She looked at him blankly, saying nothing. He was embarrassed by the obviousness of his excuse and wanted to look away, but he forced himself to meet her gaze. They'd been playing this game for a long time. When they'd first gotten married, he'd told her that he wasn't a churchgoer, but she'd said that if he really loved her he'd go with her. She said that sometimes she did things she didn't want to do because he wanted to do them, and that he should do the same for her. So he'd gone. Then Anna had come along, and they'd both agreed that it would be good for the child to go to church. But gradually, over the years, he'd begun worming out of his Sunday morning duties, pleading work, fatigue, sickness. He'd started going every other week, but when the pattern had become too obvious he'd varied it, attending two weeks and missing the next, attending one week and missing the next two.
These days, he hardly ever went to church at all.
It had nothing to do with religion, really. It was church itself. He just couldn't help feeling that he was wasting his Sunday mornings by going to services. Sunday mornings were for eating waffles and lying around, reading the
Republic and listening to music. Not sermons.
Not the Pastor Clan Wheeler. '
That was a big part of his refusal this morning. Now that she was Wheeler's secretary, Corrie felt obligated to attend his services It was not an obligation he shared. The Methodist church had been bad enough, but testicle hooks could not drag him to one of Wheeler's sermons. He could think of nothing worse than spending his only real day off sitting on an uncomfortable bench with a bunch of self-righteous strangers listening to a hellfire and-brim stoner tell him that he was damned for eternity. He would rather stay home and work.
'Come with us, Daddy,' Anna pleaded. 'You haven't to church with us for a long time.' gone
'That's okay. He has more important things to do.' Corrie took Anna's hand to lead her from the room.
He did not dignify that dig with a response, but smiled and blew Anna a kiss. 'Don't worry, sweetie. I'll be here when you get back. And if I finish my article in time, we'll go out for ice cream.' - : : ': :
'Yeah! Ice cream!'
Corrie glared at him. 'Come on,' she said. 'We'll be late.'
He watched the two of them walk out of the room, Anna bouncing and happy, Gorrie determinedly flat footed and grim. What the hell was wrong with him? He knew Corrie hated it when he wasted money taking Anna out for ice cream: Why had he so purposefully and deliberately baited her? He sighed, staring blankly at the screen. He wasn't sure.
They'd had a right last night, a fairly big one, but when they'd awakened this morning the wounds seemed to have healed. They'd kissed, almost made love, probably would have had Anna not been awake already.
But something had gone wrong during breakfast, something had changed, shifted, something he could not quite put his finger on. He had sunk deeper into the words of the Republids sports section, Corrie had prepared the food in silence, and the two of them had spoken only to Anna, who had continued to chatter away, blissfully unaware of the change in atmosphere.
The front door slammed shut. He saw twin movements of white, big and little, on the porch.
Corrie did look good in her Sunday dress, he had to admit. He felt a twinge of regret that he had not told her so. In the old days, if he'd thought what he was thinking now, he would have acted on it, running outside, dragging her back into the house, throwing her over the back of the couch, flipping up her dress, pulling down her panties, and taking her from behind.
And she would have let him.
But now... :
Now things were different.
He watched through the window as Corrie led Anna across the driveway to her car.
When had it become her car? And his truck? When had they started assigning individual ownership rights to their joint property? Or had they always done so? He couldn't remember.
He watched his wife and daughter get in the car, close their doors, buckle up, and drive away. Anna waved at him as they left. Corrie did not even look in his direction.
He hadn't really lied to Corrie. He did have a lot of work to do. She knew that. He had to coordinate her columns as well as do his usual work. And there'd been a lot of news the past few weeks. He wished she would be a little more sympathetic.
The girl from his journalism class was supposed to come in tomorrow, and that would definitely help out the production side of the paper--she seemed bright, and he had no doubt that she would quickly pick up the technical aspects of typesetting and paste up---but he did not yet know if she could write. When she'd called on Friday, he'd asked her to bring in a writing sample, and she'd said she would try to dig something up, but it sounded to him as though whatever writing experience she'd had had been in high school.
Rich picked up his notepad from the top of the desk and glanced at the notes he'd jotted down. The top story was going to be Mike Vigil. The truck driver was still missing, although his rig had been found on the highway some forty miles out of Casa Grande. Rich just needed to call the DPS for a current status report, and then tap Robert for a few local police quotes.
Robert, he knew, was pissed at him. Although his brother had never before attempted to interfere with the content of the paper, he hadn't wanted Rich to run the story on the dead mice and had actually asked him to pull it. Rich had almost caved in on this one. With all of the vampire talk, he, too, was afraid of starting a panic, and he could definitely see the issue from his brother's point of view. But he hadn't bought the argument that the story would jeopardize the investigation into Manuel Torres's death, and he'd finally decided that it was interesting and offbeat enough to be newsworthy. He'd compromised, placing the article on the second page and treating it as a feature, but Robert still hadn't liked it.
Hell, Rich thought, it was a good story. He stood by his decision to run it. If the paper subscribed to one of the wire services, it probably would're been picked up by now. Besides, despite what Robert had predicted, there'd been no panicmalthough the tourist value of the arroyo had gone up considerably since publication of the article. For the past two days, small groups of people, mostly teenagers, had made pilgrimages to the site and had been combing the surrounding area trying to find their own mysteriously murdered animals.
Rich hadn't spoken to his brother since the paper had come out, had thought it best to wait and let Robert call him first. Now he wondered if he should call Robert at home for a quote, or call him later in the day at the sta He wondered if his brother would give a quote at all.
He put down the notepad and picked up his empty coffee cup, heading into the kitchen for a refill. The front of the house still smelled of breakfast: syrup and peanut butter, buttermilk waffles and jam. Corrie had washed, dried, and put away the dishes, but the waffle iron sat cooling on the counter, drying drips of batter decorating its lower half.
He put the waffle iron in the cupboard beneath the sink and poured himself the last cup of coffee. The house was quiet, the only sounds his own, and for a second he wished he'd accompanied Corrie and Anna to church. Then he reminded himself that he would have had to listen to Wheeler rant for an hour and was instantly reassured that he'd made the right decision.
He walked into the living room, turned on the stereo, put an old Jethro Tun album on the turntable, and went into the bedroom to call Robert.. :
The church was filled, the street outside lined with cars and trucks, the pews inside, nearly all taken. Corrie stood in the entrance, holding tightly to Anna's hand, looking for a place to sit. She was surprised by the size of the congregation. She had not realized that the Church of the Holy Trinity was so popular. She'd come here today because she worked for the church and thought it part of her responsibilities to attend Sunday services. In the back of her mind, she'd also half-thought that she would be doing Pastor Wheeler a favor.
He seemed so... awkward with people, so standoffish, that she found it hard to believe that he had much of a following. It was a shock to discover that there were more people at this single early service than there had been at all the combined services at the Methodist church.
No wonder Wheeler wanted to expand the building. She thought of her old church, of Pastor Franklin giving his benign sermon in his benign way to a half-empty chapel, and she immediately felt guilty. Maybe she should explain to Pastor Franklin why she was now attending the Church of the Holy Trinity. She did not know the pastor well, had never spoken to him on a one-to-one basis except at the obligatory palm-pressing at the end of each service, but he'd always seemed to her to be a kind, gentle, and rather fragile old man, and she felt the need to let
