USA Today Bestselling Author of Medieval Romance

CHAPTER ONE

 

HARRI’S LOG: 

Day of The Coroner’s season finale

29 days until Jelly Belly replenishment

213 days until completion of Bible #8

 

Change is not good. In fact, it’s bad. Especially where First Grace is concerned.

 

I stare at the skinny backside of the repairman who just informed me he’s going to miss our church, which has become something of a second home to him. Though called out to repair whatever caused the organ to groan and grunt through last Sunday’s service, he learned that Pastor Paul is foregoing further repairs and simply—simply!—removing it.

 

To add insult to injury, not only have drums been set up to the left of the pulpit, but there are ugly black amplifiers from which all manner of cords snake across the carpet—the lifeblood of electric guitars.

 

Forcing my clenched hands open, I attempt to gain control of my emotions. But a moment later, my fingernails are once more biting into my palms.

 

So Pastor Paul has done it again. In his determination to catapult First Grace into the twenty-first century, despite our being perfectly content to stroll our way into it, he’s knocked out another wall in the house my father built.

 

I look back at the organ, beneath which the repairman hunkers, and slide my gaze over the beautiful instrument. For the past thirty years, it has provided all the instrumental accompaniment First Grace ever needed. Well, there is the piano, but prior to Pastor Paul’s arrival, it merely supplemented the organ. Now it has come into its own as we transition to a more contemporary form of service.

 

The sharp crack of bone on wood returns my attention to the repairman. Clutching his head, he seats himself on his rear.

 

I rush forward. “Are you all right?”

 

He swears and rocks back and forth. “That hurt!”

 

I freeze. He took our Lord’s name in vain. Right here. In the sanctuary. Unless he was actually crying out to the Lord for help—

 

Oh, Harri! Find out if he’s all right, for goodness’ sake! “You okay, Horace?”

 

“I’m gonna have a lump the size of a cheekful of chewin’ tobacco.”

 

Nice imagery. “Can I get you some ice?”

 

“I’ll be all right.” He lowers his hands. “Sorry about that Jesus thing. It just sort of popped out.”

 

Thing?

 

“Well, if I’m gonna have this thing out of here before Sunday, I’d better get back to work.”

 

Thing again. First Jesus’ name, now our beloved organ. Mere things?

 

Calm down. Remember whose daughter you are…in whose presence you stand.

 

I look up at the stained glass window above the baptistery. Soaring to the ceiling, it depicts Jesus with wide open arms.

 

Remember what He would have you do.

 

But surely He wouldn’t want me to sit by as Pastor Paul shifts the focus from God to growing the size of the congregation. Yes, I know all about reaching the unsaved. But what about the saved—the older folks who have drifted away this past year? The ones who have yet to drift away, but will likely do so once the organ pulls a no-show?

 

I pivot and march down the aisle between the rows of empty pews, and in the gathering area outside the sanctuary, nearly barrel into R. T., head of maintenance.

 

Screwdriver in hand, he jumps out of my way.

 

“Sorry, R. T.”

 

“Uh oh,” he drawls.

 

I snap my head around.

 

His here-she-goes-again expression dissolves, and he shakes his head. “Not me.” Shake, shake, shake. “I had nothin’ to do with them drums and wires.”

 

Perhaps not, but he has to be thrilled. The headphones around his neck often leak horrendous music.

 

“Hmm.” I resume my trek to the offices.

 

Harriet, my namesake and First Grace’s secretary, looks up. “Uh oh,” the sixty-eight-year-old woman warbles.

 

That makes two uh ohs. I halt before her desk. “You know about the organ?”

 

“I do, my girl.”

 

Softening at her affectionate use of my girl, which always pulls me back to that night nearly eight years ago, it takes a moment to return to the matter at hand. “You know about the drums, Harriet?”

 

“I do.”

 

“And the amplifiers and wires for the electric guitars?”

 

“I do.”

 

I spread my hands out atop her desk. “How long have you known?”

 

She picks up a pen and rolls it between her fingers. “Since Monday when Horace told us what the repairs would cost.” She raises an eyebrow. “This time.”

 

“You’ve known since Monday? Four-days-ago Monday?”

 

“That would be the one.”

 

“Why didn’t you say something?”

 

She leans forward and, in a conspiratorial whisper, says, “Orders,” then nods at the door at the end of the hall to her right. “From the top.”

 

If it truly were from the top—as in God—I could accept it, but Pastor Paul is not God. I push off Harriet’s desk. “He told you not to tell me?”

 

She shrugs. “Brother Paul—”

 

Brother! Why can’t he simply be Pastor like my father before him?

 

“—thought it best that we not bother you.” Harriet shoots me a knowing look. “For obvious reasons.”

 

“You’re saying I’m wrong to disagree with the direction he’s taking our church? You, who have been here since the beginning and know what’s at stake?” I draw a breath. “Despite his vision, First Grace will never be a fill-er-up, one-stop shopping, all-you-can-eat church. This church has roots, is steeped in tradition—”

 

Harriet holds up a hand, the same which used to smack my little heinie when I got out of control in her preschool Sunday school class. “You know what happens to a tea bag that’s steeped too long? Bitter. And so murky one can hardly see to the bottom of one’s cup.”

 

I scoff. “First Grace is not a cup of tea. It’s—”

 

“Oh, grow down, Harri.”

 

I’ve heard it before—grow down as opposed to grow up—and I don’t like it any better than the other times she has pointed out that I need to lighten up, act more my twenty-seven years of age, and enjoy life. But I enjoyed it enough during my rebel years, as she well knows. “Why are you siding with Pastor Paul?”

 

“Done told you, it’s not a matter of siding with anyone. It’s a matter of doing what’s right for the glory of God and this church. Were your mother and father here, I believe they’d concur.”

 

But they’re not here. Following Dad’s retirement a year ago, he and Mom went on an extended mission trip to India. As for whether or not they’d concur, I don’t know. Though that first year Dad worked alongside Pastor Paul to lay the groundwork for many of the changes undertaken these past twelve months, I can’t believe my father would approve of chucking the organ. Yes, it was being phased out, but there’s nothing phased about this. And what about the shift from weekly to monthly communion? And plans to install a projection screen at the feet of our stained glass Jesus?

 

Harriet cups her leathery chin and taps the pen on her desk. “I don’t suppose it would do any good to advise you to sleep on this?”

 

“None!”

 

Her tapping ceases and scrawny eyebrows arch.

 

R-E-S-P-E-C-T, Harri! With a sigh, I return my hands to the desktop and sink into my shoulders. “I don’t mean to be disrespectful. It’s just that…”

 

She covers my left hand with a brown, heavily-veined one. “I know, but at times like these, remember that the choice of First Grace’s new pastor wasn’t a matter your father took lightly—that it was he who presented Brother Paul as his replacement.”

 

I’m not likely to forget. I was as sold on him as my father and the committee that approved him, among its members the ever-popular Stephano Fox.

 

Stephano. Angst momentarily supplanted as the man’s name bounces through my gray matter, I sigh. Though it has been three years since he took on the position of Administrative Pastor, and our relationship is platonic, I can’t help but moon over him. He is, after all, good-looking, not to mention generous. In fact, the only reason First Grace can afford him is because he volunteers his time. Having sold off a business years earlier, the self-made Stephano is among the most eligible bachelors in Franklin, Tennessee.

 

“Harri?”

 

Yanked back from the edge of Stephano, I blink.

 

Harriet rolls her eyes. “I said we’d do well to honor your father’s choice and let God work through Brother

Paul.”

 

A small voice tells me she’s right, that while I may not agree with Pastor Paul’s changes, I need to be careful not to become the stumbling block for others that I’m becoming for myself. But that other voice is louder—the one that fears change, the one that reminds me of where I went wrong all those years ago when it was I who determined First Grace was outdated, the one that conjures images of the path I fell hard upon when I walked away from my church, my family, and God.

 

“What about Stephano? What does he say about all this?”

 

“That we need to follow Brother Paul’s lead.”

 

I grind my teeth. As much as I respect Stephano for smoothly paving my father’s last two years at First Grace with his boundless energy and organizational skills, I question him of late. Though he’s an advocate of change, previously he always laid out his ideas for my father’s and the board’s approval before moving on them. Then Pastor Paul took over, and the outspoken Stephano is suddenly content to let the other man do all the driving—even when it looks as if the car’s heading toward a barrier that’s the only thing between the road and a sheer cliff.

 

I hear a whimper, and not until Harriet squeezes my hand do I realize it came from me.

 

“It’ll work out. You’ll see.” She settles back in her chair. “This is, after all, the direction First Grace was heading.”

 

I can’t help myself. “Heading?! How did we go from heading to arriving? What happened to the gradual transition we were promised?”

 

Harriet narrows her gaze. “We’ve been in transition for over a year. And, yes, we were several months out from introducing drums and guitars, but First Grace can’t keep throwing good money at that tired old organ. You know that.”

 

I cross my arms over my chest. “So it’s out with the organ and in with the drums and guitars.”

 

She rocks her head back and forth. “And Brother Paul has been talking to one of our young ladies who plays one of those electric things.”

 

Thing again, but this time it fits.

 

“Er, keyboard.” She sighs. “That’s it, keyboard.”

 

I drop my arms to my sides. “What about Bea? Has she been told that her organ’s being taken away?”

 

She glances at her watch. “Brother Paul is meeting with her this afternoon.”

 

“So just like that? Thank you for your twenty-five years of service, but we don’t need you anymore?”

 

Harriet scoffs. “She’s sixty-nine years old, a year older than me. Well past time she retired those arthritic joints of hers.” She flexes her own.

 

“Bea’s not going to like it.”

 

“She’ll adjust.”

 

“Are we talking about the Beatrice Dawson who picketed the church six years ago when there was talk of replacing her organ with a piano?” Of course, under the direction of my father, a compromise was reached whereby the piano supplemented the organ. “Believe me, that Bea is not going to be happy. In fact, she might start circulating a petition—”

 

“If you rile her, she will.” Harriet wags a finger. “As a staff member of First Grace, it’s your duty to support the leadership.”

 

How I long to remind her that not only am I part of that leadership—director of women’s ministry—but I was left out of the decision to push up the time table for the introduction of contemporary music. However, Harriet’s right. She’s always right. Even when she’s wrong.

 

I heave a sigh. “I know. I just can’t believe—”

 

The door opens and Pastor Paul lurches at the sight of me. “Am I interrupting something?”

 

I turn to him. “Actually, I’m here to see you.”

 

He gives Harriet a why-didn’t-you-warn-me-so-I-could-slip-out-the-back-door look.

 

Not that I’m offended; he’s as frustrated with me as I am with him. Though we got along well during his first year while my father acquainted him with the workings of the church, shortly before Dad handed over the reins, Pastor Paul and I had a disagreement, the first of several.

 

I advance on him. “It won’t take but a few minutes.”

 

“Actually, I’m busy—”

 

“Five at the most.”

 

He glances over his shoulder, and when he looks back, there’s a determined glint in his eyes.

 

I halt before him. “It’s about the drums. And guitars. And Bea’s organ.”

 

“Yes?”

 

“It was agreed that First Grace would gradually transition to contemporary worship.”

 

“Yes.”

 

“And now, suddenly, it’s goodbye organ, hello rock and roll.”

 

“Hmm.”

 

“First Grace needs more time to adjust.”

 

“Oh?”

 

“Granted, the growing number of young families are receptive to contemporary worship, but what about the older members who have been here since the beginning and stayed because they were fed God’s Word in a way that spoke to their hearts?”

 

“Hmm.”

 

Realizing that monosyllabic responses are all I’ve managed to pull from him, I narrow my lids. “Is that all you can say—yes, hmm, oh? Aren’t you going to defend your decision to give tradition a kick in the pants?”

 

“Now’s not the time. As I said, I’m busy.”

 

“Uh oh,” Harriet once more mutters.

 

I draw myself up to my full five foot nine. “Until now I’ve kept my mouth shut.” Well, not exactly, but it could have been worse. “But I can’t continue to stand by while you dismantle everything my father worked hard to achieve at First Grace.”

 

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

 

“Furthermore—”

 

Movement at his back makes me peer past him.

 

Accommodatingly, Pastor Paul steps aside to allow an unobstructed view into his office. And there, standing before his desk, is a thirtyish man with curly light brown hair and dark eyes that travel down me. Only to laugh at me on the return trip.

 

Oh no. Amazing how an unexpected audience opens one’s eyes to one’s behavior. The only good is that he’s unrecognizable, so not one of our members.

 

In the next instant, my mortification yields to indignation. “You should have told me you had a visitor.” I swing away.

 

As I make tracks past Harriet’s desk, she gives a sorrowful shake of her head.

 

I know. I’ve blown it. Just had to let the rebel rear her head. And it hurts to acknowledge that despite the emergence of the new me, I’m not completely free of the old. Though my concerns are justified, I don’t much like the me I let out of her cage.

 

You can take ’em outta the bar, a voice from my past rasps between my ears, but you can’t take the bar outta them. It’s in their blood.

 

I hate that voice. Grateful to reach the cover of the corridor, I turn down it. However, no sooner am I out of sight than I catch Pastor Paul’s words.

 

“That, my friend, is Harri. And she’s all yours.”

 

Hold up! I nearly trip over my feet. I’m all whose? That man whose eyes laughed at me as if I were the silliest woman he’s ever seen?

 

Then comes his response. “My father always said to beware of redheads.”

 

Ah! I am not a redhead. My hair’s auburn. Not red! I start to turn back.

 

No, Harri. If you haven’t already lost your job, you will. And you need this job. Think: Gloria’s Morning Café. Think: independence. Think: security. Just a bit longer, and you’ll have enough money to realize your dream.

 

Forcing my feet forward, I put distance between myself and Pastor Paul and that man.

 

 

* * *

 

“You’re fired.”

 

Deep breath. “Oh, yeah? That’s what you think, Mr. High and Mighty.”

 

Steely gaze. “You can go easy or you can go hard. Regardless, you’re gone.”

 

Clenched hands. “This isn’t over.”

 

The camera pulls back to fit both characters into the scene, facing each other across a desk. Normally, I’d side with Susan’s boss who’s always overlooking his junior coroner’s shortcomings, but considering my present circumstances, I feel sorry for Susan.

 

So she’s hot-tempered… 

 

The poor woman’s under a lot of pressure.

 

So she has difficulty dealing with authority figures…

 

She always bucks up in the end.

 

So she made a mistake that cost someone his life…

 

Come on, that was no corpse. It was an actor!

 

Kevin reaches a hand across the desk. “Goodbye, Susan.”

 

My own hand hovers over a club-sized container of Jelly Bellys, and I mutter, “That’s an olive branch.” Not to mention one good-looking hand, attached to one good-looking bod, topped by one good-looking face. “Give it a shake.”

 

She does shake—her head. “Like it or not, I’ll be back.”

 

“Ohhh,” I groan. “Too late.”

 

Susan walks out and the camera returns to Kevin who lowers to his chair and swivels around to stare at the overcast sky out his window. “So long, Susan.”

 

And that’s it for this season. Four months of re-runs until I find out how this all pans out. Summer really isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

 

I sink into my recliner and reflect on Susan’s behavior and how disappointed I am with her. Of course, mustn’t forget she’s hurting, nor that she feels betrayed. On top of it, she’s dealing with guilt over the death of Kevin’s best friend and the knowledge that had she kept her mouth shut, he’d still be alive. It has got to be tearing her apart. Well, not truly tearing her apart since she is fictional. As opposed to Harriet—Harri—Bissett who is living, breathing, flesh and blood. And whose days at First Grace are surely numbered.

 

Pushing the remote’s Off button, I close my eyes to savor the night breeze sifted by the screen door, but it’s no use. My middle and index fingers start to twitch, my lips purse, and a vague memory of nicotine wafts across my senses.

 

Jelly Belly time. I reach into the container, scoop up a dozen beans, and pop them in my mouth. Though I’m usually more discerning about how I mix the flavors (there’s an art to it), tonight I don’t care. Tonight they’re comfort food as opposed to pleasure food. Something to take my mind off the phone that has yet to ring its death knell.

 

I look at where it perches on a side table. I know it will eventually ring, and I’m not going to like what the person on the other end has to say,  so I want it over with. No, my mistake isn’t as serious as Susan’s, but there will be consequences.

 

Once I returned home to First Grace’s senior mobile home park—yeah, senior—and prayed through the encounter with Pastor Paul, I accepted I was wrong. I shouldn’t have confronted him as I did.

 

I sigh. I believe a leopard can change its spots (in my case, tattoos), but it takes a miracle. Or expensive laser surgery. Unfortunately, God’s making me take the long way around. No blinding light on the road to Damascus for Harriet Bisset. Just a battered conscience and a sense of impending doom.

 

After tossing back another dozen Jelly Bellys, my anxiety eases as I taste sizzling cinnamon…green apple…margarita (virgin, of course)…buttered popcorn…and is that tutti-fruitti? Too late. They’re all jelling into one sweet-sour-spicy glob.

 

Then comes the death knell. I glance at the phone as it takes a breath between rings. Though I refuse to waste money on caller ID, I know it’s him.

 

Get it over with.

 

The second death knell.

 

Pick it up!

 

I reach and, as I bolster myself with a deep breath, remember my mouthful.

 

The third death knell.

 

I look around, but the only thing at hand is…my hand. Spitting the glob into it, I grab the receiver.

 

“Hello!”

 

“Harri, it’s Harriet.”

 

Harri/Harriet always glitches me, and tonight is no exception. Actually, it’s worse, as I was expecting him. As the remains of Jelly Belly juice trickle down my throat, I turn my head aside to cough.

 

“You all right, Harri?”

 

“Yep. What’s up?”

 

“Brother Paul.”

 

Then he asked Harriet to—? No. As disillusioned as I am with him, canning me is not something he’d have our church secretary do. And certainly not over the phone. “What is it, Harriet?”

 

“He’s been visiting some of us fogies this evening and asked me to tell you that he’ll stop by to chat with you on his way out of the park.”

 

Foul words slip to the edge of my tongue. Just the edge. Sorry about that, Lord. And that. Oh, that was a really bad one. Sorry.

 

“Harri?”

 

I gape at the mess in my hand. “It’s nine p.m.!”

 

“Is it? Oh, you’re right. Well, just a quick chat, and I’ll be a couple minutes behind him. Thought I’d bring you a batch of my famous biscuits.”

 

I jump out of my recliner. “Harriet, I’m wearing slippers, lounge pants, and a T-shirt.” New, out-of-the-box house slippers with pink roses (last year’s birthday present from Mom). Pilled flannel pants with a motorcycle insignia (a relic from my rebel days). A Got Jesus? T-shirt that hasn’t been white in ages (the short sleeves of which barely conceal my armband tattoo).

 

“Well,” Harriet says, “throw a robe over it.”

 

“I have to change!”

 

“But, Harri, he and—”

 

“Stall him!” I drop the handset in its base and grab the Jelly Belly container. Four strides take me past the screen door to the kitchen, and two more to the sink, where I drop the container on the counter and turn on the taps. One good shake and the sticky glob slops from my hand to the drain.

 

Can’t believe I did that to Jelly Belly, which is as close to a friend as something edible can come, considering the little beans and lots of prayer helped me kick the nicotine habit years ago. Were there a Jelly Belly fan club, I’d ban me for life.

 

The stainless steel soup pot in the drain rack catching my eye, I lean forward and peer at my distorted reflection. Not only is my auburn hair wisping all over the place, but mascara is smudged beneath my eyes, and my smattering of freckles stand out more than usual against pale skin. Hoping Harriet can stall Pastor Paul, as her mobile home is a mere two-minute walk away, I soap and rinse.

 

Jeans and a light sweater, I determine as I tighten the taps, but then a knock sounds. I swing around, and as I light on Pastor Paul’s mesh-shadowed face on the other side of the screen door, my arm connects with something.

 

Oh no! All the colors of the rainbow—and then some—soar past me. Little bean-shaped colors. Melt-in-

your-mouth colors. Very expensive colors. And with a sound akin to hail, they hit the linoleum.

 

Reflexively, I step forward. And glimpse surprise on Pastor Paul’s face as the beans beneath my slippers sweep me off my feet.

 

“Harri!” he shouts.

 

I can’t say what hurts more: the places where my body hit as I went down, the embarrassment, or that I’m lying among fourteen dollars’ worth of Jelly Bellys that were supposed to last me all month.

 

Pastor Paul is suddenly stooping next to me, gripping my shoulder. “Are you all right?”

 

I squeeze my lids tighter. “No. Not all right.”

 

“Is anything broken?”

 

Does my heart count? After all, it took a half hour to pick out the flavors that no amount of creative mixing can make palatable: licorice, mango, cappuccino—

 

“Would you like me to call an ambulance?”

 

“No, I—”

 

Hold up! That wasn’t Pastor Paul. That voice came from somewhere to my right and, instead of concern, reflected amusement.

 

Not that man! Not here. In my kitchen. With me flat on my back amid colorful little beans that surely confirm I’m the silliest woman he’s ever met. As the heat in my face deepens, I decide embarrassment does hurt more than the loss of Jelly Bellys. Definitely embarrassment.