Total pages in book: 93
Estimated words: 87988 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 440(@200wpm)___ 352(@250wpm)___ 293(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 87988 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 440(@200wpm)___ 352(@250wpm)___ 293(@300wpm)
“Don’t look so surprised, Ms. Davis. You two were thick as thieves back in the day. Inseparable. It’s a small town, not like your big city. We know who’s friends with who around here.”
I give him a smile that feels forced. “Of course. You have a very good memory.” I’m ready to end this conversation. I don’t want to answer any other questions, not without a lawyer present. But I forgot another thing about small towns—how chatty everyone is. And how everyone expects you to be chatty right back.
Chief Unger doesn’t take the hint as I shift my laptop, look around anywhere but at him. Instead, he leans against the car, tosses his keys into the air, and catches them, like he’s got all the time in the world. My stomach swims. Is he being friendly, or is he messing with me, trying to make me nervous on purpose?
“So, whatta ya do for work up in that big city, anyway?”
“I’m a teacher, a professor.”
“That so? What subject?” He straightens, pulls a circular disc of chewing tobacco from his pocket, and opens it.
The pungent smell wafts to my nose, and I feel like I could gag. My stomach is shaky already. “English. Creative writing.”
“Huh,” he says, and his brow furrows like—like something. Like that piece of information is interesting. But English is a boring subject to most people; rarely does anyone find it interesting that I teach it. Most think of grammar rules or overly long books from the last century that are difficult to read.
“Well, best be heading out. Good to see you again.” Chief Unger smacks a hand on the side of the car and crosses the parking lot back to his cruiser. I watch him go, but not before he glances back my way and squints, as though I said something interesting, something he’s going to remember.
Before I can think it through, I’m turning the car on, shifting into drive, and heading back toward Mom’s. What the hell am I doing? Stalking my ex–best friend. Taunting whoever this is via Microsoft Word comments. Coming home to Louisiana, where nothing good ever happened to me. Where, likely, nothing good ever will happen to me.
CHAPTER
12
Ineed to make a stop.”
My eyes flash to my mother sitting in the passenger seat and back to the road. We just came from a doctor’s appointment. “Sure. Where?”
“The church.”
I frown. Figures. But what could she possibly need to do there at 6:30 in the evening? Daily mass was always 9 a.m. and 4 p.m., unless Saint Matthew’s has changed things up, which I doubt. Lord knows the Catholic Church abhors change.
“What’s to do there at this time of the evening?”
“Pray.”
“Isn’t mass done by now?”
“We don’t need a ceremony to take time out of our day to talk to the Lord. You should try it sometime, might make you a better person.”
I bite my tongue, rather than argue over which one of us is the shitty human. “Fine.”
Ten minutes later, I pull up at the curb outside of Saint Matthew’s and leave the engine running.
“Aren’t you going to park and join me?” my mother asks.
“Not unless you need me to help you walk in. Praying is your thing. Not mine. I’d prefer to wait right here for you.”
My mother juts her chin out, but opens the car door. “I don’t need your help.”
I wait a half hour, then another fifteen minutes more. When a full hour ticks by and there’s still no sign of her coming out, I unbuckle my seat belt and turn the car off. She’s probably taking her time to be spiteful, but she’s also sick and frail. There’s a tiny part of my heart that hasn’t turned black when it comes to my mother, so I can’t help but worry, even though I hate myself for doing it. Then again, this may just be her way of getting me to come inside.
The vestibule of Saint Matthew’s hasn’t changed one bit—church bulletin board with dozens of pinned posts, worn black pleather chairs that parents force their rowdy children to sit in when they grow too loud at Sunday service, holy water fonts on either side of the door leading to the nave. I peek inside and spot my mother sitting in a pew a few rows from the altar. A man sits next to her—a priest, I assume. I ponder turning around and going back to the car, waiting her out. But I need this day to be over with. So I take a page from my mother’s book—lift my chin high with righteous indignation and walk in like my feet aren’t burning with each step.
The priest spots me first, and my footsteps falter when I get a look at his face. Father Preston—the one Ivy told me she confessed something to years ago. This town might as well have been frozen the last two decades with the amount of change it’s seen.