Total pages in book: 151
Estimated words: 145746 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 729(@200wpm)___ 583(@250wpm)___ 486(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 145746 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 729(@200wpm)___ 583(@250wpm)___ 486(@300wpm)
“You keep looking at me like that,” I warn, “you’re missing that flight and we’re for sure breaking this bed.”
She laughs and looks a little abashed. “Understood.”
“You go first.” I gesture toward the situation in my pants. “While things settle down in here.”
“Good idea.”
“Happy Thanksgiving, Vee.”
She smiles, her eyes clear of any reservations that might stop us from doing this. “Happy Thanksgiving.”
THIRTY-ONE
Monk
The house is finally quiet. Mama dragged her sister out for the Black Friday sales. God bless Aunt Jeannie, but better her than me. Mama tricked me into that retail warfare once, and I promised myself I’d never brave those rabid shopping crowds again. Yesterday was bedlam enough, with my brother and sister both bringing their families for Thanksgiving dinner. Kids, small pets, a few neighbors, and some “strays” from church. A herd of children stampeded through the halls and up the stairs. The recipes passed down to my mother for generations scented the house with food and nostalgia.
Mama and her new husband, Ray, a deacon at her church, moved into this house after the wedding. It’s good to see Mama out of that apartment, with plenty of room for all her bric-a-brac and her precious piano. I’d offered to buy her a house more than once, of course, but she refused and told me in no uncertain terms she would not accept it. I wanted to be the one to give her a new house, but Ray loves her, and I guess it means something to make this home with the man in her life.
I sit at Mama’s piano to distract myself from the temptation to call Verity and see how she’s feeling about the arrangement we discussed a few days ago before the break. Without conscious thought, I start to pick out one of the songs Mama had the whole family singing yesterday after dinner here in the living room, “Goin’ Up Yonder.” At first it’s just a few notes, and then Walter Hawkins’s familiar lyrics from my childhood pour out of me into the room’s quiet, taking me back to a time when songs like this filled our home; meant I was home.
Sitting at this old piano feels like catching up with a family friend, and my fingers flow seamlessly from one song into another and then another, until finally my hands find the notes I haven’t revisited since my grandfather’s funeral. He was the real deal, his integrity never called into question. He’d been an immensely gifted musician, and it reminds me how much talent is sometimes hidden and tucked away in small-town churches at the end of country roads. In the last days of his life, Grandpa Bellamy had made his request known. He wanted me to sing “It Is Well with My Soul” at his “homegoing.” I’d barely been able to get through the song that day, but the lyrics pour out of me strong and sure now, even though a bit of sadness will always shadow this song for me.
When peace, like a river, attendeth my way,
When sorrows like sea billows roll;
Whatever my lot, Thou hast taught me to say,
It is well, it is well with my soul.
It is well with my soul,
It is well, it is well with my soul.
“Sounds good.”
I stop playing abruptly and turn on the bench to face my father. His eyes are somber, filled with the same emotion hearing that song, playing it again, stirs in me. He and his father were incredibly close. He would have been disappointed to see how Daddy failed God, the church, himself, and his family, but I have no doubt he would have found a way to forgive him.
Must be nice.
“Thanks.” I close the piano in case my father gets the bright idea to start singing and join me. We haven’t sung together since I was eighteen. “How’d you get in?”
“Ray was on his way out as I was coming,” Daddy says, walking over and sitting on the love seat a few feet away, crossing a leg over his knee. “I missed you the last few times you were home. Didn’t want that to happen again.”
“Huh,” I grunt, ignoring his subtle reprimand for how I’ve avoided him in the past. “What’d you do for Thanksgiving? Eat with the church?”
A strange look passes over his face. “I actually don’t lead the church anymore.”
I assume my shock shows on my face, judging by his satisfied grin. “Since when?” I ask.
“Few months ago.”
“Nobody mentioned it.”
“Well, I guess you haven’t shown much interest in the church for a long time,” he says. “Or in me for that matter.”
There’s no accusation or anger in his statement, and I don’t bother denying it.
“They finally kicked you out?” I ask, only half jokingly, since I thought they should have expelled him years ago when his infidelity first came to light.