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Esther
On Monday morning, Esther wiped off her tablet and opened a browser. Her daughter had bought the tablet for her so she could have some online face time with her grandchildren. But her grandchildren never used the app, so the tablet mostly served as a dust collector.
A quick search revealed the old church and showed some interior photographs that made Esther gasp. The pictures were dark and shadowy, and the sanctuary was full of junk, but it was still easy to see how grand the church had once been. The ceiling looked to be nigh fifty feet high, and yet it barely cleared the top of the pipe organ.
The asking price was far lower than Esther had expected, and she wondered if she could sell the pipe organ to pay for the building. It would be a shame to part the two, but none of the seven of them could play the thing, and she didn’t think they’d be hiring an organist anytime soon.
Her heart drumming, she called Vicky.
It was Vicky’s turn to be woken by the phone.
“Sorry to wake you,” Esther said, even though she wasn’t really sorry. It wasn’t even that early. Vicky should have been up an hour ago. “I have an idea.”
“All right.”
Esther could hear her dragging herself to a seated position.
“What is it?”
“You want to take a few minutes and then call me back?” Esther figured she needed to use the bathroom and get some coffee.
“You trying to kill me with the suspense?”
Esther chuckled. “All right. You know that old church down the street from my building?”
She hesitated. “You mean the Baptist one?”
“No, that’s on the next street over. The one on my street. The vacant one.”
“I don’t think there’s a church on your street.”
Esther sighed, trying to be patient. “I think I know whether there’s a church on my street. I can see it from my window.” This wasn’t entirely true.
“Your window faces Main Street.”
“I meant the window from the hallway.”
“Fine. What about it?”
This wasn’t good enough. “It’s a few doors down. It sits off the street a little, has a big lawn that is all grown up now. I don’t think it’s been used since the seventies.”
“Oh, good grief, the roof is probably caved in.”
“I don’t think so. Things were built to last back then, remember? And I’m looking at pictures of it right now, and it doesn’t look to be in too bad a shape. It needs to be cleaned out and spruced up, of course—”
“Pictures? Where did you get pictures?”
“I’m on the real estate website.”
Vicky was quiet for a minute, and Esther gave her a chance to let it sink in. “So what’s your plan?”
“It’s not that much money. If we pooled our resources, I think we could do it.”
“Resources? What resources? None of us have any money.”
Esther didn’t know whether this was true. She had a little. Not enough, but a little. “Maybe we should meet and talk about it.”
“Fine. McDonald’s. Ten o’clock. Call the others.” Vicky hung up.
Esther would have been offended, but she figured the grace period on Vicky’s trip to the bathroom was close to expiring. She put the phone down and looked at the picture. They could do this, couldn’t they? Shouldn’t they? She called the others and invited them to coffee without telling them why.
“I don’t have any money,” Cathy said.
This was bad news. If she couldn’t afford a cup of McDonald’s coffee, she probably wasn’t going to pitch in to buy a church.
“I’ll buy your breakfast.”
“You don’t need to do that. I had my breakfast hours ago.”
“Cathy, please come. I’ll buy you something if you want it, but either way, we need you there.”
Cathy hesitated. “This sounds serious. What’s going on, Esther?”
“I’ll tell you when you get there.”
“Tell me now or I’m not coming.”
Esther put her head in her hands. “Fine.” She filled her in and then waited for the onslaught of arguments, but they didn’t come.
Cathy was quiet for a minute and then said, “See you at ten, and I’ll take you up on that offer. I’ll call it my lunch.”
