Clue Into Kindness

by Gay N. Lewis

  Can’t you guard your tongue in the House of the Lord? Erin bit hers to keep from replying out loud. Not that the occasion stopped her. She never could talk back to Ellen, especially when Ellen made her feel like scum on a frog’s underbelly—a skill her sister developed by their teenage years. It remained the main reason Erin avoided being with Ellen for more than one hour, even on holidays. She’d shared space with her for seventeen and a half years, and that had been enough for two lifetimes. Her mother hated when her daughters staggered their visits in order to avoid each other. Well, Mom finally got her wish. Today, they were together in the same place for at least three hours of funeral, gravesite committal, and reception.

  Pastor Mike turned a soulful glance to the family. “On this day, let us not mourn the passing of our sister, Marilyn Edwards Ballinger, but celebrate her new life in Heaven at the side of Jesus.”

  Erin muffled a cough into her hankie as she swallowed the tear-clogged boulder from her throat. Why can’t I cry over you, Mom? I miss you already. I wish I had been there. Oh, why didn’t we visit you more often?

  John laid a hand on her shoulder, but Erin jerked it away. She eyed the creases of his off-the-rack jacket. How pitiful compared to Robert’s tailored one. But there weren’t funds in the account to buy him anything decent, much less her a nice dress. The credit cards were maxed out, used to pay for the kids’ orthodontics, the car repairs, and the fridge that conked out…

  Erin sighed. How she despised money problems. Okay, maybe it wasn’t John’s fault that he never finished college. After all, she’d become pregnant within four months of their nuptials. He had to drop out to support his new family. If only they’d waited until they had their degrees. But one passionate night after three margaritas to celebrate midterms being over and, bam! Twin boys.

  Still, deep down, Erin hated that John remained an underpaid blue collar worker subject to being laid off each time the economy turned. He’d lost the gumption to pursue his engineering degree a decade ago. Now he sloughed through life with no ambition or goals other than making enough to have one hundred and fifty dollars left over each month so they never wrote a hot check.

  Ellen, on the other hand, a Phi Beta Kappa sorority girl, postponed marriage and family until she’d earned her master’s in English Literature. Then she snared a successful investment banker from a prominent family and didn’t have to work another day in her life. Their three girls had been strategically birthed four years apart to avoid double diaper duty in the beginning and, no doubt, dual college tuitions later on. Her elder sister never did anything without plotting it out first.

  Hot tears dripped down Erin’s not-often rouged cheeks. Sorry, Mom. But I have a right to cry. It is your funeral, after all. She brushed them away with her fingers, checking for mascara smudges. Out of the corner of her vision she caught John’s stern glare. He nodded as the pastor continued.

  “Marilyn’s legacy is witnessed by this fully packed church. Her Christian charity touched many lives, and for that we should praise God. She would not want us to be sorrowful, but to raise our hands in hallelujahs that she is finally walking the streets of gold, free of the pain, suffering, and heartaches of this dark and fallen world on which she once trod.”

  Erin’s stomach felt as if Boy Scouts practiced their knotting skills in it. How could she rejoice? She and Ellen were now orphans. Dad had been killed in a car wreck five years prior. They had no other siblings. No more buffers lay between the twins’ tendency to squabble. How would she face Ellen the rest of the day with a plastered smile? Could she survive the sharp verbal pricks and superior, disapproving glances unscathed? Deep down, she admitted to the ugly, forbidden thought. Erin not only hated her sister for being born first, she despised her mother for bearing twins.

  The thought made her bite the inside of her lip. She bowed her head and prayed John wouldn’t make a social faux pas in conversation or her boys eat with the wrong fork at the reception. And Lord, please keep me from dribbling anything on this blouse. It’s the only good one I own.

  Greener Grasses will release February 2016.

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