Read The Last Sunday for Free Online Page B

She immediately swung the oven door open and was greeted with another plume of smoke. The macaroni and cheese had bubbled over the sides of the casserole dish and had formed a pile of smoldering goo on the floor of the oven.
    The meal was ruined in spite of her best efforts to please her husband. Just like my marriage, she thought as a tear fell from her eye. Just like my life.
    The death of Pastor Cleaveland had served to reopen the wounds that had taken her years to heal. Feelings for Hezekiah had flooded back, as if she were nineteen again. Over the years, however, she had never stopped hating Samantha, the woman who had treated her so cruelly. The woman she had once admired.
    Â 
    Â 
    A bus filled with Japanese tourists drove onto the sacred grounds of New Testament Cathedral. Once the tourists set foot on the pavement, their digital cameras recorded images of the building and sounds of astonishment escaped their lips. They had traveled halfway around the world to see Disneyland and the new glass cathedral.
    â€œIt is magnificent!” one exclaimed in a distinct Hokkaido-ben dialect. “It is more beautiful than I imagined.”
    An army of groundskeepers, in green overalls emblazoned with the church’s logo of a bejeweled gold crown with a cross running through the center, carefully maneuvered golf carts filled with fresh sod, blossoming perennials, shovels, and other supplies through the throngs of visitors, who had come from around the world to marvel at the building.
    Reverend Percy Pryce stood at the fifth-floor window, looking down on the carnival below. His new office was twice the size of the one he had occupied in the old building. Two walls of intricately woven glass panes offered him unobstructed views of the walkway to the main entrance, a massive satellite dish pointing toward heaven, and the outdoor amphitheater, which could seat five thousand souls.
    Percy found no joy in the beauty sprawled at his feet. Every click of a tourist’s camera, every exclamation of “It’s the most beautiful building in the world,” and every plunge of a groundskeeper’s shovel into the earth only served to remind him of the unthinkable act he and Associate Pastor Kenneth Davis had committed on the eve of Hezekiah’s death.
    The memory played like a horror movie in his mind, over which he had no control. He would never forget that Saturday evening when he and Kenneth had arrived at Lance Savage’s little bungalow on the canals in Venice. It was a small, cluttered house with a permanent dampness in the air.
    Lance had answered the door, wearing faded jogging shorts and a wrinkled T-shirt. “Hello, Kenneth,” the Los Angeles Chronicle reporter had said, greeting them at the door. “You didn’t say you were bringing Reverend Pryce with you. Is he here in an official capacity?”
    â€œNo, he’s not,” Kenneth had said as they entered the bungalow. “And neither am I. We’re not here to speak on behalf of New Testament Cathedral or Hezekiah. We only represent ourselves.”
    â€œHave a seat, gentlemen. Can I get you a beer or something stronger?”
    Percy recalled, as if it were only yesterday, the irritatingly casual tone in which the reporter had spoken to them.
    â€œNo thank you,” Kenneth responded. “We don’t plan on staying long.”
    Lance retrieved the beer he had already begun drinking and sat on a leather sofa next to Percy. Kenneth lowered his body into a chair in front of them and sat a briefcase filled with money on the floor at his feet.
    Kenneth began calmly. “We would appreciate it if whatever we discuss does not leave this room. As far as anyone is concerned, this meeting never took place, and if you ever repeat anything we say, we will deny it.”
    â€œFair enough,” Lance said, setting the beer on a side table.
    â€œFirst of all, we’d like for you to tell us exactly what it is that you know