Read Set Change: A Nina Bannister Mystery (The Nina Bannister Mysteries) for Free Online Page A

red brick church building was erected knew the importance of eating—sat her big bowl of tuna salad.   It was surrounded by countless other bowls, all of them single cells in the vast and complex creature that was fellowship.
    Almost invariably Nina brought chicken salad to such events.
    Every now and then deviled eggs.
    But today—perhaps it was the summer gaiety that had descended on Bay St. Lucy with the luscious warmth and the new faces and the stands along the beach and the corn dog smells—whatever it was, it brought to her a sense of madcap revelry of Lord of Misrule, of Do the Unthinkable—
    ––and so she had made tuna salad and not chicken salad.
    So there!
    The announcements plodded along. She listened earnestly to them until they reached the phase that she had begun to dread terribly, and through which she knew that she must force herself to daydream about other things, any other things.
    This phase was The Joys and Concerns.
    She had, in years past, never really minded Joys and Concerns.
    But that was a time of a younger congregation, when there had been approximately as many of the one as of the other.
    Time had gone on, and the balance had shifted mournfully to the concerns.
    Well, that was all right.
    If one had no concerns, then of what use was a church anyway?
    The problem was that the older women of the congregation had begun to enjoy the   thing too much.
    They no longer simply said:
    “Marge Riddlemeyer’s brother has gone into the hospital for surgery.”
    No, they had learned to become much more specific about the matter, even much more clinical.
    And they spoke more slowly, enjoying the dramatic pauses surrounding various organs and symptoms.
    “As you know—Harold Witherspoon—was diagnosed—last month––”
    Nods from everyone in the congregation, who were all listening to this broadcast as though it were an episode of The Guiding Light .
    “—with heptomal non-recurring empheriarsis, which began producing malignant tumors on the anterior lobe of both his pineal gland and his lower distending femoral artery.”
    Pause, for a second, then collective:
    “Ooooooooo.”
    Nina had ceased to be certain whether the low collective moan was a sincere expression or grief or a show of respect for the anatomical knowledge of the speaker.
    Another hand in the air; and another, and another:
    “I just felt I—had to tell everyone––”
    Thousand one, thousand two—
    “That Herschell Massey’s friend Richard––”
    Thousand one, thousand two—
    “Has had—a recurrence—of the lymphomatic—cytosis—which seems to have invaded—the non-distillary embolic membranous and subcutaneous––”
    “Who,” Nina whispered to Sandra, “is she even talking about?”
    “Herschell’s friend Richard who lives up in Oregon.”
    “Sandra we don’t even know this man!”
    “That doesn’t mean we can’t pray for him.”
    “How can you pray for somebody you don’t even know?   Why don’t we just pray for everybody in the world?”
    “Well, we should do that too!”
    But it wasn’t any good. She couldn’t do it. The symptoms, at least those she could understand, sounded too awful. Besides, every time she heard a disease described so graphically she began to think she had it herself. Pancreatic cancer. That was incurable and killed you in two weeks.
    Her pancreas began to hurt.
    Which side was it on?
    No.   She had to think of something else.
    So she did. She thought of the performance last night.   What a fantastic job they had all done! And Margot, wonderful Margot, bringing down the house—which found itself brought down several times, a fitting ‘adieu’ for the old theater—with her “Climb Every Mountain.” Who knew she could sing like that?
    And as for the finale, the last scene––
    She found her eyes to the far side of the congregation.
    There sat John Giusti.
    “Good job, John,” she found herself whispering.
    Like always.   In John we trust.
    John had been