“Come on,” she said, and folded my arm into hers like she'd been doing it for years. “There are people you haven't met yet and I intend to fix that.”
Judah's hand had lingered on my back for exactly half a minute before I was swept away.
The next hour was an education.
Sister Ruth introduced me to eleven people in forty minutes, and every single introduction had a certain undertone to it. Notthis is Mercy, she works at the food bank.That would have been simple. That would have been the job posting, which is what I was. Instead, it was:this is Mercy,with a specific weight on the word, a pause after it, and then everyone who heard it looked at me. Like they knew something Ididn’t.
I’d forgotten small towns did this.
Mrs. Tureaud, who was sixty-something and had the posture that was actively crumbling, held my hands and said: “A pastor needs someone steady. Someone who understands the work.”
“I'm the administrative coordinator,” I told her, trying not to let my face show my true thoughts and feelings about it.
“Of course you are,” she said, warm as syrup, and patted my hands.
Mrs. Fontenot — the wife of the late Curtis Fontenot I'd heard mentioned once in passing — looked me up and down and said:“You're good with the congregation already. I can tell. Some women take to it naturally.”
“I'm just doing my job,” I tried again.
“Mmhm,” she said.
I didn’t understand it.
The third time it happened I stopped correcting people and just smiled, because the corrections weren't landing and smiling required less energy.
Darlene found me near the sweet tea table, trying to —poorly —suppress her amusement.
“They're not subtle,” I said.
“They're not trying to be.” She handed me a cup. “In this town, subtle is how you miss your window.” She said it without any particular judgment — just information, the way she gave most information. “How are you holding up?”
“I've been introduced as a pastoral asset four times.”
Darlene's mouth curved. “That's actually restrained, for Ruth.”
The bayou sat at the edge of everything, patient and dark, the water gone still in the heat. You could see it from the tables if you looked past the children running through the fireflies — a flat black gleam between the cypress trees, the occasional sound of something moving in the reeds.
I was watching it, not for any reason, just because it was there and it was beautiful — like most beautiful things in Louisiana were. Complicated, a little threatening, more alive than felt entirely comfortable, andhot. And then I noticed the boat.
It was tied at the far dock, half-hidden by the cypress — flat-bottomed, used for the shallow runs through the back channels. Two men I didn't recognize were talking to a man I did: Renard, who came to Sunday service and ran some kind of transport business. He had shaken my hand at the fundraiser. Theconversation was low, efficient. Not the kind of talking men did at a fish fry. Certainly not aboutfish.
Then someone put a plate in my hands.
“You haven't eaten anything,” said a voice at my shoulder. I turned and it was Dice — crop top, cuffed jeans, sleeve tattoos vivid in the string light, looking as much like a church fish fry as a lit match looked like a candle. She tilted her head toward the spread. “Darlene's watching you.”
“How did you end up here?” I asked.
“Darlene invited me. She does every year.” Dice took a piece of cornbread off my plate without asking. “Don't read into it. She invites the whole town.”
I looked back toward the dock. The men were gone. The boat was still there, or another boat was. I couldn’t tell anymore.
“You good?” Dice asked.
“Yeah,” I said. “Just looking at the water.”
She looked at me. The sharp green eyes did something complicated. “Uh huh,” she said, which was nothing like themmhmof the congregation women and everything like it at the same time — the same shape, different species.
“Can I ask you something?” I said.
