In the Details

by H. Claire Taylor

  Even Destinee cringed at that.

  “No,” Jessica said, upon seeing Maddy’s especially horrified face, “they don’t actually do that.”

  Judith shrugged remorselessly. “Listen, I wasn’t the one who started calling them pigfuckers. It had to start somewhere right?”

  While Destinee continued to cringe, she also nodded a concession. “She’s got a point.”

  Jessica couldn’t believe what she was about to do. “Listen, White Light had a lot of faults. In fact, it’s entirely faults. But … that isn’t one of them, okay?”

  “That almost sounds like you’re defending them,” Judith replied.

  “I’m not. Trust me. I just don’t think we have to make up stuff about them to prove they’re terrible. And if we do make up stuff, all it does is discredit all our other arguments against them.”

  Judith let the issue drop.

  Destinee jumped in. “That’s wise of you, Jess.”

  And Judith was right back in it. “Yeah, are you, like, a prophet or something?”

  Jessica sighed. “It’ll be so nice to give you time off, Judith.”

  “Preaching to the choir, God girl. Preaching to the choir.”

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  After a busy week of training her new recruits (none of whom insisted they already knew everything she was trying to show them), dust and clutter had reclaimed her condo like when nature springs up through the cracks of an ancient city with intrusions of grass and moss and vines, shouting, “You thought you got rid of us, motherfucker, but we always win in the end.”

  However, despite the mess, Wendy Peterman was relaxed enough to sit during this team meeting. She made herself comfortable on a chair across from her clients while Jameson leaned back on the couch, his arm comfortably around Jessica’s shoulders. They didn’t need to put on a show, even while the reporter Maria Flores was present and sat attentively but patiently on one of the barstools Jessica had brought in from the kitchen. But after weeks spent pretending to date Jameson, including his occasional visits to It is Risen to stoke sales and nights out at expensive restaurants he was happy to pay for, she felt a pleasant level of platonic intimacy with him that allowed her certain perks, like casual human contact.

  And perhaps their firm alliance deserved some of the credit for Wendy’s almost serene expression and the fact that Cash Monet hadn’t been required to attend this time around.

  “How does it work, exactly?” Maria asked. “Break down the logistics for me.”

  Jessica was happy to do so, but she decided to give the floor over to Joshua, who had also been called across the hall for this preliminary interview.

  He’d opted to sit crosslegged on the overly furry living room rug, like a contented little buddha in his loose Judas Priest T-shirt and tattered jean shorts. “Every evening, an hour after It is Risen closes, I arrive with the truck and collect the remaining food that she won’t be able to sell the following day. Then I bring the food to the trailer I’ve set up by the homeless shelter and distribute it for free.”

  Wendy swooned gently.

  “I must say,” Jesus continued, “the homeless greatly prefer muffins to fish, and they haven’t been meanies to me at all. In fact, they’ve been quite kind. Haven’t been kicked or punched in the face a single time!”

  After a few more questions about the logistics, Maria appeared satisfied. “I’ll type this up and get some eyes on it, and then I’ll call Gabrielle, and we’ll come by with the camera for in-person interviews sometime next week.” She tucked her pen and pad away and grinned. “I think it’s going to do wonders, Jessica. And for what it’s worth, I’m proud of you.”

  Jessica allowed herself to take the compliment without exposing that the setup hadn’t been her idea but Jameson’s. She would have passed the credit along to him in a heartbeat, had Wendy not coached her against it prior to Maria’s arrival.

  “It’s very nice to meet you, Joshua,” Maria said, reaching down to shake his hand.

  “Peace be with you,” he replied.

  “And also with you.”

  And when Wendy escorted her to the door, Jessica swore she heard the reporter say, “His aura is remarkable. What aren’t you telling me?”

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  “Just one more,” the frat bro begged.

  “Yeah, all right,” said Jessica.

  She leaned toward him again, a few hairs that had pulled loose from her ponytail over the course of a long workday catching on his stiff, gelled helmet of spiky hair. The smell of his cologne managed to overpower the scent of the donuts she’d just pulled from the oven that were cooling on a rack, glazed and miracled, only feet away.

  She smiled, using her reflected appearance in his phone screen to make sure both sides of her face were in on the cheery expression.

  He snapped the selfie, looked at it, and nodded his approval. “Sweet.”

  Another fifteen bucks in the bank. It was hard not to smile for that kind of cash from ten seconds of work, or in the frat bro’s case, twenty seconds spanning eight pictures where he looked exactly the same yet was somehow only happy with the last one. If there was any variance in her expression over the array, it was that she appeared much less enthusiastic by the last one. But maybe that was how he preferred women to look.

  She hadn’t had a week so good in … ever. At least she couldn’t remember one.

  Maria’s piece about feeding the homeless had only aired on the Midland station, but from what Cash Monet reported, it was making the rounds online, being tweeted, shared, even pinned, which made the social media specialist endlessly happy, citing something about reaching the target demographic. They’d told Jessica that a story like this was exactly what the world wanted. Sheesh. Who knew? She’d thought people wanted to read about things like Jimmy’s brainwashing scandal, which had turned up sixteen women claiming to have been part of his cult at last count.

  That number was laughably low. She’d been to White Light Church, which had since undergone massive renovations after buying up the land around it and growing larger than many towns in the surrounding area. The number of people in Jimmy’s cult ranged closer to ten thousand. What else could White Light be called? And now that it’d expanded, opening branches in Katy, Beaumont, Lubbock, and Brownsville, that number might even be higher. She couldn’t be sure. She’d never looked into how big those satellite locations were, and she had no plans to check on them. Unwelcome news like that usually did a pretty good job of finding her, no assistance needed.

  Like when White Light celebrated its tenth anniversary. It had just celebrated its twentieth this past February. She shuddered, thinking about all the much better things than White Light Church that hadn’t lasted that long—TV shows, marriages, koalas.

  “Don’t you have somewhere to be tonight?” Judith asked as she passed Jessica on the way to delivering a warmed-up blueberry muffin. “Shouldn’t you already be on the road?”

  “I still have an hour. It doesn’t take that long to drive to San Marcos.”

  “True, but I figure you’ve already jumped the gun on this entire scholarship thing, so you might as well jump the gun on leaving work for it.”

  Jessica groaned and helped the next customer in line.

  Judith may not understand Jessica’s reasoning for starting the scholarship now, and that was fine. But she was on a roll, and she needed to keep it going if she hoped to drag out, for as long as possible, the heady high of being in the public’s good graces.

  It would come to an end eventually. It always did. And that didn’t so much worry her anymore. Jessica was a pro at disappointment. She slipped right into it like it was her favorite pair of pj pants.

  It was good fortune that she could really use more practice with.

  WE’VE BEEN OVER THIS. I NEVER ESTABLISHED KARMA. IT IS NOT A THING.

  She thanked the young mother with her toddler on her hip and directed her to the glass display where Judith would plate her items for her.
>
  Then maybe Original Mistake did it. Because it’s a thing.

  NO, IT IS NOT. ORIGINAL MISTAKE DOESN’T CARE ABOUT BALANCING THE UNIVERSE. THAT’S MY JOB.

  And you’re doing a fantastic job of it, let me say.

  THE LORD DELIGHTS NOT IN YOUR SARCASM.

  It didn’t matter what God said about Karma. He’d been wrong before … hadn’t he?

  Regardless, she was playing the odds here and putting as much good into the universe as she could in hopes of receiving the same back. And establishing a scholarship fund for NAO was just step one of her master plan.

  Had she paid up on all her debts? Not by a long shot. But could she stash away a few bucks of her own paycheck here and there to establish the fund?

  She wasn’t entirely sure about that, either, but she was going to try. If it meant she only ate things from the bakery for the next year, well, that wouldn’t be too different from the last year, and she’d learned just the right coffee-to-carb ratio to avoid becoming constipated to the point of a medical emergency.

  Again, life was all about balance.

  When Judith passed by again, Jessica hissed, “I’m not jumping the gun. I’m being proactive.”

  “Don’t know if your creditors see it that way.”

  Jessica ground her teeth briefly before helping the next in line.

  Thanks to Pippa’s smart accounting work and suggestion to transfer existing credit card debt to a few more business cards with no-interest offers, Jessica was only one-month behind on mortgage. Pippa had even accompanied Jessica to the credit union to touch base again about the agreement, and, after speaking with the same two people, Pippa confirmed that the boss was in fact an angel. So that, at least, didn’t weigh as heavily on her mind.

  The other main source of debt was, of course, Mrs. Thomas. Jessica had fallen a few months behind again on those payments. At Pippa’s urging, Jessica had called Mrs. Thomas and explained the full situation, and as she’d expected, her story was received with full understanding.

  But she didn’t think her good fortune could afford to wait until she was paid up before adding to Karma’s coffer. Feeding the homeless cost her nothing, and brought her good will, and with that, increased sales. But she knew the main bolster to the bakery’s sales was her continued relationship with Jameson. And he wouldn’t be in town forever …

  If she wanted money Karma, she needed to give money. And who better to receive it than her old sorority? Not everyone could pay for college with scratch-off lotto tickets.

  “Let me worry about the finances,” Jessica said as Judith passed behind her again.

  “Oh, I do. Listen, don’t think I’m ungrateful for the fact that you always pay on time even when you’re tens of thousands of dollars behind on payments. I’m just saying, setting up a scholarship fund might be a little ambitious when you got that crazy investor of yours breathing down your neck. If I were you, I’d want to pay her off and be done with that as soon as I could.”

  “She’s not crazy. She’s actually being incredibly understanding. And you think I don’t want to finally be out of debt? Of course I do! But I’m not going to wait until everything’s perfect before I start giving back. Besides, if there’s anything Mrs. Thomas would understand, it’s the importance of helping people get a quality education. She’s even praised me on becoming a philanthropist.”

  Judith cocked a skeptical eyebrow at her. “Is that what you need? Praise?”

  Jessica glared back at her. “No. But it doesn’t hurt every now and then.”

  When Judith raised her arms into the air and bent at the waist, bowing down, Jessica slapped her hands away. “Go take a smoke break.”

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Jessica hadn’t been back to San Marcos once since moving to Austin, and the sight of the campus buildings on the skyline wasn’t unlike a bad drug trip. The feelings in her gut had no words for them. There was a sense of pull, like she’d swallowed magnets and the town was made entirely of steel. There was a tingling nausea associated with it, but not in her stomach. Rather, it was in her chest and a little in her forearms as she clutched the steering wheel.

  The NAO house was on the other side of town from the highway, forcing her to drive through campus to get there. As she passed the Christian Student Center, her gaze wandered restlessly to the giant, blocky structure.

  She slammed on the brakes in the middle of the road. Cars behind her honked, but she didn’t care.

  On the building’s tan siding had long been a dark brown cross: her half-brother’s torture device. Now, next to it, in much fresher paint was a symbol she didn’t recognize that looked strangely similar to the cross, but with a circle on top and what appeared to be a halo above that. She had a bad feeling about it.

  By the time she’d pulled onto the gravel leading up to the sorority house, her limbs had stopped shaking. She took a deep breath after parking and looked onto the passenger’s seat where she’d buckled in the stacked boxes of It is Risen goods.

  What was she even doing here? Her sisters kept insisting she speak to the new NAO members, but what did she have to say? All she had to offer was some danishes and muffins with her face seared onto them.

  This is gonna be so uncomfortable.

  YOU HAVE NO IDEA.

  Care to fill me in?

  THE MIGHTY-AND-ALL-THAT LORD LACKS THE PROPER WORDS TO DESCRIBE IT.

  Couldn’t you make up some?

  INDEED. YOU CAN EXPECT A HOMMERNOMINY OF DRANBLOOTLES AWAITING YOU INSIDE.

  She groaned (more at herself for having thrown Him such a slow pitch to hit a Dad joke right out of the park) and unbuckled the boxes.

  As promised, Kate was waiting to play liaison. She sat on the porch swing Jessica had enjoyed on so many stressful nights. Her auburn hair was magnificent in the first hint of twilight.

  She jumped up and ran over, taking the top half of the boxes from Jessica’s stack. “They’re so excited to finally meet you.”

  “Oh great,” Jessica lied.

  She hadn’t prepared a speech or anything for this visit, and she was wondering now if she should have.

  Of course I should have. Never prepared.

  “And the scholarship fund should be ready to start distributing next fall to incoming freshman and existing students. I just have a few more documents to get notarized and then the attorney will type up the official statement and so on.”

  Jessica inhaled deeply, letting it out in a whoosh. “Thanks. I really appreciate you taking this over. I know I should be more involved in the behind-the-scenes part, so if you want me to—”

  “I’m not going to screw you, Jessica. Have I ever done anything to help you that went awry?”

  While standing on the front lawn of the sorority house, the memory of Kate’s excessive hazing in this same spot, where she’d shouted “pigfucker” at Courtney Wurst until Jessica had been forced to intercede, came readily to mind. But she decided not to bring it up. “You’re right. I trust you.”

  “Judith told me about what happened with the bakery, so I know you’re a little gun shy when it comes to trusting others to simply take care of business without your constant oversight. Which is why I’m taking so long on this. I want to make sure everything is done properly so none of it comes back to bite you. You have so much on your plate, Jessica. It means a lot to me that you let me help. Really.”

  “I guess this is what you do now, huh?” She wasn’t sure if setting up a scholarship and working as a contract grant writer for non-profits was the same, but it seemed closely related through a similar need to read fine print, play by cumbersome government rules, and spend hours concentrating on something so boring it made Jessica want to weep.

  “Sort of,” said Kate, shrugging a shoulder, which told Jessica the two things probably had less in common than she’d guessed. “But my uncle works in estate law, and he’s been helpful. Now can you loosen up? You’re about to be filmed by no fewer than thirty of your sisters.”

&nbs
p; “That’s supposed to help me loosen up?”

  Kate nodded, missing the contradiction. “Yes. You have to loosen up or you’re going to be all over Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, and Facebook looking like a robot, or worse, an unrelatable human.”

  Balancing the boxes in her hand, Kate held open the door for Jessica, who cleared her throat, worked out her jaw in preparation for the plastered grin, and then sauntered into the house as casually as she could.

  Her feet had hardly left the welcome mat when she planted them again, and any hope of appearing relatable vanished. The jaw stretches, however, proved extremely useful as her mouth hung open.

  Opposite the front door, on the living room wall stretching up toward the vaulted ceilings, was Jessica, staring right back at Jessica or whoever else was foolish enough to enter this veritable shrine.

  “Kate,” she hissed, ignoring the girls lounging around the main room and the long dining table who had begun squealing as soon as they spotted her.

  Kate let the door close behind her and stepped forward to admire the work. “Isn’t it incredible? Caitlyn did that. She joined right after you left. She’s an art major, if you couldn’t guess.”

  “The artist’s name and major weren’t among my main questions,” Jessica grunted, staring at the giant image of her face in ecstasy.

  She knew the moment the mural had recreated. She remembered it well, and yes, it was a defining one for her career, but there was something about her expression in it that seemed profane. If only casting miracles felt that orgasmic.

  While the focus of the art was Jessica’s face, there was quite a bit more happening in it. It depicted the moment in the Nu Alpha Omega kitchen when Jessica had first discovered her ability to make things gluten-free. Except Caitlyn had taken a few liberties for the purpose of artistic balance, no doubt. In the center of the wall was a ten-foot tall version of Jess, her eyes shut, her chin raised ever so slightly as she extended her hands out over a fresh spread of crescent rolls. Jessica knew for a fact that light did not radiate from her hands or any part of her when she miracled, but in this depiction, it did. The rest of the founding NAOs were pictured as well. There was Kate peeking out from behind Jessica to stare at the holy mystery with wide-eyed awe, her auburn hair a shade brighter than reality, though that was hardly the exaggeration Jessica needed to fixate on. On her left stood Judith, arms crossed, staring skeptically with a single eyebrow raised. And on her right, Natalie shared a similarly subdued interest.