exactly like that.”
Sue Ellen then asked, with a bit of disappointment, “Then are you saying it’s a rumor that you showed up at your house later that night with your dress unbuttoned to the waist and your hair all bed-head crazy?”
“No,” she said emphatically, and then with less vigor, “not to the waist.”
Becky pasted a guilty smile on her face. “Okay, I might have mentioned that, but for the record, all I said was that there were a few buttons ‘askew.’” She emphasized with an eye roll and finger quotes.
Loren’s embarrassment was hijacked by Madame standing up and leaning authoritatively on her fingertips.
“Allow me to introduce myself to the ladies at the table who have yet to make my acquaintance.” Loren shrank back in her chair. “My name is Madame Garmond. I am Loren, Mercy, and Cara’s English grandmother of French descent. It is a pleasure to meet each one of you. Without further delay, and in anticipation of what I am sure to be a rousing sermon, please take a sheet of paper and list those dishes you would like to prepare for this year’s Thanksgiving . . . potluck. I must admit, the concept of a gathering where each person brings a pot of food in a questionably sanitized dish, is foreign to me. Regardless, I am determined to embrace the cultural and hygienic anomaly. After you have made your food preparation selection, I will peruse the list, categorize them in the proper food groups and advise if your choice is permissible. If not, you will be instructed to choose a dish in the category that I find to be lacking.”
Loren was equally subdued by Madame’s assumed authority, and her outright lie, in a church basement no less, that she was their grandmother from over the pond.
Emmy Lou jumped up to grab a notepad and some pens in one of the cabinet drawers and began to pass them out.
Madame continued her monologue, “I have no doubt that with the proper administration and adherence to personal hygiene, this Thanksgiving’s . . . potluck . . . will be a grand success.”
Sue Ellen raised her hand. “What do you call a person of both English and French descent?”
“Exceptional,” Madame intoned.
Loren covered her smile with her hand as the geriatric pit bull with unimpeachable manners single-handedly wrangled the discussion toward the matter at hand and shut down conversations trending toward illicit rumors.
Madame gathered her shiny purse and cardigan.“Ladies, shall we rise to the narthex?”
Without another word, Madame turned toward the staircase as Loren and the others scrambled to grab their coats and purses.
The young woman of the forgotten name, whispered, “Is she, like, from royalty?”
Loren shook her head, despite the contrived story Madame shared upon her arrival. But she still felt the need to come to her defense. “She’s really quite nice once you get to know her. It kind of shows up when you least expect it and need it the most.”
Chapter Thirty-Five
“The good Christian should beware the mathematician and all those who make empty prophecies. The danger already exists that the mathematicians have made a covenant with the devil to darken the spirit and to confine man in the bonds of hell.”
—Saint Augustine
One of the Latin Fathers of the Church and perhaps one of the most significant Christian thinkers after St. Paul. Augustine created a theological system of great power and lasting influence
* * *
To Loren, the service wasn’t exactly rousing but did the trick in terms of helping her to be a better person. For another week anyway.
She sat obediently beside Madame as they listened to Henry Sterling sing a solo, and then Emmy Lou provide an update on upcoming events.
Loren had a great side view of her new boyfriend sitting several pews in front of her. He wor
e a dark-blue, button-down shirt and listened intently to each individual no matter the level of mind-numbing boredom.
Loren fidgeted, contemplated if the quantized structure of energy and space-time actually required that the structure at the smallest level would be represented as a lattice shape. She then tried to remember if she applied deodorant in her rush to get ready this morning and then did her level best at discreetly sniffing one pit.
Madame caught her odd head angle and lifted a single eyebrow, and then blinked slowly.
Loren pulled herself together by sitting on her hands and then pulling one out to check the time on her phone again. She took a deep sigh at how much time she still had to endure and began to play with her hair, pulling the front wisps over her eyes, wondering what she’d look like with bangs.
Then she wondered what Jesus would look like with bangs.
She blew the hair out of her face, and then after another scathing look from Madame, self-consciously tucked it back behind her ears.
Ally sat in the pew directly in front of Loren and Madame, apparently preferring to sit with Amarilla, Cara, and Samantha rather than her brother.
Amarilla leaned her head toward Ally and whispered loud enough for Loren to hear, “Your brother is so stinkin’ hot.”
“Ew,” Ally said with a grimace. “Shut. Up.”
“No, seriously, Alec’s even cuter than Marco,” Amarilla whispered, “And Marco was hotter than fuck.”
Obviously unaware that Loren and Madame Garmond had taken seats directly behind them, Amarilla continued. “I just turned fifteen. Alec’s what, thirty?”
“He’s thirty-two, you pervert.”
“Nice. An older man.”
“That’s a fifteen-year age difference. That’s not nice. That’s illegal.”
“In two years, it won’t be. The legal age for consensual sex is seventeen in the state of Texas.” She sighed heavily. “I can be patient.”
“For your information, Alec is in a committed relationship with Loren Ingalls, you know, the sister of one of your best friends.”
“Hey, I’m not my mother.” Amarilla seemed genuinely offended. “But a lot can happen in two years, I’m just saying.”
“In two years, they’ll be married with babies by the time you’re legal. And then he’ll be an old man with a paunch and two kids wrapped around each leg.”
“Hey, Loren,” Cara whispered, turning to the side with a little finger wave, oblivious to the conversation and the two now unusually straight torsos sitting to her left. “Madame, do you have any those mints?”
Madame lifted the clasp to her purse, opened the tin, and deftly offered one first to Ally and Amarilla.
“Ladies first,” Madame said. Cara, as if on cue, plucked one from the tin and popped it in her mouth.
“Ladies . . .” Madame repeated, with an unmistakable skeptical tone.
“No, thank you,” Ally said, looking straight ahead.
“No, thank you, ma’am,” Amarilla echoed.
Loren watched as Madame leaned back against the pew, slowly placing the tin of Altoids into her shiny patent leather purse with a look of pure disdain on her face.
After Pastor Roberts wished everyone a blessed Sunday, Ally and Amarilla gave a quick goodbye hug to Cara and Samantha and skedaddled out of the holy building like two guilty nuns at a Planned Parenthood pep rally.
Alec found Loren outside the front doors and down the front church steps as he gave her a chaste kiss.
“You’re going to have to do better than that if we’re going to have two kids over the next two years,” Loren said with a saucy smile.
“I believe we agreed to explore, not procreate,” Alec whispered. She could feel his grin against her earlobe. “There is a chronology to a relationship, not always followed but, if I recall, strongly recommended by my mother.”
“Hey, I can slow my roll, but I can’t speak for the others in this town. And just so you’re not blindsided, it’s been foretold that you will not age well in the next couple of years. While I will continue to maintain my youthful glow.” Okay, that last part was a lie but, when it came to her boyfriend, she had control issues.
Loren couldn’t contain her smile or the strange satisfaction in feeling Alec’s hand possessively touch her back as they said their first hellos as a couple.
It wasn’t long before Becky found her in the crowd and waved her down. “So, Madame Garmond is your grandmother? Why didn’t you ever tell me?”
Loren winced, knowing Alec was standing next to her now, wondering the same thing. “Adopted grandmother,” Loren blurted out, “but unofficial. No documentation. Actually, it’s more wishful thinking on her part than anything concrete.”
“Like a fairy godmother?” Becky said, nudging her shoulder.
“Something like that,” Loren said, forcing a chuckle, thinking it was time for a sisterly discussion about boundaries, who was in charge of their fabricated backstories, and their houseguest’s presumed extended stay.
Her chest squeezed as once again she felt to be losing control. The last thing she was willing to do was to allow others to make decisions and unexpected announcements that could affect their safety and meticulously documented aliases.
It was then that Madame Garmond caught her attention. “Oh, hello dear, I’ve invited a few people over for a small post-sermon luncheon.”
“How many are a few?”
“Oh, just a few close friends,” she waved, “Pastor Roberts and his wife, Mrs. Waterman and her charming daughter, Samantha, and Mr. Simmons and his granddaughter, Amarilla.”
“Really?” Loren said, genuinely shocked. “I thought for sure you would have forbidden Cara from ever spending time again with Amarilla, after,” she lowered her voice, “the conversation we just overheard.”
“Oh, that,” Madame Garmond huffed, “Quite the contrary, we all need to keep a keen eye on that young lady.”
“Right . . . because . . . she can’t be trusted?”
“Oh my no,” she said, as if affronted, “because she is a lost soul, pining for authority and establishment of boundaries. Now is not the time to forsake the girl but rather to nurture her along, considering her mother is failing miserably.” Her lecture continued. “Mr. Simmons is well aware of his daughter’s philandering nature and is quite beside himself as to how to guide his granddaughter. It is our duty, as women possessing a strong moral aptitude, to rally behind Miss Amarilla Simmons as positive female influences and support his grand-parental efforts.”
Well, crap. Just when she was about to boot the old woman on her fake English keester for upsetting their familial balance, she goes and says something like this.
Madame Garmond was bossy, arrogant, and enviably well put together. Attributes she and Mercy struggled with, having been raised in a sterile environment consisting of a strange mixture of lab coats and combat gear. Loren couldn’t help but wish she and Mercy had had a Madame to influence them when they had first arrived at the Center.
Madame seemed to just be getting her second wind. “Now, as for le Docteur Russe.” Madame guided Loren to the side, away from Alec even though he seemed adequately distracted by a conversation with Gus. “He is completely smitten by our girl, and frankly,” she said, pulling Loren closer, “I don’t trust him as far as I could heave him over a stacked stoned balustrade.”
Loren turned to her wide-eyed. “You believe he’s a mole on the verge of turning us into the Center for the bounty Jasper must have hanging over our heads?”
“Good heavens, no,” Madame said with a dismissive head shake. “He’s biding his time, hoping our girl finally sees the light and falls head over heels in love with him. He’s obviously love-drunk and daft as a mad hatter.”
“I don’t think that’s a real English or French term . . . or thing . . . for that matter.”
“Pay attention,” Madame continued, undaunted. “We must introduce him to some of the women of Wilder. Help him to fall for a nice young woman who shares h
is affection.”
“I was thinking more along the lines of kicking him out of the house.”
“Whatever for? He’s a love-sick menace, not a criminal, for goodness sakes.”
“I’m not a hundred percent sure who anybody is anymore,” Loren said, almost to herself, as she rubbed her forehead.
Madame ignored her. “Which is why I invited that brash young woman, Daniela Harris, to our luncheon.”
“Who?”
“The young woman in the undercroft during the committee meeting.”
“Undercroft?”
“Beneath the chancel and nave.”
“Wait, are you speaking English or English, English?”
“For a genius, you lack the proper language of religious architecture.” The elderly woman seemed to be on a tangent and took a breath. “Nevertheless, I have invited Daniela as she seems to be of the proper age and snarky nature as our girl.”
Daniela must have been the name of the woman in the committee meeting she couldn’t quite place. “So, you’re planning to get rid of Vlad by introducing him to Daniela?”
“Exactly,” Madame preened. “The poor man is never going to alter his attention for Mercy until another woman captures it.”
“You are quite the meddler, Madame.”
“My dear, it’s never meddling when one merely looks out for the people for which one cares.” As if an afterthought, Madame added, “Please feel free to invite Alec and Ally as well.”
As Madame strode away, with a regal wave to another Wilder acquaintance, Loren muttered, “Gee, thanks for letting me invite people to my own house.”
Loren speculated if Madame was as innocent and oblivious as she let on. Loren had learned never to believe what someone revealed of themselves but to rely only on information she was able to unearth through data mining and good, old-fashion Google.
She watched Madame converse with a smitten Emmy Lou, who treated her like a celebrity. Why, it wouldn’t surprise Loren in the least if the elderly woman turned out to be a two-bit fraud from Hoboken with a long rap sheet of scam artists on her Ancestry.com account.