Nowhere but Home A Novel - By Liza Palmer Page 0,79
utter failure.
Merry Carole, Cal, and I walk into the town square in our Sunday best.
The town church sits in the exact center of North Star. The Texas Hill Country is known for its beautiful painted churches, which were built by the early Czech and German settlers. Our church is not one of the famed painted churches, but it is beautiful. Its white steeple rises high into the big sky, and the church looks just like you’d want a small-town church to look. The reverent North Star citizens stream in through the large wooden doors. I see all the familiar faces. Fawn and Pete. Dee and her brood. Shawn looks happy as he carries his youngest into the church. Whitney and Wes, their two kids, follow behind. As we near the church, I smooth my dress down, clearing my throat. It’s gone dry all of a sudden. My legs are tired and sore from this morning’s insanity, but I’m happy I went. Maybe just nuts enough to go again, if Cal will have me.
We walk through the big wooden doors, past the ushers, and down the main aisle of the church. Huge beams stretch and web their way across the barnlike ceiling. The simple design of the church and the pews is a nod to German engineering. Clean lines and function over form. Merry Carole stops and motions for Cal and me to go into the pew first. We oblige. I smooth my skirt again and sit on the hard wooden pew next to an older couple who smile at me as I settle in. I smile back and begin to scan the church, telling myself the entire time that I’m not looking for Everett.
Merry Carole’s body is controlled and tight next to me. She’s making eye contact with everyone and no one at the same time. Her posture is perfect and she keeps pressing her lips tightly together, smoothing her lip gloss from one to the other. When she’s not doing this, her eyes are scanning the church as she anxiously bites the inside of her cheek. As I watch the circus that is Merry Carole’s feelings, I see Everett, Arabella, and Felix Coburn settle into the pew just beyond Merry Carole’s. They greet Florrie, her husband, and their brood as Gray smiles and charms his way through the bevy of adoring single ladies who’ve gathered around him. I lean forward in the pew just enough so that Everett can get a perfect bead on me. He does. He’s caught completely off guard once again. I can see him see me, not really believe it’s me, process that it is, and then look instantaneously drained. I remember this morning and seeing him unguarded as he walked along with Arrow. How beautiful it was to see him unencumbered with the weight of our relationship. I lean back in my chair, completely comfortable with using my fifteen-year-old nephew as a buffer.
The music, the pomp and circumstance, the ladies’ fans, and the spoken and repeated words echo through the church as I stand, sit, and kneel in front of God and everybody. I catch glimpses of Everett during the service, but still force myself to seem unaffected. In the quiet of the church, I let myself relax and get swept away in it all.
As we file out of the church, Merry Carole guides us over to the edge of the front lawn. Cal and I oblige, but I wonder why we don’t just go straight home. As I’m just about to ask, I see Reed Blanchard walk by with his two little girls dressed in their Sunday best. Reed and Merry Carole share what can only be described as a longing gaze.
“You could go over there,” I say, after Cal has excused himself to catch up with some of his friends.
“I just can’t, but I will go see if I can find Fawn and Dee. I’ll be right back,” Merry Carole says, and walks over to where Fawn and Pete are speaking with some other people Merry Carole knows I’d have no interest in spending time with. She falls quickly into conversation. I can see her exchange looks with Reed. It’s heartbreaking. Their entire body language is a sigh.
“I didn’t expect to see you here.”
Everett.
“You keep forgetting who my sister is,” I say. He laughs and it actually pains me. He’s in his Sunday best, hair combed, clean shaven. A far cry from what he wore this morning.