The Christmas Sisters by Jones Annie

Author:Jones, Annie [Jones, Annie]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Publisher: PoutyGirl Productions
Published: 2012-08-31T16:00:00+00:00

Thirteen

This just looks awful!” Nic kept her voice low and her head down as she practically went slinking along behind Aunt Bert into the third pew from the front. She hated to leave the first two pews empty but told herself that maybe having her whole family front and center would throw Sam off. Besides, only the goody-goodies and women with new hats they wanted to make sure everybody saw sat in the front pew.

“Where is everybody?” Petie slid in behind Nic.

Collier, then Nan, Willa, and Fran rounded out the row. Willa had insisted on sitting with her doting great-aunts. Nic knew that move had as much to do with the fact that they would feed her pink peppermints from their huge pocketbooks all service long as it did that Nic would expect Willa to sit still and behave. She leaned out to send a warning glance at her already fidgeting child. Willa grinned back at her, her cheeks puffed out like a squirrel storing nuts for winter and a stomach-medicine pink on her teeth. Nic smiled at the sweet child then sighed and made a quick survey of the rest of what could hardly be called a crowd.

Across the aisle, a family from the cottages sat. Nic did not know their names. She would not have known they lived in the old cottages if Aunt Bert had not specifically told them when they walked in to “sit on the side opposite that family from the cottages.” She had not said it with any prejudice against the people dressed in not quite their Sunday best clothes that Nic could discern. They seemed nice, to look at them. The woman pressed a bundled baby to her shoulder while the man flipped through the hymnal, jiggling one leg up and down.

A row behind them sat the Stern family. An aptly named household of serious-faced people who had spent many years as missionaries before settling in Persuasion where Mr. and Mrs. Stern pretty much ran the high school by teaching and taking on every extracurricular activity they could manage. Despite their sometimes off-putting expressions, they were some of the nicest, most generous, most faithful people Nic had ever known. It did her heart good to know they supported Sam and his effort to rebuild the church that had once been the center of the community.

Behind Nic and her family, Mrs. King and her daughter scooted to the center of their pew. The pair who ran the town's lone beauty parlor sat down demurely, their posture perfect and their hairdos right out of the latest issue of Modern Hair and Beauty—the only reading material besides the Bible and current religious tracts they kept in their small salon.

Two generations of the Freeman family took up both back rows. A couple of older folks that Nic did not know rounded out the sparse congregation.

“Surely there are more people than this attending church?” Petie nodded to the people across the aisle.

“Maybe they are late getting out of Sunday school.

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