Revival Season - Monica West (recommended ebook reader TXT) 📗

of computer keys resounded in the otherwise empty corridor. Had someone been in there all along? Had they heard us?

I turned to Dawn and placed my finger in front of my lips. With our backs pressed to the wall, we inched down the hallway. Papa’s door was still closed, so it wasn’t him, but if anyone saw us, word would reach him before I got back home. Mrs. Nabors’s door was open at the end of the hall; I could have sworn it had been closed when we arrived. I pointed down the left side of the hallway, and Dawn nodded. This was not the way it was supposed to happen—I’d planned an escape via the sheltered privacy of the back door, not the exposed front door where anyone passing on the street could see us. We didn’t have a choice as we tiptoed past the closed doors of the nursery and Sunday school classrooms. The tapping stopped, and I held my breath, drawing my belly button close to my spine. I wanted to run; instead, I took slow, measured steps toward the main doors and heard Dawn’s ragged breathing behind me. I shoved my shoulder into the door and winced; the rubber squeak of footsteps replaced the faint sounds of typing. Dawn and I ran out the front door and hid behind the bushes by the edge of the building.

A few moments later, Mrs. Nabors came outside and scanned the parking lot, a concerned look on her face. A rogue branch stabbed my cheek before droplets of coppery blood fell into my open mouth. I tried to quiet my breathing, to make everything still so Mrs. Nabors wouldn’t hear me. Dawn trembled next to me, rustling the bush. Mrs. Nabors craned her neck in our direction but must have heard nothing because she receded—a turtle’s head returning to its shell.

Each brick scraped my spine as we melted down the side of the building. Dawn didn’t move—she still looked dazed. Then she got up and slowly walked away from me, her arms stiff by her sides.

“Bye, Dawn,” I whispered.

She tossed up a hand without turning around. I watched her get back into the red car and drive away before I peeled myself from the concrete.

Each downstroke of the pedal to Micah’s house sent a fresh wave of pain through my body. By the time I got to her front door, it was almost 1:00 p.m.; Ma was expecting me back any minute now. I stashed my bike by Micah’s garage and forced myself to knock when I usually let myself inside. The lilt of Micah’s voice said that she was coming, and then the door cracked open until all of her was standing in front of me.

“Miriam. Hi.” It wasn’t her normal cheerful greeting, and she didn’t swing the door open to invite me inside. She scanned me from head to toe. “What’s up with your arm?”

I realized that I was holding it against my body at a funny angle. “Nothing. It’s fine.” I tried to lower it, but a shooting pain passed from my elbow to my hand. “How’ve you been?”

“Okay, I guess.” She looked down at the box.

“I wanted to bring you some of your things from school. Your favorite pencil is in here somewhere.” I scrounged around the bottom of the box for the metallic pencil that she used for everything, anything to keep from looking at her.

“You don’t have to do that. I’ll find it. Thanks for bringing my stuff.” She took the box from me and rested it on the floor inside her house.

“I miss you.” I crossed my left arm over my abdomen.

“Yeah, I miss you too. It’s been hard not to talk to you.”

“That’s been the hardest part.” I didn’t tell her all the times since last Friday when I’d lifted the receiver to dial her number and been deterred when Papa picked up the other end.

“What’s going to happen to you guys?” I asked. When I spooled time back to the day in the annex, I wondered if we’d be where we were if I hadn’t spoken those forbidden words over her.

Micah shrugged. “I think my dad is looking to work for another church, but that’s been hard. And I have to find another homeschool. My mom’s been calling people.”

Deacon Johnson’s voice calling Micah’s name came from the belly of the house. Micah tilted her head toward the low sound. “Coming,” she yelled back.

“So what does this mean?” I asked.

Micah shrugged, her eyes brimming with tears.

“We’ll see each other again, right?”

Micah gave a halfhearted nod.

“Promise me we’ll see each other again.” I stuck out my pinky to link with hers—she lifted her hand but placed it on the door and pushed it closed.

“I gotta go, Miriam.”

As the bronze doorknocker swung closer to my face, I wondered if Ma had felt something similar when she had to leave her sisters. If she’d had a similar conversation with them while Papa was waiting in the driveway with the engine running. If she had the same sensation I was having now, where I felt the parts of myself that had always been solid leaking through my shoes.

TEN

The congregation dwindled as November marched on—first the Smiths left, and then the Markhams and then the Loomises. It must have felt like betrayal for Papa—he had welcomed the twin Loomis boys into the kingdom last year, dunking their identical bodies deep below the surface of the lake. He took comfort where he could, in the fact that most of the regulars who’d been members since the church was founded—save the Johnsons—were still in attendance. In the midst of it all, Deacon Farrow stood by Papa’s side Sunday after Sunday, while Mrs. Cade and Mrs. Nesbitt vocally supported him.

In the first couple of weeks after the Johnsons left, offerings reached a new low. At the end of the third Sunday service in November, the baskets made their way down the rows and returned to