揘othing like a couple of cold beers and a Texas sunset.?She raised her bottle in a toast to the orange, yellow, and purple streaks that filled the sky to the west.
Then she took another long look at the old community church her Uncle Elijah had built back in the day, when he got sober for the seventh time梠r was it the eighth or ninth?梐nd got religion.
The windows in the white building were dirty, but it was a miracle they were all intact. Scaling paint testified that no one had kept up the building since the day Elijah gave up trying to build a congregation and headed to the nearest liquor store down in Burnet, Texas. Seven posts held up the roof to a wide front porch. Jessica wondered whether that number was significant.
She heard a noise to her left and glanced that way to see a squirrel fussing at her. The critter抯 tail twitched as he barked out a warning.
揟his is my church, and it looks like you抮e sitting on my steeple, even if it is laying on the ground,?she argued with the animal.
She and her cheerleader friends桼isa, Haley, and Mary Nell梙ad thought they were being so rebellious when they were in high school. Now she wondered whether drinking beer, dancing, and making out with guys in a church parking lot had brought all of them bad luck. Risa was headed for a divorce. Mary Nell had given almost twenty years of her life to a boyfriend who抎 kicked her out a while back. Haley had lost her mother recently. And Jessica had inherited a church from her last living relative. There was also a lot of money involved in Uncle Elijah抯 estate, but she had to deal with this church sitting here like a white elephant with a bad case of peeling skin before she could think about what to do with the rest of her life.
Risa had said that her mother, Stella, had had some roof damage to her house when a tornado or straight-line winds had hit Riverbend the year before. Evidently, that same storm had whipped the steeple from the roof and tossed it out onto the ground beside the building. Jessica glanced over at the squirrel, and the sassy critter started barking at her again.
揧ou want to buy this??she asked. 揑抣l sell it to you for a reasonable price, and finance it for you, but I want payment in dollars, not pecans.?
The squirrel flicked its tail a couple more times and then ran away.
揝ee there, Uncle Elijah? I can抰 even sell the place to a squirrel.?She groaned.
Since the pandemic, folks had gotten spoiled to watching Sunday morning services online rather than going to an actual church. Jessica was surprised that the existing churches didn抰 have 揊or Sale?signs out on the lawns. With a population of less than nine hundred people and six different denominations trying to stay afloat, a person or persons would be crazy to try to start up a new place to worship in Riverbend. Add to that the fact that it was so far out of town梩he only reason the squirrels stuck around was for the pecans they could eat on the trees around the old church. Then it was down a dirt road梩hat got a car dirty every Sunday morning, and the nearest car wash was at least thirty minutes away, down near Burnet. No one wanted to drive that far every week to remove all the dust from their vehicles, and everyone knew it was a sin to drive a messy car. Just a minor sin in the scheme of things梐t least according to Jessica抯 mother before she was killed in a plane crash. Nowadays, according to what she heard from Risa, Stella carried that list of sins high in the air so everyone could read it.
Maybe Jessica should just donate the church to the town and keep driving until she found a place that felt like home. Other than the church, there was nothing for her in Riverbend except her besties桵ary Nell, Haley, and Risa, who were all waiting for her call that evening梐nd who knew how long they抎 stick around when the summer ended?
Haley might go back to her old job in Alabama. Risa could easily give her husband in Kentucky another chance. And Mary Nell could get homesick for Tennessee at the end of summer. Jessica just needed to find a place to put down roots as soon as the monstrosity in front of her was taken care of, and she didn抰 have a clue where they would be.
Memories of a church a lot like the one she was staring at flashed through her mind. It had been a white building, but the stained-glass windows were shiny clean, and the paint wasn抰 peeling. She抎 had her folks?memorial services there on Orcas Island when they抎 been killed in a small plane crash. She抎 read the report dozens of times, but all the technical legalese didn抰 make much sense to her. Something with the fuel tank had gone wrong, and the plane had crashed, killing the pilot, her folks, and two other passengers as they traveled from Orcas Island, where they lived, to the mainland.
The crematorium had asked her about an urn, but she couldn抰 decide on one, so they抎 given her the ashes in simple cardboard boxes. Afraid that the boxes would get wet and disintegrate, she had mingled her parents?ashes together in a red plastic coffee can, taped the lid shut, and carried them with her for the past five years.