CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Ellie decided she had missed her calling. Instead of banking and business ownership, she should have been an actress. If the smiles from all of the elderly people she’d greeted were any indication, she was killing the part of a happy, healthy, Christian woman. She shook her old piano teacher’s hand and breathed through her mouth, hoping the four doses of mouthwash and five Altoids, along with brushing her teeth four times, freshened her breath. It sure hadn’t killed the horrible taste in her mouth.

“Good luck on Tuesday,” the sweet old woman said. She leaned forward and whispered, “I’m voting for you.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Hennessey.” Ellie made the mistake of breathing through her nose and was assaulted by the smell of mothballs. She hoped her grimace looked enough like a smile to fool Mrs. Hennessey. The old woman turned, and Ellie grasped her roiling stomach and sat down. She leaned over to Kelly, who sat beside her. “I think I’m going to be sick.”

“Buck up, little camper. You can do it.”

“I only had two beers, for Christ’s sake. Technically only one. Part of one. I practically didn’t drink at all.”

“Shh. You’re in church.”

Ellie rolled her eyes.

Reverend Woodard, worn Bible in hand, approached the podium. “Welcome to all of our members and guests!”

Ellie checked out. She’d heard this same song and dance every Sunday for forty-two years. The church was a little more than half full, everyone sitting in their regular spaces. Like every week, Ellie and Kelly sat together, midway down the left hand side. The previous night’s argument hung in the air between them, but it wasn’t big enough to break their routine.

Announcements ended. There was a rustling while everyone opened their hymnals to 335, “Standing on the Promises.” Ellie and Kelly opened their shared hymnal, but neither needed it. Kelly’s voice was beautiful, but it wasn’t loud enough to overcome the cacophony of reedy, elderly voices around them. Like the town, First Baptist Stillwater needed an injection of youth into its congregation, and fast, or it would die out.

When they stood for the next hymn, Ellie looked back at Susan and Brian’s pew. They weren’t there. Kelly caught her eye when she turned back to the front. Their absence was not a good sign.

Kelly and Ellie had spent many, many hours discussing Susan and Brian’s relationship, what they knew and what they didn’t. Everyone in town knew the Grant men had tempers and were quick to fight each other and other men. No one knew for sure if it was true that Grant wives were more accident prone than other women or if they were helped down the stairs and into doors. If the emergency room doctors and nurses knew, they weren’t talking.

Susan had, of course, always vehemently denied Brian abused her. Many times, Susan’s facade had fractured, and her two best friends had thought she might be ready to confide, to do something, to leave. But Susan always closed back up, leaving her friends with the feeling of helplessness they’d carried with them since standing up with Susan as she promised to love and obey Brian twenty-four years earlier.

The congregation stood to sing “It is Well with My Soul.” Not one of Ellie’s favorites, but as she sang, the words comforted her. Yes, it is well with my soul.

Across the aisle sat Julie McBride, confused by the tune and clearly not a Southern Baptist. Ellie didn’t know why the McBrides chose this church—she was relatively sure Jack was Catholic, but religion hadn’t ever come up in their short time together. Ellie assumed they were at First Baptist because Ethan had friends there. Whether her membership in the congregation had any bearing on Jack’s choice, she didn’t know. She realized for the first time that she didn’t care.

Gone was the queasy stomach that had been constant since the horrible night six weeks earlier when Jack told her his wife had returned. Well, Ellie was queasy at the moment, but it was a different nausea, the kind that would go away when she ate and got as far away as possible from the smell of mothballs wafting from Mrs. Hennessey. The thick carpet covering her tongue made her regret the beer she drank the night before, but she didn’t regret telling Jack how she felt. She now felt as light and happy as she felt their first night together. She loved him. It was as simple as that. He knew now, though surely he had known before. What he did with the information was up to him.

She’d probably gone too far with the demand he leave town if he didn’t divorce his wife, but the little amount of time she’d been around Jack and Julie was proof enough. Jack needed to know she wasn’t some fucking doormat who would stand idly by while he built a life with Julie in Ellie’s hometown. If he chose Julie, fine. Ellie’d had her heart broken before and had lived through it. She would again. But she’d be goddamned if Jack McBride rubbed her nose in it every day for the rest of her life.

Ellie prayed, asking God to forgive her for mentally cursing in church, sat, and passed the offering plate. Brother Woodard had stepped away from the pulpit in the middle of the last hymn. He returned, head bowed, and waited for the ushers to bring the plates to the front and for the final, solemn organ note to end. He peered across his congregation, taking in every single face. Checking who was there, Ellie thought.

“Brothers and sisters, I have been given some grave, grave news.”

Kelly and Ellie clutched each other’s hand, their thoughts immediately going to Susan. Bile, tangy and acidic, rose in Ellie’s throat, and her mind flashed through the events of the night before and all the times she had been on the verge of confronting Susan about leaving Brian. Regret, heavy and cold, settled on her shoulders. For the second time in her life, she’d failed a best friend.

“A prominent, loving couple has been brutally taken from us.” Brother Woodard paused. Red blotches crept up his neck to his face. He wasn’t grieving; he was furious. “We don’t have all the details, we will probably never know the why of this horrible, horrible tragedy. All we can do is trust in God that this is somehow part of His plan, and that the deaths of these two fine Christians were not in vain.”

Oh my God. It’s real. Kelly was squeezing so hard Ellie couldn’t feel her hand.

“Let us bow our heads and pray for the dearly departed souls of Matt and Amy Doyle.”