They Sold Me to the Crippled War God, So Why Was He Standing in My Father's Barn on Two Good Legs novel · Chapter 23 of 24
Chapter 23: Midnight Mass
The midnight Mass at St. Rose was crowded to the doors, and I played it from the loft.
I had played it every Christmas Eve for six years, and I had never once looked down at the pews while I did.
That night I looked.
He sat at the end of the fourth row on the left, in his dark suit, with his hat on his knee and his back straight.
The farmers sat around him in their good coats.
The old man from the third row at the meeting had put a hand on his shoulder as he passed.
The farmer who had been first in line for his envelope had shaken his hand twice.
He did not seem to know what to do with any of it.
Tessie sat in the very last pew by the font, alone, in a gray coat.
She had come in late, and she did not look up at the loft.
I played "O Come, All Ye Faithful" with every stop out, and the pipes filled the church to the vault with light.
When the Mass was over the whole parish stood in the cold on the church steps, wishing one another a good Christmas.
I came down the loft stair in my blue dress and my coat and found him waiting at the bottom with his hat in his hand.
"Come home," he said.
"The house."
"It's cold," I said.
"I lit the fire at six."
I took his arm.
We walked across the churchyard in the frost, under a sky as hard and clear as glass.
The whole parish watched us go.
I did not care in the least.
The mill house was warm.
He had left a lamp in every window and a fire in the front room, and the old piano stood against the wall with a sprig of holly across its lid.
I stopped in the doorway.
"You did that," I said.
"I asked the piano first," he said, gravely.
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–6 of They Sold Me to the Crippled War God, So Why Was He Standing in My Father's Barn on Two Good Legs are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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