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

would turn to look in the direction of his grave, but their heads stayed glued to the traffic light. I craned my neck toward the right window and touched the glass, remembering the feel of the hard earth around his grave marker when I’d gone there with Mrs. Cade. When the light turned, Papa gunned the engine.

We arrived back at the house two and a half weeks after we left. Papa placed the minivan in park and killed the engine. We sat in the driveway; no one dared to make the first move. I waited for Ma to say the prayer that thanked God for bringing us safely home, but her mouth was sewn shut.

In the rearview mirror, Papa was looking back at me with a weary expression—the first time he’d held my gaze for more than just a few seconds on the drive home. One blink. Two.

“There will be no more of that,” he finally said. “Right?” His voice had all the accumulated heft and weight of everything he’d wanted to say to me. No more of that That. He had reduced everything I’d done to one word; he couldn’t even get himself to say the word healing.

I held his gaze. The simplest thing would have been to tell him what he needed to hear, to pretend like my confession and absolution would restore him to the preacher and healer that he had once been. As though my healing was a sin that required absolution.

“Answer me, Miriam. Yes or no.”

As though on a movie reel, I saw the future that he wanted for me—the future that he needed me to want. Like a shutter, my eyes closed—I felt the hands that would stay in the pockets of my homemade starchy skirts without touching another forehead, the truths that I’d have to hold deep inside while I pretended Papa could still heal and I never could.

When the shutter opened again, my eyes bounced around the minivan—to Caleb whose eyes darted in their sockets, to Ma whose chin was resting on one palm, at sleeping Isaac, whose body was curled in on itself in the car seat like a comma, and finally to Hannah, who still managed to smile at me even after what had happened in Shelby. I saw her again, bleating on the ground, her eyes begging me to help her. Tipping forward in the seat, I swallowed the white heat and pain that came from my ribs and touched her clammy cheek—she leaned into my hand. I prayed this meant she was forgiving me.

I looked to the porch of the house, remembering the days I played on the front steps, writing my name in sidewalk chalk with ashy pastel hands, the epic games of hide-and-seek when I always beat Caleb, only coming back inside the house when Ma called my name. I had crossed a line, unmarked and unseen, and now those memories were on the other side. The Miriam I had been before had died in Shelby—saying no meant I would no longer sit on the porch after revival with Ma, feeling the numbness on my tongue after dipping it into an ice-cream cone. Would never again stand ankle-deep in lukewarm water playing baptism in an inflatable pool with Caleb, my skirt hitched up to my knees.

“Well?”

A yes would bring me out of exile, back into the fold, while a no would cast me into the wilderness, into the land of Ma’s family and the nonbelievers that we prayed for. Then other memories came flooding back to me: the sweat above Micah’s lip as she lay lifeless in front of me; the convulsion in Nadia’s body as she pressed against the sink’s ceramic basin, the trust in her eyes when she’d believed that I could take away her pain; the puff of Hope’s first breath in my mouth and the tiniest rise in her chest as her skin turned pink; and then Ma, her forehead smooth when I touched it, slick with holy oil as the sign of the cross lingered on her skin long after my hand was gone. And there could be so many others.

“Miriam?”

I dipped my chin to my chest and closed my eyes, pressing the ice pack into my aching ribs. I whispered a prayer to God. Wind wafted into the minivan through the open windows, making goose bumps sprout on my skin, and I knew He was here with me. I opened my eyes, my gaze a laser on Papa’s, and felt the answer tickling the edges of my mouth.

I took a deep breath and parted my lips to speak.

Acknowledgments

Duvall Osteen, you believed in this book even when I had my doubts, and you have been its champion all the way through. Thank you for your ideas, enthusiasm, patience, support, and warmth; I can’t imagine anyone else guiding me through this process. Carina Guiterman, your enthusiasm for this story came through during that first call, and your clear, precise vision and edits have shaped the novel into what it has become. Every moment that I’ve been able to work on this book with you has been a gift. Lashanda Anakwah, you have been a lifeline during this process, and I’m grateful for your quick responses and guiding hand throughout this journey. To Cat Boyd and Elise Ringo, thank you for all of your hard work on behalf of this book. Tristan Offit, thank you for designing a stunning cover that was better than I even imagined it could be. To the rest of the team at Aragi Inc. and Simon & Schuster, thank you for the tireless work that you’ve done on behalf of my book.

To Julia Fierro, thank you for nurturing my early writing at Sackett Street and giving me confidence in my voice. In addition, before Revival Season was a book, it was a chapter and an incomplete idea, and there were a few people who saw it during its infancy and helped shape it