The Christmas Sisters (30 page)

“Each of
us
has a place,” a male voice muttered from the back of the room.

Let it go and launch into the prayer. That would be the easiest way to deal with this now
. But Sam had not gone into the ministry to take the easy way. Lifting his head, he searched the area where he'd heard the scoffing remark. “Did you have something to add?”

The murmuring grew louder.

Nic put her arm around Willa and pressed her lips together, her anxious gaze trained on Sam.

But he could not let her apprehension deter him from his duty. “Speak up. If you have something to say, stand up and say it to my face for everyone to hear.”

“Okay, I will.” Lee
Radwell
rose slowly. “Nobody here has a problem feeling we got a place in this church. Most of us was christened here, baptized here, and attended a goodly portion of our friends' and families' weddings and funerals inside these very walls.”

“And me right beside you, Lee,” Sam shot back.

“No. No, that
ain't
true,
Reverend
. You got kicked out of this church a long time ago.”

“If I recall right, I wasn't the only kid who caused a stir in church and was asked not to come back without proper supervision.” Sam paused and swept his gaze over the congregation. More than one person ducked to avoid eye contact. “The difference was I didn't have a parent who cared about supervising me in anything, least of all church services.”

Lee puffed up his barrel chest and tugged at the waistband of his dark jeans.

Sam met the antagonistic posture with a crooked smile. “I don't want this church to be like that anymore.”

“Why do you get to decide that?” Lee demanded.

“Because I'm the minister.”
He held his hands out, palms open. “It's that simple. The board brought me here to lead and to serve this church.”

“I didn't have
no
say in it. Lots of people didn't have
no
say in it.” Like a dog with a bone, Lee wouldn’t let go.

“Speaking as a member of the board.”
Big Hyde rose from his seat, though it took the old fellow a minute to get fully upright. The congregation waited in silence for him to go on. “Speaking as a member of that very same board that voted to bring Reverend Moss to town...”

Sam caught the old man's eye.

Big Hyde must have seen the sheer shock Sam felt to learn this man, who had given him grief on his very first day in town, had participated in bringing him here “I think I speak for the whole board when I say we got no quarrels with his leadership, his preaching, nor any other part of what he's done here since he got back.”

“That's right,” someone murmured.

“Thank you for saying it,” Aunt Bert chimed in.

“No quarrel with anything he's done?” Lee crossed his arms. “Not even his private life?”

“If you are trying to dredge up my past, I'll gladly talk about how the kid you all knew became the man I am today. In fact, it's one of my favorite illustrations of God's grace, but—”

“Have you
throw
in our faces how we got a minister who came up from a no-good childhood?” Lee shifted his weight. Even his boots on the floorboards had a heavy, aggressive sound. “One who got into who knows what all trouble? One who thinks he's so much better than us that he can get up in a pulpit to tell us everything we do wrong? No thanks.”

“I don't think I'm better than anyone, Lee.” Sam stole a glance at Nic, but it was Willa's sweet face and worried expression that made his heart still and brought his mind back to the immediate moment. “And I'd be happy to carry on this conversation with you and anyone else interested but not tonight. Tonight we have come to give to the needy and to sing about the joys of the gift of Christmas. I regret we've gotten sidetracked from that.”

“You asked me to speak my mind,” Lee reminded him.

“Yes, and I thank you for doing that, now—”

“
Ain't
done it.
Not yet. You never let me finish what I had to say. Guess that comes with all that leading and serving you came to do here. You
lead
the way you want the talking to go and cut it short when it
don't
serve
your purposes anymore.”

Sam clenched his teeth to keep from calling the man a liar in the house of God. Taking a deep breath, he bowed his head and shifted his weight to rein in any anger the evening had churned up in him. When he looked up, he offered only kindness to Lee
Radwell
and all the people gathered before him. “I can see how my actions might look slanted to my advantage, but then it would be in keeping with the old church in the lurch to have a minister who knows how to handle an incline.”

Quiet, approving laughter lightened the tension in the room.

“Knows how to work the angles is more like it.”

“Mr.
Radwell
, Reverend said this
ain't
the time nor place.” Big Hyde did not rise from his pew as he spoke this time, but Hyde Freeman Jr. did scoot forward in his seat enough to lend his support to whatever the old man decreed. “Let's all just join in prayer, then get on with our evening and take this up another day.”

“And what?
Let him rub our noses in his arrogance as long as he sees fit to do it?”

“What arrogance?” Nic covered her mouth the second the question had slipped out.

Sam gave her a smile and a wink. A few days ago she might have sided with Lee and company about him. That made her unguarded remark so much sweeter.

“Anyone walking in here tonight
who
got eyes could see that Sam Moss has taken back up with Nicolette Dorsey.” Lee seized the moment to press on with his cause.

“If you have issues with me, then bring them to me. Bring them to the board and we will address them in the proper time and place. Now let's join in prayer and—”

“You see? You see how he cuts me when things get too close to the truth? I know you've all heard about what's going on. He stands up there all high and mighty wanting us to think he's changed. All the while he goes on his own jolly way openly living with his girlfriend and their illegitimate daughter.
Right under our noses!”

“That's enough, Lee.” Sam stepped forward, not to threaten but to place himself in the midst of his church and to make himself a protective shield between Nic and Willa and the ugliness Lee was spewing. “You've gone too far. I do not want to hash this out here and now, but I won't stand by and let you spread untruths about a member of this church and an innocent child.”

“You
gonna
throw me out, Reverend?” Lee looked around the sanctuary nodding now and again to those he must have found sympathetic to his way of thinking. “Ask me to leave this church you just said welcomed everybody?”

“No.”

“No?” Nic's voice resonated with soft surprise.

Sam did not look her way. He did not want to face the hurt and disappointment in her eyes. If he did that, he risked wanting to shelter and stand up for the woman he loved; and that would overshadow his first commitment to his ministry and this church.

“I won't throw you out or ask you to leave and not come back, Lee.
As
long as I am minister here, everyone seeking God’s love and mercy will find it extended to them here.”

“Amen.” Big Hyde held up his hand in an attitude of praise to God.

Lee glowered at him a moment, then nudged the woman sitting next to him in the pew.
She and the two teenage boys next to her lurched up out of the pew.

“Let's
all
stand and share a minute of silent prayer.”
Silent because too much had been said already.
Silent because anything more he said might so easily be misconstrued or twisted around by those who had come into God's house with angry hearts and closed minds.
Silent because Sam did not trust himself at this moment not to speak as a man, to speak on behalf of Willa and Nic and even himself instead of as God's servant.
He bowed his head.

Pews creaked. Floorboards groaned. Shoes shuffled then settled into quiet. Above it all the unmistakable scuffing of footsteps, of people leaving the sanctuary, chafed at Sam's battered idealism.

When the door fell shut and did not swing open again for several seconds, he exhaled, drew his own prayer to a close, and said, “Amen.”

“Amen,” the congregation echoed.

When Sam raised his head, more people remained than he had anticipated. That should have lifted his spirits, but he couldn't look out at his church and not see the empty places. He felt their absence in a way he had not anticipated. He recalled the verse that had played through his head these last few days.
Foxes have holes and the birds of the air have nests....

Perhaps Sam had asked for too much when he had expected God to give him a home of his own at last. He looked at Nic, who would not return his gaze. He smiled at Willa. She stared back, her eyes so big behind those delicate glasses, her face pale and serious.

He loved them both so much it made his head light and his heart ache at the same time. And yet he knew at that moment he would have to find a way to make this church whole again, even if it meant he would have to leave.

“So that's it then.” Nic had not left the front pew.

Everyone else had gone home already. Collier had taken Willa, and Jessica and Scott promised they'd occupy her with stories and songs until she either fell asleep or Nic got home.
One by one the other attendees of the Christmas Sing had filed out, most of them pausing to give Sam a hug or some kind of encouragement.
Finally, Sam helped the Sterns take the donated food and money to the office where they could put the benevolence baskets together the next morning.

Throughout it all, Nic had stayed just where she had sat when she'd walked in earlier, so filled with hope for her life and love for Sam. Hope wavering, she tried not to give in to the doubt and discouragement pressing in around her.

Sam walked across the front of the dimly lit sanctuary wearing a smile that did not for one minute fool her into thinking it indicated a true lighthearted mood.

“It's started all over again,” she said softly as he reached her pew.

“What has?”

She looked straight ahead. “The
gossip, the assumptions, the unfounded rumors, the innuendo, take
your pick.”

“Nic, I am so sorry you got dragged into a power struggle over the running of this church, over my being the minister here.”

“I didn't get dragged anywhere, Sam. I was here at the vortex of the problem from the very start.”

He chuckled, but clearly not at her. “Nic, honey, my problems with people in this town started long before you and I had our first date. It was a bold choice to ask me to come back here as pastor.”

“And brave of you to come back.”

“So many people do so much braver things for their faith. Coming back here? That was more foolhardy than brave.”

“Living your faith is a scary business. It puts you at risk of being reviled by people on all sides, believers and nonbelievers—anyone who sees
your
taking a stand as a threat to their status quo.” She stood. “You saw how it started here tonight. You think word isn't spreading around town even as we sit here, people calling Willa your illegitimate daughter, making up who knows what kind of stories about our living arrangements?”

“Speaking of that, your Aunt Bert cornered me in the hallway after the service and suggested I move into Lula's room at their house the next few days.”

“She did?”

“Yeah.
It'll give you all more room in the house over the holidays, and Bert is just itching for someone to start a rumor about her and me staying there
unchaperoned
.”

“I'll bet.” Nic laughed at the idea of her aunt at the center of any kind of scandal. “Thing is, I'm not sure if she wants those rumors so she can take on the gossips or because, like all The Duets and most of the Dorsey girls, she just likes everyone talking about her.”

“Maybe a little of both.”
He folded his hands together, cleared his throat then shifted his feet on the uneven floor. “I am sorry about what happened tonight. I'd never have encouraged Lee to speak if I thought he'd stoop so low as to attack anyone but me.”

“Another lesson learned,” she whispered.
“When someone gets that self-righteous, he stops thinking about others as people with feelings and begins to see everything and everyone as obstacles to his getting his way.”

“I suppose so.” He shook his head. “Still, everything about my renting a room at your house was so innocent. I'd lived there a month before you even showed up, and then it was with both your sisters and Willa. We never spent any time alone there.”

“You'll eat better at Aunt Bert's, that's for sure.” She smiled then bowed her head. “Of course moving for a few days only provides a short-term solution to a long-term problem.”