Riverbend Reunion(8)

“Are y’all really goin’ to drink beer in the sanctuary?” Lily asked.

Daisy covered her head with her hands. “Granny Stella and Granny Martha are calling down the lightning for sure.”

Jessica laughed at the girls. From what Risa had told her, the twins had taken the whole bit about getting kicked out of the Jackson family better than most teenagers would have. They’d had to leave cousins by the dozens, a close-knit family, and the school they had attended their whole lives, but they were adapting—maybe even doing better than their mother.

Jessica tipped up her beer and took a sip. “I’ll give all these excellent ideas some thought.”

“We could just make it into a house,” Risa suggested. “How many Sunday school rooms are there?”

“Have no idea,” Jessica answered. “I was only in it a few times when it was a church, and I was only in the sanctuary a few minutes this evening. Daddy didn’t like Uncle Elijah’s preaching. He was one of those hellfire-and-damnation preachers, and Daddy liked a more conservative church. I’ll try to get lights and water hooked up before y’all come out tomorrow evening, so we can take a tour.”

“Think it’s haunted?” Lily whispered. “Does your Uncle Elijah’s ghost live in it?”

“Guess we’ll find out when we go in there. His spirit might have been what knocked the steeple off,” Jessica said with a giggle.

Wade stood. “Thanks for the visit, but I’m going home now. If you need some carpentry work done on the place, holler at me. I’m between jobs right now.”

“Thanks,” Jessica said. “You might as well come on back tomorrow. We can see if there are rats in there as big as the ones in Kandahar.”

“How’d you know?” Wade asked.

“The boots.” Jessica held up a foot, showing she was wearing the same boots the military issued for deployment in the sandbox. “When were you there?”

“Four years ago,” he answered. “You?”

“Just finished my last tour a couple of months ago, after we pulled out,” she answered. “Boots are from a previous tour, though.”

“So are mine. Just now getting them broken in good,” Wade said as he started toward his truck. “See y’all tomorrow evening, then. Who knows, we might even find a snake or two hiding in the pews.”

Daisy shivered. “I’m not going in there until y’all clear it. I hate rats.”

“I hate snakes, so I’ll hang back with Daisy,” Lily told them. “And y’all just changed my mind about enlisting in the army when I graduate high school.”

“Both our grandmothers would disown you,” Daisy said. “Granny Martha almost kicked Daddy out of the family when he joined the army.”

Lily shot a look toward her twin sister. “But he got back in her good graces when he let her name us after her mother and grandmother.”

Jessica whipped around toward Risa. “You didn’t even get to name your kids?”

“That’s only a minor detail of my ill-fated marriage,” Risa answered. “Right now, we’d better get on back to Mama’s. She starts calling if we’re not home by nine o’clock. That’s her bedtime, and she locks the doors promptly at nine. Out of the frying pan, into the fire—the story of my life. But I’m hunting a job so the girls and I can get our own place.”

“Want to live in an old church?” Jessica asked.

“Don’t tempt me.” Risa stood up, bent to give Jessica a hug, and motioned for her girls to follow her. “Is it all right if we leave the chairs right here? We might need them tomorrow.”

“Perfectly fine,” Jessica answered.

“I’m turning in, too,” Haley said. “I should go through some more of Mama’s stuff before bedtime. Maybe there’ll be something in another note about why they hid things.”

“Me too,” Mary Nell said. “See y’all tomorrow. Same time?”

Jessica walked with them out to their vehicles. “If you need to talk, Haley—or any of you, for that matter—give me a call, or just come on out here. You don’t have to wait for an invitation or a specific time.”

When the dust from the vehicles had settled, she turned her beer up for a long drink. The burp it produced wasn’t very ladylike, but then, if there was no one to hear a beer burp, did it really happen?

“How could we all split seven ways to Sunday, and yet when we get back together, it’s like we were just here having a good time last weekend?” she muttered as she headed back into her RV.

That’s close friends of the heart for you. Appreciate what you’ve got here, girl. It could be the beginnings of putting roots down for all of you. Uncle Elijah’s deep voice popped into her head.

She wondered why she would hear from him after all these years. “Well, Wade Granger was barely an acquaintance in high school. I wouldn’t consider him a close friend, and yet, he kind of fit right in with us,” she argued as she pulled a box of junk cereal from the cabinet and filled a bowl with it.

He might be if you give him a chance, Uncle Elijah said.

“Since you’re passing out advice, you could tell me what to do with that church.” She poured milk on the cereal and carried the bowl over to the tiny table to eat.