Sunday rolled around all too quickly, and Bess sat in the back of the family’s Ford Sedan feeling under-dressed even in her best maternity wear. She looked out the side of the window, watching the rows of plowed fields swirl by outside the window in their delicate arcs so that they formed a kind of wave behind her eyelids that made her dizzy.
But the dizzy sensation was preferable to looking at the back of Judd’s creamy Stetson as he drove the family in to town for church services. Ever since the sort of peaceful ending to their conversation the night the pastor and his wife had visited, Judd had made himself scarce around the house, blaming a court case in the next county and the extra tasks of winterizing the ranch for the cold weather that was only weeks away. Still, every time she came into contact with him, she felt as if he were looking so acutely at her that he was seeing right through her, right down to her deepest, darkest secrets.
She saw his eyes in the rear view mirror, probing her as she adjusted herself in the seat to take the pressure off her lower back.
“You might want to roll up that jacket in the seat beside you. Put it behind you for the lumbar support,” Judd ordered more than suggested so that the thoughtfulness of the suggestion was marred by the bite in his words.
“Really, Judd, she’s your sister-in-law, not some handcuffed criminal,” Agnes scoffed.
He shrugged his shoulders. “It was just a suggestion,” he finally managed.
They were pulling up to the church then. Instead of the over-the-top spirals and stained glass windows Bess was expecting, she was surprised to see a rather plain, brown brick building with two annexes that made a sort of v-shape on either side of the main structure. A small crowd of men in three-piece suits, women in flowery dresses and children like miniature copies beside them visited in clusters outside, slowly milling their way into the church.
Agnes grabbed Bess by the arm as they exited the car. “I want you to meet some of our young adults,” she was saying as they neared the church. “They were all friends of Daniel’s, and they’ll want to meet you.”
Bess felt her stomach grow cold, but she managed to paste the smile on her face that had seen her through every adoption day and doomed-to-fail job interview. It was the facade that shielded her from the judgments and stern looks masking disappoint. It helped her lie to herself about needing any other person’s acceptance.
She was surprised when the young men and women Agnes introduced her to moments later gave her such warm smiles and welcoming hugs. A little bit of the ice she had encased around her innermost self melted. She especially liked a young woman with dark hair and pudgy arms who tugged on Bess’ curls and proclaimed that Bess was the perfect image of the girl she’d always imagined Daniel Taylor loving. The woman’s name was Rachel Bree. She taught kindergarten at the elementary school. Without giving Bess much of a choice, she grabbed her by the hand and dragged her into the sanctuary for the service, holding tight to Bess’ fingers as if she sensed the new girl could use a true friend.
Bess lost track of where Judd and Agnes were sitting as she concentrated on Rachel’s rapid-fire chatter. In the few minutes before the chords of the first hymn swelled to fill the sanctuary, she learned that Rachel had known Daniel since they were diapered babies drooling over the shared toys in the church’s nursery, that he had taken Rachel to freshmen prom because no one else had asked her, and that Rachel had had a secret crush on Judd Taylor since she was fourteen, but that she didn’t quite have the courage to do more than smile at him.
The music was pretty, Bess thought, though most of the imagery of the words went right over her head. When the man stood in front of the congregation talking about the breaking of Christ’s body and the drinking of His blood, she passed along to Rachel the golden serving platters without partaking, hoping that she wouldn’t be judged for her lack of participation.
Reverend Jones took his place behind the pulpit looking somehow taller and more confident than when Bess first met him. His sermon was on a passage in the New Testament where Jesus went to the house of a tax collector. As Michael explained, the idea that Jesus would associate with such a person, who was considered an outcast by the elite religious leaders of the time, only made those leaders more furious with the Christ. But, Michael emphasized, Jesus proclaimed that He had come to save those who were in need of a physician, who knew how desperately they needed the kind of saving grace Jesus had to offer.
Bess, who had always been one of those outcasts, wondered what it might have felt like to have a famous man like Jesus agree to come to her home for a meal. She suppressed a grin at the thought of someone like Jackie Kennedy sitting down to the franks and beans that were about the best food Bess could afford to serve most of the time and just managed not to laugh out loud at the image of the meticulously dressed woman perched on one of Bess’ mismatched chairs at her shared apartment, trying to eat off the Melamine plates which were faded and cracked with fissures from years of use.
She wondered at the idea that the Jesus Michael Jones described seemed more interested in loving people than judging them. It seemed to Bess that most of the other lectures she’d heard about the figure in the white robe ended with her feeling just that much more like a failure. How could she love her enemies and submit to a strict pattern of behavior when most of the time she was too busy just trying to survive?
Rachel turned to Bess as soon as the service was over, grabbing her arm and squeezing lightly. “You have to come to the movies with us next Saturday afternoon,” she enthused. “There’s just a small group of us, really. We watch the matinee and then go to Mrs. Hudson’s tea shop for a good, old-fashioned gab session. You’ll have a lot of fun. I promise.”
Bess studied Rachel’s brown eyes for a moment with their long lashes. They were kind eyes without a hint of the sarcasm or pity that Bess was so used to and always determined to avoid. “Okay,” she conceded. “I’d like that.”
Agnes found her then, looping a bony arm through Bess’ elbow. “So, did you like the service?” she asked, almost holding her breath in anticipation of the answer.
She could just lie and say yes, but because Agnes had been nothing but welcoming since Bess arrived unannounced at her doorstep, she felt the older woman deserved better. “I’m not sure I really understood that much of it,” she admitted, “but it gave me some things to think about.”
Agnes managed to keep the smile on her face, even though the light seemed to fade a bit in her eyes. “Well, maybe we can go over your questions later, if you’d like.”
Bess felt her back stiffen. Going to church with the family seemed like the right thing to do, at least until the child was born, but she wasn’t at all sure she wanted to explore the ins and outs of the family religion. After all, she’d never been a religious person.
In the orphanage, it had been Bess who usually managed to volunteer for infirmary duty on Sunday mornings. So, as the other children shuffled off to the church just two blocks from the facility where they ate and slept and learned their reading and arithmetic, Bess huddled in a corner of the usually frigid sick room with Matron Seals, playing gin rummy between emptying sick pans and ignoring the swigs of cough syrup the matron gulped when she thought little Bess wasn’t looking.
Agnes’ grip on Bess’ arm tightened, and she realized the other woman was still waiting for an answer. “I’m sure I’ll get the hang of things eventually,” she told Agnes noncommittally.
Judd joined them then, smelling faintly of cigarette smoke. Bess held back an amused smile as she watched the otherwise animated Rachel draw in on herself. She would have tried to help Rachel out of that shell, she thought, except she wouldn’t wish Judd Taylor on her worst enemy, much less a potential friend.
“I’ve got to get back to the office,” Judd said without preamble. “I’ve got just enough time to take you two home if we get going now.”
Agnes nodded, still studying Bess’ face with an expression that promised further discussions about church if Bess didn’t figure out a better way to avoid them, and then she turned toward Judd and began to follow him, pulling Bess along. Bess shrugged her shoulders and waved apologetically to Rachel, who was watching the trio walk away with an amused expression on her face. She smiled broadly at Bess as if to say she understood exactly how the Taylor family operated and then turned herself to join another group of hangers-on outside the church building.
The car was silent on the ride back to the house except for the rhythmic clop-clop of the tires on the pavement and then packed dirt as they made their way back to the homestead. Judd’s knuckles gripped the steering wheel so tightly that they turned white. Agnes kept her hands in her lap and stared straight ahead as if she were deep in thought about something.
Bess was the first one out of the car when Judd braked in front of the door minutes later. She leaned over to rub on Jethro’s warm head while Agnes said a few words to her son before exiting the still-running car herself. Judd took off in a cloud of dust as he sped back toward town. He didn’t even wave goodbye.
“Did someone rob a bank or something?” Bess asked, trying to break the sudden tension she felt as the car faded out of sight down the long drive.
“What?” Agnes turned her gaze to Bess finally and shook her head as if to clear it. “Oh, no. Judd is just always in a hurry, that’s all.”
And then Agnes launched into a rapid-fire discussion of what they could prepare for lunch, about the knitting project she was doing for the mission barrels at church, and about Bess’ doctor visit the following morning. Through it all, Bess couldn’t shake the feeling that whatever Judd had said to Agnes in the car before taking off again had somehow shifted the other woman’s opinion of her.
Had he found out about that she wondered. No, she assured herself, those records were sealed. Still, when Judd hadn’t returned that night when Bess finally dragged herself off to bed, she couldn’t shake the feeling in her gut that, as always, the other shoe was about to drop, squarely, on her curly, doomed head.
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