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yourself,” Ginger muttered as she crossed her arms over her chest.
    I leaned over to give her wrinkled cheek a kiss. “Aw, Ginger, I always do.”

    Sunday dawned quicker than I had hoped. Having run out of “respectable” dresses, I had surrendered to Ginger’s safety pin even if I was afraid she was going to accidentally stab me in the boob as she closed the gap that showed my cleavage. Far better to risk a prick than to wear one of her shawls from the fifties.
    We rode in silence to the church. She insisted on driving again. I didn’t want to admit I was nervous, and she, blessedly, didn’t feel the need to ask me. She patted my hand before we got out of the car. “You’re going to do fine, Beulah. Just fine.”
    It sounded like she was trying to convince herself.
    I took my seat on the first pew, and Luke nodded at me before making his rounds. County Line only ran six pews deep so it didn’t take him long to shake palsied hands and kiss wrinkled cheeks. Most everyone in the place was over the age of sixty.
    At fifteen till, I took my spot at the piano in the choir loft. I looked over for Ms. Lola, but she wasn’t playing the organ as she always had with Ginger. Instead, she sat on the second row with her arms crossed to indicate she wasn’t joining me in the choir loft any time soon. I looked at Luke, and he nodded.
    County Line didn’t usually have a formal choir, so I waited for the spirit to move the usual suspects to come forward and climb the steps to join me in the loft. No one came. I played another hymn just to be on the safe side and realized the church piano was more out of tune than the one at The Fountain. As warped notes bounced off the walls, I reminded myself to get John the Baptist to tune them both as soon as he got back from Guatemala.
    Playing the music as written, I ignored the itch to embellish, the desire to cover up the stark humanity of simple out-of-tune notes. As suspected, the congregation mumbled through the first song. I didn’t hear Lottie Miller’s distinctive rough-hewn soprano, so I chanced a glance over my shoulder. She sat beside her twin sister, Lola, with her arms also crossed and lips firmly closed. I told myself I didn’t care what Ms. Lola and Ms. Lottie did, but my stomach flipped over in betrayal.
    I narrowly resisted a nervous tic as I played a spiritual without being able to jazz it up. Luke looked back at me as we finished the song with a whimper, definitely not a bang. I glared at him for the injustice done to “Soon and Very Soon.” He arched an eyebrow that said, “My church, my rules.”
    I eased into one of the choir seats next to the piano, immediately realizing the mistake of not going back downstairs to join everyone else. The eyes of the sparse congregation, some curious and some hostile, bore through me, so I studied the perfect crown on the back of Luke’s head. He read that judge-not-lest-ye-be-judged passage, and I rolled my eyes. Please. Obviously, I was going to have to think of something, anything, other than what he was saying.
    From my vantage point, I couldn’t see his feet. Was he even wearing pants? What did he wear under those robes? I had a vision of him taking off his robe to reveal only a faux shirt collar and the old-fashioned sock garters and black socks with his dress shoes. Of course, he had to wear tighty whities. How could anyone as obsessed with rules and propriety not wear briefs?
    I smothered a snicker into a cough, but he didn’t miss a beat. Looking for something else to keep my mind off what Luke was saying, I almost reached for a Bible to thumb through it.
    Yeah, no.
    Next week I’d sneak a couple of magazines up to the choir loft. Maybe I’d see if I could read about Cosmopolitan ’s new sex positions while holding a properly pious look on my face.
    â€œWhen my wife left me, it was easy to blame her.”
    I sat up straighter.