The Name on the Broadcast novel · Chapter 19 of 24

Chapter 19: Her Name

Rachel stood in the kitchen doorway with Grandma's hand locked on her arm.

The whole church turned to look at her.

She was smaller than I'd ever realized. Her housedress was faded almost to white. There was a dish towel tucked in her apron string.

"Go on," Grandma said again, softer now. Sweet. "Tell them. Tell them how good this church has been to you."

Rachel looked at the hand on her arm.

Then she looked up the aisle, at me, standing in the pulpit with the green book open under my hands.

I didn't say anything.

I didn't nod.

It had to be hers.

Rachel lifted her chin.

"My name," she said, "is Rachel Ainsley."

It wasn't a whisper.

It filled the church to the rafters.

Grandma's fingers tightened.

"I was eighteen," Rachel said. "I was walking home from my job at a pharmacy in a lake town five hours west of here. A man pulled over and asked me which way was the highway."

Nobody moved.

"I woke up in the back of a camper. She bought me." Rachel turned her head and looked straight into Grandma Verna's face, six inches away. "This woman. For two thousand five hundred dollars. For the church house."

"She's confused," Grandma said loudly. "She's always been simple. Everybody knows that."

Rachel pulled her arm free.

Grandma stumbled back a step against the end of a pew.

"I was in her back room the night Annie Wooler had her baby," Rachel said. "In the snow. I held Annie's hand."

"And I was in that same room four years later, when Annie came back from the river with her head broken. Two days. She wouldn't let a doctor near her. She sent me in to clean up, because she thought I couldn't talk."

"Annie told me who hit her," Rachel said. "She told me twice, so I'd be sure."

She pointed up the aisle.

At me.

"That's Annie Wooler's daughter," Rachel said. "She came back for her mother."

A woman in the third row put both hands over her face.

Rachel kept going.

She walked up the center aisle, slowly, and as she passed each pew she said what house it was, and what that house had bought.

"The feed store. Two. I washed their sheets."

"The mill. One. She died in the winter of her second baby, and you buried her behind the mill and said she'd gone home to her people."

"The church house." She stopped at the foot of the pulpit steps and looked up at the pastor. "Me. Twenty-four years. You preached on charity every Sunday while I scrubbed your floors."

← Chapter 18 · All chapters · Chapter 20 →

Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend