Two Days Before Our Divorce Was Final, He Wrecked His Car, and the Hospital Called His Wife and Not the Fiancée He Left Me For novel · Chapter 16 of 24
Chapter 16: Joys and Concerns
I hadn't been inside that church since September.
I went anyway, in the red coat, and sat in the third pew on the left, where I had sat for nine years beside a man who checked his phone during the sermon.
Nobody had asked me to come.
That was why.
The sanctuary smelled of floor polish and old hymnals.
Heads turned as I sat, and they turned back too quickly.
The oldest woman of the circle sat across the aisle with her coat still on and her hearing aid turned all the way up.
She saw me and nodded once.
Patty came in late, alone, on her bad knee.
She wore her good navy suit and a brooch in the shape of a dove.
She walked to the second pew on the right without looking at the third on the left.
Dean wasn't there.
The service was a hymn, a reading, a prayer, and a sermon about the lost coin that I couldn't have repeated if you paid me.
I watched the back of Patty's head.
Her hair was set, and her neck was very straight.
When the pastor said, "We come now to joys and concerns," a hush fell over the room that you could have scooped with a spoon.
A man in the front said his granddaughter had passed her driving test.
A woman asked prayers for a hip replacement.
Then there was a pause.
Patty stood up.
It took a moment, because of the knee.
She put one hand on the pew in front of her and faced the congregation, which is a thing she had done for thirty years only in order to tell other people what to bring to potlucks.
"Good morning," she said.
"Good morning," said a few voices.
"I'm going to say three things."
Her voice was steady and flat, a school secretary's voice.
"First. I told many of you that my daughter-in-law gave up on her marriage."
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