Down the aisle.
And using my hand, he shoved me in first as Hattie, who was at the end of the pew, looked up, startled.
Ryn and Lottie looked up too.
Ryn didn’t hide her surprise.
Lottie visibly sighed.
They all scooched as we pushed in.
“Sorry,” I whispered to anyone disrupted in our general area.
Auggie didn’t say anything.
Once I got my ass to a pew, Lottie did.
She leaned forward and rapped out, “Who had the big mouth? Mo?”
I didn’t reply because I didn’t know, but even if I did, and it was Mo, I wouldn’t say anything because I adored Mo and I didn’t want to get him into trouble.
I shrugged.
Auggie, sitting next to me, leaned forward too. “Get your shit. We’re leaving.”
I counted three gasps in our vicinity, undoubtedly due to his use of the word “shit.”
Though, it could be because we were continuing to talk.
“I’m not going,” Lottie declared.
“I’m not either,” Ryn said.
But I’d lost interest in them because I felt it.
I looked toward the front of the church.
There were three sets of rows of pews angled back with a view to the pulpit, the center one the longest, two aisles cutting through the collective.
We were halfway back, left of middle.
And at the end in the front row of the set of pews at the left, my father was turned and looking at me.
I’d gotten his hair.
I’d also gotten my mother’s eyes.
He was almost entirely gray now, but in his forties, his blond had darkened with age and I’d wondered if mine would too.
He was tall and straight and lean, like me.
And he was handsome and retained some of that to this day.
I tore my eyes from him and saw a head of silvery-white hair dutifully contained in a bun next to him.
My mom.
She’d been dark and had started to go silver in her late thirties, the white came through in her forties.
And next to her, a blonde and two brunettes.
No white. No silver. No gray in those heads of hair.
Shining and declaring their youth without seeing their faces.
My father’s wives.
“Oh my God, I’m going to fucking kill him,” I whispered.
More gasps, a sharp “Shh!” a whispered, “Oh my goodness,” and Hattie reaching to my knee and squeezing it.
“Let’s go,” Auggie growled.
“Are you okay?” Hattie asked.
Either we were making a ruckus, my mother sensed me, or she noticed my father had not turned back around, because slowly, painstakingly slowly, she looked over her shoulder.
And my world fell out from under me.
I made a very loud noise of shock and sorrow.
People turned to look.
“We’re leaving,” Auggie clipped.
He still had my hand in his and he used it to pull me up and out of the pew.
I sensed my friends getting up with us, but even if Auggie was tugging me toward the door, I was resisting.
Because my mom was a living skeleton.
She was a breathing horror show.
Sags of skin dripping on her face.
Innumerable deep wrinkles lining her mouth.
Her wispy, silver-white hair controlled by the bun at the back but framing her face.
She was a character from a haunted house.
And she was fifty-four years old.
There wasn’t even a nuance of my mom left, and if I wasn’t seeing the vestiges of my eyes and the memory of her thick head of hair, I wouldn’t have recognized her.
Panicked, my mind harked back, trying to place the time I last saw her.
It wasn’t that long ago.
A month.
Maybe six weeks.
I’d thought she’d lost a little weight.
She’d come to that in six weeks.
For some reason, my eyes swung right, to the front of the center set of pews, and I saw several women looking back at me.
A few older.
The rest younger.
My sister with her soon-to-be sister-wives.
“Baby, let’s go,” Auggie said in my ear.
“If we could please have everyone take their seats,” Reverend Clyde requested over what sounded like a very high-quality audio system.
Bargain basement pews.
Bargain basement carpet.
But you sure could hear Clyde in every corner of that big room.
“Pez, honey, let’s get out of here,” Lottie urged from close.
I looked from Saffron to Dad.
He was now standing, fully facing me.
I did not look at my mother.
“Yes,” I called loudly down the aisle to him. “You better damn well follow me.”
More gasps, some shocked murmuring, but I turned, pulled free of Auggie, and stomped toward the doors.
They all followed me.
I got to the vestibule and started pacing.
“I don’t think now is the—” Ryn.
“Okay, maybe we shouldn’t have—” Hattie.
“Hey, hey, hey, look at me,” Lottie said from right in front of me, stopping my pacing with her proximity and her hand on my cheek.
I looked down at her. “She’s wasting away.”
I felt Aug get close to my back.
Lottie’s face got soft, her mouth turned down, and her thumb slid across the apple of my cheek.
The door to the sanctuary opened and my father appeared.
I turned on him.
Lottie’s hand fell away.
Aug didn’t move an inch from me.