The Undoing of Saint Silvanus by Beth Moore

Author:Beth Moore [Moore, Beth]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: FICTION / Christian / General, Fiction / Contemporary Women
Publisher: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.
Published: 2016-09-20T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 34

JILLIAN CHANGED HER CLOTHES in the cramped stall of the ladies’ room at Café Beignet with tears dripping from the end of her nose. The second she’d arrived, a coworker had asked why she was so dressed up, making Jillian feel twice the fool. She set her dark-blue top on the small metal shelf and, in the twisting and turning of putting on her uniform, knocked it into the toilet bowl.

“You’ve gotta be kidding.” She stuffed the dripping-wet shirt into the plastic bag with her toiletries, put on her work shoes, stashed her things in a corner of the kitchen, and clocked in. Her hands were shaking so badly that her first two orders were practically illegible. A woman at the second table who couldn’t have passed a sobriety test if her life depended on it asked Jillian if anything was wrong. That was it. Jillian went straight to the night manager and begged for the evening off.

“Why? You just got here. You sick?” the manager asked.

“Yes.” Jillian should have left it at that but she didn’t. “The truth is, I’m so upset about something that I’m sick. My stomach feels awful and my head is killing me.” Her voice broke.

At first the manager looked perturbed, but her face softened somewhat when tears pooled in Jillian’s eyes. “You have the flu?”

“No. I just feel sick all over.”

“I think you have the flu. Go. Take your germs out of here. You think I can afford to get sick? Shoo.” Jillian knew this was the woman’s way of showing her mercy. She’d be less likely to get fired for leaving sick than upset.

Jillian started down the sidewalk with only one place to go. She had enough cash on her for a week in a cheap motel but she didn’t know how long she’d need to make the money last. The dollars would stretch further if she could stay at Stella’s. More than anything, Jillian needed to buy some time until she could bring herself to do the inevitable: call her mother for help. The one time she’d risked using her phone to call Jade, her usual live-and-let-live mother had flown completely off the handle about Jillian staying at Olivia’s. The whole conversation had been so childish Jillian could hardly believe it.

Jade pitching her own daughter into the backseat usually meant one thing: she was having man problems. Jillian had never known her mother to simply like a man. Moderation didn’t appear to be a category Jade understood. She was either cold to a man or consumed with him. Nothing in between. Jillian had tried to muster up a little compassion toward her, but sometimes she got tired of being the one in the mother role.

As she started up the stairs to Stella’s apartment, she thought about the first time they met and how something about Stella early on had reminded her of Jade. The one glaring contrast was that Stella hadn’t spoken of a single issue with a man in the months they’d known each other.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.