Four Deacons Drove Out My Father, So I Brought Them to Their Knees novel · Chapter 7 of 24
Chapter 7: Silk
Naomi's POV
It rained on my father's burial.
Magnolia Cemetery had a green awning over the open grave and eight folding chairs under it.
I sat in the first one, beside my mother's headstone.
Her stone was the old gray kind with her name cut deep.
The space beside it had been waiting for him for eleven years.
The pastor spoke for a few minutes about a man who had loved God and lost his way, and I let it go past me.
Calvin stood at the head of the casket in a black overcoat, with his hands folded and his eyes on the ground.
He had done everything exactly right.
The flowers were white, the straps were clean, and the rain sheeted off the awning at the edges and did not once touch my shoes.
Behind the last chair, under two black umbrellas, the other three stood in a line.
Isaiah held his hat against his chest.
Lucius did not laugh.
Abner looked straight at me and kept looking until I looked away.
Nobody said my father's name but the pastor, and he said it only once.
I took a handful of wet dirt from the tray.
It was cold and heavy, and I let it fall.
I did not cry.
I had not cried in eleven years, and I did not plan to start in front of them.
Calvin lived on Government Street in a brick house with a screened porch and a piano under a gray cloth in the front room.
He had cooked.
He had set the dining table with white linen, two plates and a candle, and he pulled out my chair for me.
I ate shrimp creole and rice and did not taste any of it.
"I did your mother's service," Calvin said, across the candle. "I did it too quickly. I have thought about that since."
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–6 of Four Deacons Drove Out My Father, So I Brought Them to Their Knees are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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