Turnabout's Fair Play (4 page)

Maureen rose to fix another cup of tea—so Jamie wouldn’t see her smile or the tears pooling in her eyes. To see him so indignant on behalf of others instead of himself made her grandmother heart swell with pride.

He snorted and then shoved an entire cookie into his mouth. “Guess we found out why Mitch and Armando got into it yesterday and why Mitch didn’t show up for work today.”

“James …”

He covered his full mouth with his hand. “Sorry, Cookie.” After swallowing and guzzling half the glass of milk, he continued, “They’re giving us a week’s severance pay for every year we’ve worked there, plus our accrued vacation time. So I’m the lucky one. I get thirteen weeks and eight vacation days. Darrell gets eight weeks, and Wade and Ainslee get five. Mitch—unless Armando fired him yesterday—only gets two weeks.”

“Do you really think—”

“No. I doubt Armando would have done that to him. He probably told him not to come in today to keep him from saying anything to the rest of us.”

“So they let you go home after the meeting?”

Jamie swallowed the half cookie he’d just bitten off. “The HR rep came in and talked to all of us together, then took us aside one by one. Fortunately, I got to go first. Armando couldn’t even be bothered to sit in on the meeting. But the gal from HR told us he’d said we didn’t have to stay for the rest of the day if we didn’t want to.”

Maureen reached for one of the cookies and dunked it in her tea. Her grandson’s voice had started mellowing under the effects of the chocolate cookies with crushed toffee candy inside. “Your job ends today?”

“Next Friday.” He squinched his face in a sardonic expression. “I still have month-end reports to finish and expenses and mileage reimbursements to request and other paperwork to finish before I can be officially released from work. Talk about adding insult to injury. I can’t even use getting laid off as an excuse to get out of month-end reports.”

He pushed back the plate, still holding two cookies, and once again pressed his face to the table. “I hate my life.”

After a few minutes of silence, Maureen decided to broach the topic that had been bouncing around in the back of her mind ever since her quick, accusatory prayer. “Remember what we talked about last night?”

“About how much I hate my life?” he muttered against the table.

“About how much you really wish you’d chosen a different path in life. About how much you feel like working in marketing is sucking the life out of you. About how much you wish you had a job that impacted people in a positive way.”

He didn’t respond. Maureen wasn’t sure if she should take that as positive or negative, so she pressed on. “Maybe this is God’s way of giving you the chance to make that change. Maybe He’s been trying to tell you in little ways over the years that this wasn’t the path He intended for you, but you weren’t listening. So maybe this is your wake-up call.”

For a long time, Jamie didn’t move, didn’t speak. Finally, he sat up, rubbing his nose. “Why couldn’t God have just sent me a registered letter instead?”

Maureen chuckled. Nothing kept her grandson down long. She leaned over, wrapped her arm around his shoulders, and gave him a squeeze. “Now’s your chance, Jamie. Your chance to start all over again and figure out what you really want to do with your life. And you can start by going to Bobby Patterson’s bachelor party tonight.”

“But I told you I’d come help with game night at church.”

So proud of him she couldn’t stand it, Maureen pinched his cheeks. “You are so precious. But the senior adults of Acklen Avenue Fellowship can manage on our own. Besides, after calling bingo for two hours at the nursing home last night and then coming home and talking to me until the wee hours, you need a break from hanging out with old folks. Go. Have a boys’ night out. Make new friends. And open up your heart for whatever it is God might be trying to tell you.”

He leaned over and kissed her cheek. “I’ll go. And I’ll try to have a good time.”

“Every time you start feeling low, just remember the old song about turning your frown upside down.”

“You used to sing that to me after Mom left.”

She nodded. “I know.”

He pressed his forehead to hers. “What did I ever do to deserve a grandmother like you?”

“I don’t know, but it must have been something wonderful.”

“Sorry I’m late, Big Daddy. I couldn’t get away from the office. Not from lack of trying, though.”

Kirby McNeill set the menu down and stood to greet his youngest granddaughter with a kiss on the forehead. “I thought you were supposed to be off work today, helping out with last-minute things for your friend’s wedding.”

Flannery sat in the chair he held out for her, shaking her head. “Got bad news last night. That big contract I’ve been working on for months, which they were supposed to give me a final answer on yesterday—there were more pieces they wanted to negotiate, so I’ve been haggling with the contracts manager and my boss all morning. But Bobby’s mother and Caylor are with Zarah, helping her with what needs to be done.”

After ordering, Flannery went back to talking about her job. Kirby fought the urge to give her advice on how to deal with the coworkers, agents, authors, and production people who seemed to do nothing but add stress to her life. But sixty years as a pastor had taught him that young people didn’t want counseling or advice unless they specifically asked for it—and then, most of them didn’t take it anyway.

“I got the final changes done and the new contract sent over right before I left to come here. The agent promised me a final answer before end of business today. And since he’s in Atlanta, hopefully he means eastern time, which means I might actually get to leave work by five o’clock our time.” She dug around in the large pile of salad greens remaining in her bowl for the last piece of fried chicken. “How’s your room at Union Station? Did you get checked in okay?”

“It is much nicer than it was when your grandmother and I stayed there the night after we got married.” He watched her plunge the breaded nugget into the dressing and eat it.

“Sorry things didn’t work out for you to stay with me on the weekends.”

With only one parking space in the garage under the high-rise condo building and her determination to give up her own bed and sleep on the not-quite-long-enough sofa in what she called “an open-concept one-bedroom”—meaning that only an angled half wall separated the bedroom from the rest of the apartment—Kirby had put his foot down and told her he would stay in a hotel when he came up on the weekends to visit with her and attend church.

“You need your privacy—especially on your only days off from work.” Not that she ever truly took any time off from work. Just sitting here for forty-five minutes without her phone ringing was a rarity—

Flannery looked down at the smartphone clipped onto her purse. Her eyes widened. “Big Daddy, I hate to do this….”

“It’s the agent, isn’t it?”

“It is.” She dug around in the large satchel for her keys. “Are you still planning on going to the game night for the seniors’ group at church tonight?”

“Don’t worry about me. I know you have responsibilities this weekend. I can entertain myself. There are so many new things to see and do in Nashville, I could spend every day here for six months and still not see it all.”

Flannery leaned over and gave him a peck on the cheek. “Thanks for understanding. I’ll meet you at the hotel for breakfast tomorrow at nine.”

“I’ll see you then.”

After paying the lunch tab—and wondering for the hundredth time why Flannery insisted on ordering a salad when all she ate off of it was the fried chicken—Kirby left the restaurant and drove from Brentwood back into downtown Nashville.

He missed the farm already, even after only a few hours away. But getting away from the farm—and getting involved in a new church—would be good for him. He’d spent so much of his life as Pastor McNeill and not enough as just plain Kirby—always a part of what was going on, but always apart from the people.

He spent the afternoon at the Country Music Hall of Fame, enjoying the displays on the beginnings of the musical style that made the city famous—and the music he’d listened to for so many years.

After a light supper at the hotel, Kirby dressed in slacks and a button-down shirt and headed over to Acklen Avenue Fellowship. Game night sounded a bit juvenile to him, but he couldn’t miss the opportunity to fellowship with others and start getting to know them.

The fellowship hall—community center, this church called it—was in a separate building across a small plaza from the back entrance of the main part of the church. The floor-to-ceiling glass windows of the ultra-modern community center contrasted greatly with the traditional red-brick exterior of the rest of the church complex.

He’d no more than stepped into the cavernous fellowship space than an older lady with red hair—dyed, obviously, but looking quite natural with her porcelain skin and smoky-gray eyes—looked up from the name-tag table. Her red lips split into a wide smile.

“Kirby McNeill, isn’t it?” She extended her right hand, the knuckles slightly bent and bulging.

Kirby took the arthritic hand and exerted gentle pressure on it. “Mrs. O’Connor.”

Her smile widened. “Yes, but you must call me Maureen. I’m impressed you remember—you must have met so many people Sunday.” She handed him a felt-tip pen to make a name tag for himself. “We’re so happy you decided to come back and socialize with us.”

Being able to put faces and names together after one meeting was a gift—one that apparently had passed on to Flannery alone of all his offspring. “After so many years of being the one in charge of these types of shindigs, it will be nice just to be able to take it all in for once.”

Maureen came around the table, a slight hitch in her giddyup. “It’s early yet, so not a lot of folks have arrived, but let me introduce you around a little bit.” She looked up at him, almost craning her neck to do so. “You said you were accustomed to leading these types of gatherings. May I ask why?”

“I’m a pastor—or, I
was
a pastor. I’ve recently retired. Again.”

“Again?”

He rubbed the back of his neck. “I officially retired two years ago. But I’d been at the church for nearly thirty years. It was the church that supported me through losing my wife and through…many other difficult times, so I figured I’d stay on as a member. But when they couldn’t find an interim they liked, they asked me to fill in until they found a new pastor.”

“And after two years, they’d stopped looking?” Maureen stopped in between two tables displaying a couple dozen games, puzzles, and decks of cards.

“Something like that. I think everyone would have been content for me to stay on until I keeled over in the pulpit.” Kirby could hear those words echo through his head in Flannery’s mellow alto voice. “So I gave them a date that would be my last day to preach. And that was two weeks ago. Then I took my granddaughter’s advice and skedaddled out of town on the weekends.”

“Out of town?” Maureen’s ample forehead crinkled in a frown. “You’re not from Nashville?”

“No—Pulaski. A bit south of Columbia.” As soon as he said it, recognition flashed in Maureen’s eyes, marking the explanation as unnecessary. “I just need to find a more permanent situation than staying in a hotel every weekend.”

“Your granddaughter can’t house you?” Maureen started walking again toward where everyone was clustered around the refreshments.

“Her apartment is too small. And with as many hours as she works during the week, I don’t want to infringe on her only downtime.” Though she rarely took weekends off, either. He’d seen the stacks of paperwork on her desk and suspected the computer tablet thing she carried around everywhere with her had work stuff on it, too.

“What will you find to fill your time? Though I suppose you will want to make sure that you see all of the sights around town, and that will take some time.”

“I went to the Country Music Hall of Fame this afternoon. And since my granddaughter is tied up all day tomorrow with her best friend’s wedding, I guess I could visit the Frist art museum and the Tennessee State Museum.” He turned his gaze to the table laden with all kinds of baked goods and desserts. His blood sugar spiked just looking at all of it.

“You don’t sound overly enthusiastic about it, though.”

He shrugged, struggling to put words to the restless feeling that had been growing in his chest all day. “It’s all well and good to take in the sights and be entertained. But I feel like I should be doing something…useful. Something helpful. Something to make whatever time I have left mean something.”

At eighty-six, he had long since passed the years of denying his own mortality. No sense in pretending he had decades remaining on his account. Though he didn’t usually like to talk about it.

“I know what you mean. When I retired from nursing twenty years ago, I almost went crazy feeling like my life had ceased to matter. That’s when I started volunteering at the hospital and the nursing home our church supports. And I try to find a service project for the group each month. So if you’re interested, we’ll be going down to the food bank Monday morning to pack boxes and then over to the women’s and children’s shelter around lunchtime to host a Memorial Day cookout for the residents. We should be finished by three or four o’clock.”