Safe from Harm (9781101619629) by Evans Stephanie Jaye

Author:Evans, Stephanie Jaye
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin USA
Published: 2013-01-24T05:00:00+00:00

Fourteen

Sunday morning, Lizabeth Pickersley-Smythe and Toby and Tanner came to church, second service. She looked all noble and suffering, but—and I know this is cynical and I know cynicism is an unattractive quality, especially in a minister—I felt like it was all show. Liz was dressed perfectly in a dark-gray tailored skirt and sweater, her hair just so, and those twins in matching navy wool shorts with jackets. It was all very president’s-grieving-widow, if you know what I mean. She was thronged with sympathizers, and she couldn’t have been more gracious. It felt . . . staged.

I tried to put a positive spin on Liz being at church. I thought to myself, Well, this means that Mark can have some fresh air, and a shower and change, and he can restock his fridge and still be safely bolted back in before Liz gets home. And then I thought what it must be like for a man to have to hide away in his own home. And then I thought that it wasn’t his home. And that was so depressing.

From: Walker Wells

To: Merrie Wells

Subject: Baby Bear and pugs

Hey, sweet Merrie—I attached a picture of Baby Bear with Rebecca’s pugs. We’re watching them this weekend. Rebecca picks them up at two. I don’t know if Baby Bear will be glad or sad when they’re gone.

From: Merrie Wells

To: Walker Wells

Subject: Re: Baby Bear and pugs

Ohhhhhh! I want a pug for my birthday!!!

How’s Jo? Back in her room yet? You’re going to have to sell the house, Dad.

• • •

There was a knock on the door at eight thirty Sunday evening.

Our house was winding down. Rebecca had come to collect her dogs, the kitchen was clean, and Jo was doing homework.

The knock was unexpected, and with that awful weekend behind us, alarming. But it was Salihah Fincher at the door, and unless you are the Devil himself, she is not an alarming sight. What Salihah is, is a tiny warrior of God. I don’t know what else to call her. She’s my mom’s age, and about five feet nothing, not including the three inches for the luxuriant bouffant of rich, black hair that crowns her head, and another two inches for the kitten heels she wears. Her features are distinctively Egyptian, her birthland—straight off an Egyptian scroll. And her voice, still accented after a half century in the United States, is high and sweet and girlish.

Salihah had met her American husband, Blake Fincher, some fifty-five years ago, when she was a nursing student in Cairo and he was a young engineer working for one of the oil companies. That wasn’t a happy time in Egypt—Wikipedia can tell you about the Sinai crisis better than I can. At one point, the nursing college was being peppered with sniper fire. That meant no one could safely leave the hospital wing, a real problem since the morgue was in the building next door, and the Egyptians had a particular horror of being under the same roof as a dead body.

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