My mom had caught sight of me when I entered at the beginning of the service and took a seat in the back. She kept shooting nervous looks over her shoulder at me like she was worried I was going to jump to my feet at any given moment and lay all my family’s sins bare for all of the loyal parishioners to judge. I just kept smiling at her with a lot of teeth. I didn’t see any reason to put her mind at ease, not after the way she had sold Poppy out to a murderous creep under the guise of trying to do what was best for her. Every time she caught my eye, she gulped and nervously looked back at my father.
I figured he knew I was there as well. His entire sermon centered on forgiveness and sin. The sins of the body. The sins of the mind. The sins of the well-meaning and the sins of parents and children. He talked a good game about nothing in this world being unforgivable by God and then turned my stomach when he offered a prayer for Oliver Martinez and reminded everyone sitting inside the picture-perfect, small-town church that it was only up to God to forgive and judge Oliver for his misdeeds. Not one word about Poppy or the horror she had suffered and he most definitely didn’t mention that he was the primary reason Oliver had found my sister in the first place.
I wanted to get up and march up the aisle to the front of the church and knock him off the altar. I wanted to stand on the pew and scream that all these innocent people were listening to a fraud and that my father really thought his opinion and his beliefs were just as important as the deity he claimed was the only one that could sit in judgment. I didn’t do anything. I sat there with my arms crossed over my chest and watched him through narrowed eyes.
I knew he was trying to get a rise out of me in front of all of these people he considered his sheep, his blind followers. He had long since declared me an embarrassment, a loss, a wayward soul that was godless and not worthy of his guidance and tutelage, so I wasn’t about to prove him right in any way, shape, or form.
My phone vibrated from where I had it stashed and I pulled it out to glance at the text.
Love you.
It was simple. It was sweet. It was a reminder that after this was all said and done, I had somewhere to go. I had someone that would always want me. I had never returned to anything or anyone in my entire life, so it sent warm and gooey threads of love and happiness shooting all through me so that I absolutely couldn’t wait to get back home. I wanted to get back to Rowdy. The days I had to spend apart from him felt years longer than the decade we had previously spent separated.
I missed him. I was worried about my sister. I wanted to cuddle with my dog. I wanted to get back to work, and as much as it surprised me, I really missed the crystal-clear Colorado sky. I had found my place and it would take a real act of God to remove me from it now. I sent him back the return sentiment and stood up as the service ended with a final prayer and everyone started to file out.
Exiting church took forever. Everyone had to say hello. Everyone had to stop and shake my father’s hand and tell him how much they appreciated his kind words and giving nature. I had to literally bite my tongue when more than one person muttered under their breath about the shock that they had felt about what had happened with Oliver and my sister. The sympathy the churchgoers so readily offered my father and mother as they told them to stay strong during this trying time made me see red. The fact that the lunatic that had held my sister hostage, put a gun to her head, and beat her senseless more than once had been so skilled at hiding all of his evilness while my sister suffered alone and in silence made my insides boil with rage. The injustice of it all left a vile taste in my mouth and had fury coiling tight along my spine.
Rowdy had gotten Poppy home without incident, but once they were in Denver, my sister had started to break down. She was a mess and Rowdy was at a loss as to how to help her. Poppy didn’t want to be at my apartment, she didn’t want to be alone with him at his place, so out of desperation Rowdy had called Sayer and asked her to take both of them in until I got home. Luckily Sayer had plenty of room at her Victorian and she was well versed in how to handle my sister in her fragile state. Sayer Cole was turning out to be a lifesaver, and the fact that she had dropped everything to pursue the same man I had pursued was undeniably fortuitous, and I was so grateful she had found her way into our lives. Rowdy’s endless prophesizing that all things happened for a reason really did seem to be true. There was a lot of really nasty stuff and a lot of really ugly bumps in the road we had all had to overcome, but in the end it really felt like all of us had ended up exactly where we were supposed to be. For me, I knew without a doubt that was wherever Rowdy was at, but I felt like it rang true for Poppy and Sayer as well.