Chapter 7: The Second Pew

Our Savior Lutheran holds about two hundred people, and on Sunday it felt like all of them turned around at once.

I walked Gene up the center aisle behind his walker, one slow thump at a time, in the blue shirt from his birthday.

Tressa was in the front pew with her husband and both kids.

She wore a black dress that said she was grieving someone who was still alive.

She did not see us.

We took the second pew, right behind her, and Rob's wife slid in beside me with her purse on her lap.

"I'm sorry," she whispered, so quietly the organ nearly covered it. "About everything. I should have said something years ago."

"You told me the truth. That's more than anyone else did."

"It was the least I could do." She squeezed my wrist once and let go.

Gene settled his walker against the pew, folded both hands on his tablet, and looked straight ahead at the cross.

He looked like a man at the front row of a play he had written.

The pastor read a psalm and a few announcements, and the casserole sign-up, and then he said, "We have prayer requests."

Tressa stood up so fast the pew creaked.

"Pastor, may I?"

"Of course, Tressa."

She turned half toward the congregation, with one hand pressed to her collarbone.

"Please pray for my father, Gene. He's not himself, and he's being kept from the people who love him."

Her voice cracked in the right place.

"He's confused, and somebody he trusted is taking advantage of that."

She looked at the third row, and the fourth, and then she looked straight down at the second.