His hand came to rest against my spine, between my shoulder blades — one touch, nothing more. He said something low to Billy that I didn't catch; Billy laughed. I felt like I had acquired a role of someone who I was not. I stood between them in the Louisiana dark with the fireflies coming up out of the grass and the string lights throwing gold across everything, and thought about all those women who had already proclaimed me as something belonging tothe pastor.
“Sister Ruth told me,” I said carefully, “that a pastor needs someone steady.” I don’t know why I said it out loud. Maybe because that thought didn’t quite sit all that well with me.
Judah was quiet for a moment. Then, like it mattered very little in the grand scheme of cosmic things, he declared: “She’s not wrong.”
“She said it directly to my face. Staring at me,” I told him.
“Ruth is not a woman who traffics in implication.”
“Neither are any of the others.” I looked up at him.
Something moved in his expression that wasn't quite amusement and wasn't quite something else — a middle thing, warm at the middle, still microwaveable at the edges.
“Is that so,” he said.
“You could correct them,” I said. “If you wanted.”
He looked at me. “I could,” he said.
“But hewon’t,” Billy said, sipping from a flask. “You wanna know why?”
Judah shot him a look thatscreamed“careful.”
Billy ignored it. “Because he’d already imagined ten different ways of takingthatparticular dress off you,” he said, licking his fingers. “And about a hundred more of why heshould.”
I looked up at Judah’s face and saw the barely suppressed smirk.
Billy looked at me with the expression ofI told you, and proceeded to the table with the potato salad.
Mrs. Arceneaux caught me on my way back from the table — and took my free hand in both of hers with the grip of someone who had decided this conversation was happening regardless of my feelings about it. They did that here a lot, I noticed.
“You know,” she said, and her voice suddenly grew very serious, “I knew his mother.”
“Did you,” I said, not quite sure where this setup was going to lead us.
“Good woman. Hard life.” She patted my hand. “She would have liked you.”
I didn't know what to do with that so I said, “That's kind of you to say,” which was what you said when someone handed you something you didn’t rightly understand.
“He needs someone who isn't afraid of him,” she said. Matter-of-fact, no softening. “Most women are. Can't blame them.” Shetilted her head and looked at me with those sharp eyes. “You're not, are you.”
It wasn't quite a question.
I thought about the boat that had been there and then wasn't. The PI with his cigarettes and hisfresh eyes.I thought about the kitchen wall and his hands at my ribs and the way he'd looked at me across a fundraiser room with an expression I still hadn't fully decoded.
“No more than I am of God,” I said.
Mrs. Arceneaux smiled.
“Good,” she said. “Lord appreciates honesty.”
She let go of my hand and moved back into the party. Which would’ve been all fine and well, if I had come to St. Francisville with the intention of becoming a pastor’s wife. But I had come here with an intention to escape the cage of a clergyman, not fall into the arms of another one.I stood with my sweet tea and my plate and the dark water at the edge of my vision and thought about all of it.
The fireflies rose in the dark over the bayou.
I ate my food, and realized I hadn’t seen a single gator.
Billy had two flasks and a complete lack of mercy, which meant by nine-thirty my cup was heavy with liquor that tasted like a sweet, liquid lie. It didn't burn; it simply slid down my throat and started dismantling my common sense from the inside out. The string lights above the grass weren't just glowinganymore — they were pulsing, vibrating in time with the zydeco accordion that had found its way into my bones.
