by Maisy Morgan
They stood, Hannah an exception, and proceeded to sing a song Mary was thankful she was familiar with – Amazing Grace which was followed by How Great Thou Art. When the second song came to an end, Pastor Michael stood up in front of the church. “Amen! Amen, how great a God is He,” he began. Pastor Michael had them all turn to the Book of Joshua, where he began the sermon discussing King Saul, the first king of Israel. Mary admittedly was having a hard time focusing. For one thing, her own personal Bible was still in a box packed up somewhere, and the King James Version Bible she now held in her hands that she had gotten from the back of the pew was difficult for her to follow. Pastor Michael, though a bit young himself, had a very old preaching style that made Mary understand why Cindy and Hannah had joined a more contemporary church.
“Saul was selected not by God, but by the people,” Pastor Michael was saying. “Now this does not mean that God was not in full control. God was the Lord of His people. He chose to give them what they wanted, and that was to be like other nations and have a king. But what the people seemed to forget was that they already had a king! And that king was God!”
There were a few excited “Amens!” from the small church crowd goers. Pastor Michael continued for several more minutes before reaching his next big point he wanted to make that day. “You see, what I’m wanting to really get into today, folks, is leadership. What it means to be a Godly leader, and what it means to be a leader with a heart after God. Jeremiah chapter three, verse fifteen tells us that God will send us leaders after His own heart who will lead us with knowledge and understanding. But what does that mean? Saul, at first, triumphed as a leader. But God turned his heart cold. Saul started listening to the people rather than God. Saul started to let the world tempt him. Saul feared the people more than he feared God. What causes a leader to falter? What causes a leader to lose sight? It’s that – it’s when they fear man more than they fear God!”
Once again, there were a few more “Amens!” from the crowd.
“We all know a few leaders – leaders in our nation or even right here in our own community – who are guilty of running astray. Guilty of great sins. Guilty of turning their backs on the God they promised to serve,” Pastor Michael preached, and he seemed to be making some sort of transition. Mary sat upright a bit. There was a seriousness to Pastor Michael’s tone that seemed to supersede the intensity from before. He was making eye contact with people in the crowd in a way that made Mary want to put her head down and hide. Pastor Michael spoke firmly as he continued, “You see, I’m guilty of putting my faith in a leader much like the people of Israel put their faith in Saul. I put my faith in a man I wrongly thought was somehow above a great sin. I put my faith in a man other than God or Jesus Christ. And, I think we’ve all felt the sting of that this week.”
Mary’s jaw dropped. Pastor Michael was, without a doubt, calling out Josiah. Josiah had just been killed a week ago, and here Pastor Michael was preaching a whole sermon on the man. It was painfully obvious, and looking around, Mary could see that several church members had started to fidget in their seats. Pastor Michael didn’t seem to care. He continued, “We put our faith in a man who raised up this building – not in the man who raised up the Lord’s church! We put our faith in a man in our community, and he has disappointed us. He has disappointed me! We put our faith in a man. Therein lies the problem. We put our faith in a man: not God! And now, God has used a terrible tragedy to stir us. We must ask ourselves, what are we going to do now?”
By the time the sermon was over, Mary doubted there was a single person in the crowd of people who did not know exactly who Pastor Michael had been talking about. In fact, a small handful of elderly church members had gotten up and left in the middle of the sermon after he started bashing “the man” that the church had wrongly placed their faith in. Mary completely understood the point that Pastor Michael had been trying to make. Their faith needed to be entirely on God and not on men, as men always disappoint, but it had gotten increasingly distasteful the more the man spoke. Pastor Michael was angry. His fury had been painfully clear in the sermon.
Mary breathed a sigh of relief when it was finally over, realizing she was not mentally fit to sit through another minute of Pastor Michael speaking so poorly of a man who had just been brutally murdered just a week before. Mary was just glad Jenna had elected not to go to church that morning because it would have probably given the poor woman a heart attack.
Soon Mary found herself standing outside the church with Cindy, Hannah, and Tripp – each of them looking just as uncomfortable as the next. The crowd had dispersed very quickly that day, and Mary couldn’t blame them. She wanted to get out of there too.
“So… that was an interesting and colorful sermon,” Tripp said, and Hannah snorted.
“Hannah, that’s enough,” Cindy warned. “Pastor Michael… is grieving.”
“I’ll say,” Hannah said. “Mom, that was ridiculous, and you know it.”
“You’re right, it was,” she said. “Though he made some incredible points.”
“He did,” Hannah agreed. “But the whole church is grieving and upset over Pastor Josiah. They’re still mourning him. The man has been dead for a week, Mom. He was murdered. His killer is still out there, and Pastor Michael just used his platform to bash the man. That started out as a sermon about placing our faith in the right place and turned into a tirade.”
“I believe Hannah is right,” Mary said uncomfortably. “I expected Pastor Michael to be upset about what he learned about Josiah, I just didn’t expect him to broadcast it like that.”
“Well,” Cindy said, lowering her voice in the event anyone exited the church as they were talking. “There has always been a lot of gossip surrounding Pastor Josiah’s retirement and Pastor Michael’s involvement.”
“How do you mean?” Mary questioned.
“Well, and I don’t know what is true and what is just rumors, but Michael had supposedly vocalized his concern about Pastor Josiah’s leadership abilities before; long before the man was retired of course. Pastor Michael had trained under Pastor Josiah, and he had brought a few things to the church elders before that he was concerned about, but what they were, well, that was what no one really knows. Pastor Michael has suggested in the past, though he never outright said it, that he suspected Pastor Josiah was living some sort of double life. Trying to have it both ways; the sinner and the saint sort of thing. I think Pastor Michael might have suspected a lot of what we saw in Kristin’s video,” Cindy explained.
“Well, that’s terrible,” Mary said. “I suppose he wasn’t quite as surprised then as everyone else when Kristin showed that video? Do you think he knew about the affair, or did he just suspect it?”
“I think it was just suspect,” Cindy said. “But I think it was pretty clear to everyone that Pastor Michael had a lot to do with Pastor Josiah’s early retirement from the church. He had been encouraging the man to step down for a while.”
“Interesting,” Mary said, making a mental note that she needed to fill Preston in on what she had learned at church that morning.
Chapter Fourteen
Another day in Brooks meant another day of going through boxes for Mary and Tripp. They had been putting so much effort into getting her shop ready that they had greatly neglected any unpacking. It seemed as though they were lucky to unpack a single box in a weekend, so they had decided to dedicate an evening to at least getting all of the boxes marked “Living Room” unloaded. Mostly, those consisted of miscellaneous items and small decorative pieces that Mary had intended to be put up in the family room, so it made for a rather fun and adventurous unpacking experience. She pulled out picture frames and little statues that would look lovely on the built-in bookshelf the house had come with.
As she and Tripp unpacked, they tried their best to actually put everything where it needed to go and not just take it out of the box. There was only a small pile of things on the couch that Mary needed to decide on at a later date – thi
ngs she was contemplating on hanging up in the hallway or perhaps in her bedroom.
Tripp opened up another box with the box cutter Mary had passed him. “It’s about time we started going through all this stuff,” he said. “It was getting out of hand. I’ve been using a box upstairs as a chair in my bedroom.”
Mary laughed. “Yeah, I’d say it’s high time we got everything unpacked. We’ll be able to actually make this place feel like home, right?”
“Yeah. Uh, what is this stuff?” Tripp asked, pulling out what at first looked like a book.
“My photo albums!” Mary cried out, hurrying over to him. “Wow, I had completely forgotten about these. I packed these up years ago.” Mary practically dragged Tripp onto the couch flipping open the photo album.
“What is it, pictures from when you were a kid or something?” Tripp asked, moderately amused.
“No, look, it’s your mom,” Mary said, opening the album up to the first page and pointing toward a happy young girl with freckles and missing front teeth. “How cute! Oh, I miss her being this little.”
Tripp stared at the picture. “How old was she in this picture?” he asked, seeming somewhat uninterested.
“Oh, probably just six or so,” Mary said, grinning and completely unaware of Tripp’s discomfort. “Let’s see…” She flipped through several pages towards the back of the book. “Oh, I thought so. This one I never organized. There’s some more recent stuff… here we go! This was your mom right before homecoming. That’s the year she met your dad. Look at that dress. She was so pretty. It was no wonder your dad liked her so much. I remember this one time—”
Tripp abruptly flipped the side of the album he was holding to where it shut on Mary’s hands. “I really don’t want to look at a bunch of old pictures of her before she got knocked up and doped up.”
“Tripp!” Mary exclaimed in surprise as he stood up, kicking the box full of old photo albums out of the way. He moved on to another box, cutting it open with the box cutter then slamming it down on the television stand, he started digging through the box rather aggressively.
“What?” he snapped over his shoulder. “I don’t want to look at any pictures of her.”
“She’s your mother,” Mary said, feeling quite hurt by his reaction.
“No,” Tripp said. “The closest thing to a mom I’ve ever had was Katie. She was Dad’s girlfriend for six years before they broke up. I would have rather moved in with her than you.”
Mary took a breath, reminding herself that this was just another way in which Tripp was coping with what had happened to his dad. Mary made for an easy punching bag whenever something triggered him. “I’m sorry,” Mary said. “I just thought you might want to look at some old pictures of your mom.”
“Well, I don’t,” Tripp said. “And don’t even call her that. That girl in those pictures wasn’t my mom. She didn’t want to be. She never was and never will be.”
“Tripp—”
“Don’t,” Tripp warned, holding a small porcelain horse that had once sat on the mantle at Mary’s home in LA. “I can’t believe the court actually gave you custody of me. I mean, you already screwed your daughter up. You’re obviously a crappy mom if she turned out the way she did. I don’t know why they thought you deserved a second chance. That’s what I am to you, right? A second chance. This is you trying to redeem yourself—trying to be a better mom this time around. Well, don’t bother. Because when I’m eighteen, I’m gone. I don’t want anything to do with you because I don’t want anything to do with her.”
Mary slammed the photo album down next to her and stood up slowly. “You will not speak to me like that. I don’t know who you think you are! Tripp, if I crossed a line, for that I’m sorry. But that’s no excuse for the way you’re acting. If that’s what you really think…. If you honestly believe that all you are for me is some sort of second chance then—”
Tripp threw the porcelain horse across the room. It shattered against the wall into several pieces. Tripp was breathing heavy. “I hate being here!” Tripp shouted. “I hate that you made me move out to some random town in the middle of nowhere. I hate that the only person I know out here is you! I don’t want anything to do with you. I don’t want to be here. I want to be back home in LA! I am not about to sit here with you and stroll down memory lane talking about that woman you want to call my mom! There is nothing you can say or do that is going to change my mind about her. She loved her stupid drugs more than she loved me or you or my dad. I’m not going to listen to you talk about her like she was just some sad, sick girl because she wasn’t! She made her choice, and it wasn’t me!” Tripp stormed out of the room.
Mary chose not to shout back or respond; she was certain anything she said was only going to set him off even worse. She heard the door to his room slam. She exhaled deeply and went over to the horse that was now broken into six different pieces. She gathered up the pieces and brought it into the kitchen sitting it down on the counter. She opened a drawer, pulled out some superglue. and began carefully putting the porcelain horse back together.
“Throwing stuff…” Mary grumbled to herself. It was hard for her to believe that Tripp had just chunked something across the room like that. And, it was one of her favorite decorations. Tripp’s mother had bought it for her three Mother’s Days before he was born. It had been one of the last gifts her daughter had given her before her inevitable spiral – not that Tripp had any way of knowing that. He had just lost his temper, something he had been doing a lot more of these days.
Her phone started to ring, so she sat it down on the counter and put it on speaker phone while she worked on repairing the horse. She sat there, holding one of its front legs to the body while the glue dried. “Hello?” Mary spoke with aggravation evident in her voice.
“Mary?” Preston questioned, clearly already picking up on her tone. “Everything all right?”
“Everything’s just peachy,” Mary said. “I just had a little rift with Tripp is all.”
“Uh-oh,” he said. “Are you both okay?”
“I don’t know,” Mary admitted. “I think I pushed him too far again. We were unpacking some old boxes, and we came across an old photo album with pictures of his mom when she was a kid. I got really excited and tried showing him all the pictures, and it pushed the wrong buttons.”
“He really takes issue with his mom, huh?” Preston asked.
“I mean, I can’t really blame him,” Mary said, realizing she was prepared to vent to him. “She abandoned him. My daughter got hooked on drugs, and it ruined her life. I just wish I could have done something more. I don’t know what. I tried, I really did. But I still believe this whole situation is my fault. I feel like there was something more I could have done for her to help her get clean.”
“Mary, she has to make that decision on her own,” Preston said. “She has to decide that enough is enough, and some people are just born with that addictive nature in them. They must choose for themselves that they want to get better. Sometimes, no matter how much love and support you give someone, it’s just not going to be enough. Your daughter must reach the conclusion herself, and that’s not on you at this point. She’s an adult now, and you did all you could. I’m certain of that.”
“You barely know me, Preston,” Mary said. “For all you know, I pushed her into it.”
“Did you?” Preston asked.
Mary sighed. “No,” she said. “But sometimes I wonder if I put too much pressure on her. I think that’s how she wound up with Tripp’s father in the first place; how she wound up pregnant, I mean. I pushed her to be the best – to do the best. I think I was too strict, and when you’re too strict with your kids, they try to rebel, and that’s just what that relationship was. Tripp’s father was the one who stepped up though. He was the one who got his life together for his kid not my daughter. She started dumping Tripp off with his dad more and more, and eventually she just opted out completely. I just wish I had seen the signs earlier. Realized she
was getting into trouble sooner. Maybe I could have helped her if I had caught on to what was going on.”
“You can’t live in a world of what-ifs, Mary,” Preston said.
Mary released the horse’s leg and nodded in satisfaction that it seemed to want to stay. She poured some more glue out and pressed the second leg together, holding it firm once again until the glue dried. “Yeah. I guess… so, I know that’s not why you called me. What’s up?”
“I was just calling to check in on you. I bumped into Cindy earlier today, and she told me you guys had an interesting experience at church this morning,” Preston said. “She didn’t go into details with me, but she said I should talk to you?”
“You have no idea,” Mary grumbled. “Pastor Michael’s entire sermon was obviously about Pastor Josiah, and it was far from friendly.”
“Wait, really?” Preston questioned.
“Oh, yeah, it was bad,” Mary said. “It was a disaster. It was so bad that some of the older members of the church left in the middle of the sermon. He was just up there bashing Josiah – he never said Josiah’s name, but everyone knew who he was talking about. The man just died. I feel like it was in bad taste. It was not that I necessarily disagreed with a lot of what he was saying, and I think most people agreed with him – it was just too soon, you know?”
“Dang,” Preston said. “That’s pretty cold.”
“It’s not just that, but I was talking to Cindy today, and she told me about some old church gossip that you might find interesting. Turns out that Pastor Michael might have had a lot to do with pushing Josiah into an early retirement,” Mary said. “From what Cindy told me, Pastor Michael had a suspicion that Josiah wasn’t quite the holy preacher that he led people to believe. I’m starting to think that Pastor Michael might be a more viable suspect than we originally thought.”
