“I was about to hang up,” Cora said. “What took you so long?”
“I was quilting,” Nessa explained, “and stuck my thumb with the needle. Had to get a tissue to keep from getting blood on the phone. How are you and Daddy?”
“I’m fine,” Cora said. “He’s in a funk because of the way things went about that property out there. To tell the truth, I’m glad he lost. I don’t want to move out to that godforsaken place. I like where we live—and our friends are here—but losing in court has shattered all of his retirement dreams. I told him that getting that property wasn’t God’s will for us, and he agreed, but he’s still bummed out over it.”
“Retirement dreams?” Nessa frowned. “Daddy is only sixty-two years old. I figured he’d preach a sermon on Wednesday night and drop dead right after the last amen was said when he was about a hundred and ten.”
“That’s sacrilegious,” Cora scolded.
“Well, it’s the truth.” Nessa put the phone on speaker mode and put a Band-Aid on her thumb. “What were all these big dreams, anyway?”
“He was going to get the retreat going in that area, show his deacons here what a lovely place Blossom is, and then, in about four years, we would move there. He’s always dreamed of coming back to his hometown and building his own church. If some of our good friends here in the church family saw the place, he believed that they would fall in love with it and follow him—kind of like the people did with Jesus.” Cora sighed. “But your grandmother ruined it all. I will never understand why she did that, since Isaac is the only child that she could have put a bit of pride in. Rachel was a troubled child from the time she took her first steps, and Matthew was a complete disappointment. How Isaac could share DNA with those two is a mystery.”
“Daddy used to tell me that disappointments were good for the soul. They taught us to depend on God and to realize that He was in charge. I knew that wasn’t right because Daddy was the one in charge at our house, not God,” Nessa said.
“That’s downright mean.” Cora’s voice went all high and squeaky. “Your father’s disappointment is aggravating me. He’s moping around here like a six-year-old kid whose mama forgot all about his birthday. I’m glad we’re going to the Holy Land next month. That’s the only thing that’s keeping him going. I wish you’d go with us. Samuel has agreed to take that last ticket we had to use to get the group rate. I’m sure he’d be delighted to have you along.”
Nessa shivered at the very idea of spending two weeks with Samuel right beside her. He was the guy her dad had insisted that she marry when she was just eighteen years old. Six years older than she was, he had already finished college and was a successful pharmaceutical rep. He was as vanilla as a guy could be. Nessa craved someone with at least a little bit of wildness in him. He didn’t have to ride motorcycles or have tattoos, but he did have to make her want a kiss from him instead of want to run away from one.
“Are you still there, Vanessa?” Cora asked.
“I’m here, and thanks for the offer, but no thanks. Samuel wasn’t the man for me more than ten years ago, and he’s still not,” Nessa answered.
“Poor thing,” Cora sighed. “He loved you so much, but he realized that you weren’t the one for him at that young age when you . . . Well, you did get wild after you made that decision to go to college”—another sigh—“and then Samuel married Ruth Ann that very next year and lost her four years later. I’ve always thought that he was just waiting for you to grow up and come back into his life.”
“He’ll be waiting for a long time if that’s what he’s doing,” Nessa said. “I don’t love Samuel.”
“You could give him a chance.” Cora’s voice turned slightly icy.
“No, thanks,” Nessa said.
“Well, then, can’t you let your dad use that house for a retreat in the winter months when you’re back in Turkey at your job?” Cora asked.
Now we’re getting to the real reason for this call, Nessa thought.
Cora O’Riley was a master manipulator, and she’d played her hand well. Nessa should feel so guilty for not going to Israel with the group that to make up for it, she would agree to let the Reverend Isaac use the house.
“Only if April and Flynn both agree to the idea,” Nessa said, “and I doubt they will. They both say they’re sticking around for a long time. There just wouldn’t be room for any more adults in the house.”
She was amazed at how good it felt to be able to say that to her mother, but somewhere in the back of her mind, she expected to be sent to her room to pray for forgiveness for talking to her mother like that.
“Sometimes I wonder how two godly people like your father and me ever produced a child like you,” Cora said.
Nessa could easily visualize her mother setting her jaw and her mouth in a firm line with her dark, perfectly arched brows drawn down in a frown.
“You should have studied his mother a little more before you married Daddy,” Nessa said. “They say I’m just like Nanny Lucy.”
“God forbid!” Cora said, and she hung up on her.
April stuck her head in the door. “You about finished? Flynn says he’ll be ready to set the air conditioners in a couple of hours, and it’s looking like it could blow up a pretty fierce storm out here.”
“I’m ready,” Nessa answered. “Just let me run to the house, make a trip through the bathroom, and grab my purse. You can wait for me in the SUV if you want to. Just get the AC going.”
April nodded and jogged in that direction as Nessa closed the shed and took off in a slow run to the house. Storms aren’t always on the outside of a body, she thought as she cleared the porch and ran to the bathroom.
She could hear her father quoting that verse about loving thy mother and father. “I do love you,” she muttered, “but the Bible doesn’t say I have to like you.”
April hated thunder and lightning, but at least she had a roof over her head, and if things got too bad, she could always take shelter in the cellar. She wasn’t too fond of that closed-in space, either, but she and Nanny Lucy had spent lots of nights down there waiting out a storm.
Her skin itched at the thought of going down into the cellar. She always felt like spiders or bugs were crawling on her body, or that a mouse was chasing across her feet.
She covered her ears at the first distant rumble of thunder, like she had when she was a little girl. Not wanting Nessa to think she was a big baby, she removed her hands when her cousin slid in behind the steering wheel. She needed a diversion, something to talk about while the lightning zipped through the sky and left another clap of thunder in its wake. “Did Nanny Lucy ever tell you the tornado story?”
Nessa started the engine and shook her head. “No, come to think of it, she didn’t say an awful lot to either me or Flynn while we were here. Do you know that story?”
“Yes, I do,” April answered. “She was deathly afraid of storms, and we relived the story every year during tornado season. I made up my mind that I would never go down in one of those shelter things again when I left home. I hated the smell even more than the spiders and scorpions that lived down there.”