“Well, clearly, we have a differing opinion about that as well,” she snapped.
“Saffron—”
She pushed out the door, stating, “Let’s just get this done.”
“Saffron!” it was me snapping now, and I caught her elbow to stop her.
She twirled on me, yanking her arm from my hold, and glared into my face.
“What we’re about to get done is me having a visit with my dying mother, maybe one of the only ones I’ll be able to have before she dies,” I reminded her.
“Yes, so don’t you want that to be over?”
Okay, Saffron could be a pill.
No denying it.
But this?
This was something different.
I looked back to the doors we’d come through, then to her.
“Who was that guy?”
“He’s an associate pastor.”
Reverend Clyde had associate pastors?
As far as I knew, he never had before.
Certainly not young, good-looking ones.
“Is there something going on with you two?” I inquired.
A rod slammed so far up her ass, it shot up her spine as well. “Absolutely not.”
“So you’re marrying Reverend Clyde,” I said.
She gave me squinty eyes. “How do you know all of this?”
“You told me to find Birch. My last name isn’t Drew, so I had to have help with that. And the men I asked to help are thorough.”
Was it me?
Or did her face just turn a whiter shade of pale?
“So you know…”
She let that trail.
It wasn’t a question.
It was a demand for information.
Precisely: what I knew.
And the words were strung so tight, if I didn’t answer it, they’d break, lash out and bite me.
“I know Clyde has a bunch of wives. Dad has a bunch of wives. You all live here. You do recruiting—”
“I’m a missionary,” she corrected,
“You’re on a mission in Denver?” I scoffed.
“The word needs to be spread everywhere, Pepper.”
I had nothing to say to that.
“So that’s all you know?” she pressed.
It wasn’t.
It was all I’d share.
“Is there more to know?” I asked.
She put a hand on a hip she’d hitched and swung out a foot.
Uh-oh.
Not a good stance from any female.
“You don’t want us to judge you for running away from home and getting pregnant by a man you barely knew. Making money by dancing for men in an effort to tempt them to ungodly pursuits. Building a home without a lion at the head to guide your worldly and spiritual journeys. If you don’t want us to judge you for that, you can’t judge us for the way we choose to live our lives.”
“I didn’t run away from home, Saffron, I was eighteen and no longer a minor. And I wouldn’t judge you for any of that if you didn’t try to force it on me, and when I found it unacceptable, openly judged me because I’d turned away from your church.”
She chuffed out some air and shot back, “We didn’t judge you.”
“Saffron, you yourself called me a whore when I told you I was pregnant with Juno. And I didn’t ‘barely know’ Corbin. We’d been seeing each other a year and living together six months of that before I became pregnant. And let us not forget, you also told Juno the devil shines from women’s exposed skin when she was three. Every bath time for a month after you said that, she’d ask, ‘Mommy, is the devil shining from me?’”
Wait.
Whoa.
Hang on a second.
Did Saffron just flinch?
“Saff, what’s going on?” I demanded.
She dropped her hand from her hip and turned to walk along the front of the church, asserting, “Nothing.”
I caught up with her and walked at her side.
As we turned a corner, I said, “I know something is up. You know I know. So be careful, little sister.”
She stopped dead and scorched me with her own look.
Then she hit me with her best shot.
And it was a doozy.
“If you have any regard for her at all, you should let Mom die in peace, Pepper. She hates the way you live your life. She hates the way you’re raising Juno. She despairs both you and Birch went so wrong. And she prays to God every day to provide her with answers about what she did that you turned out the way you did.”
I stood there, figuratively bleeding out on the sidewalk.
She either didn’t notice it, didn’t have time to revel in it, or didn’t care she’d perpetrated it.
She kept talking.
“Now,” she clipped, “we have a narrow window of time. Dad’s away at a meeting, but the sisters can walk in at any moment.”
“Sisters?” I whispered, too poleaxed by what she’d just said to me to raise my voice higher.
“The others in Dad’s flock.”
“You mean his other wives,” I clarified for her.
“Yes,” she stated shortly. “His other wives. And they will tell him. So we have to go.”
“And we have to go so I can say good-bye to my mother now, rather than attempting to spend further time with her, this so she can die in peace. Peace from me.”