Miranda Hathaway Boxed Set: Cutler Quilt Guild Adventures #4-6 by Mary Devlin Lynch & Debbie Devlin Zook

Author:Mary Devlin Lynch & Debbie Devlin Zook [Devlin Lynch, Mary & Devlin Zook, Debbie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: MCWriting.com
Published: 2018-05-23T22:00:00+00:00

Nine

St. Luke’s Episcopal is a lovely church with wonderful stained glass windows, but it is small. Sometimes that’s a good thing. If two hundred people turned out, we’d have a full house. For Laura’s funeral, there were at least a hundred, which was a relief. There’s nothing worse than an empty church.

That rarely happens here. While there were surely people who only wanted to make sure it was Laura in the casket, as in “Ding-dong, the witch is dead,” but there was a sizable number who showed up because it was the Christian thing to do. Yes, that’s a thing in Cutler. You do right by your neighbors, whether they did right by you or not, mostly. A funeral without a reasonable turnout would have shamed the whole town. But, if there ever was going to be a service without a crowd, Laura Jenkins’ funeral would have been it.

The first row was reserved for family: in this instance that would be Marcia and her husband. Although it was always possible some new relative, like a long-lost cousin, might show up that no one had ever seen before.

Judy and Tom Smythin were already in the second row with Jake and Taylor beside them. Judy and Taylor, first cousins, were next to each other chatting quietly. Gabe and I slid into the third row. Diane and Mark came in beside us and Mark and Gabe shook hands briefly.

Brittany and her husband, a big bear of a guy I had only met once and whose name I could not, of course, remember, moved into the pew behind us. Wait. Jackson. No that was her son. John! That’s it! Next time I looked, Harriet, Sarah, and Queenie had joined Brit. We all politely nodded to each other, maintaining an appropriately solemn silence. Queenie especially looked pale and unlike her usual flamboyant self in an understated black pantsuit and no jewelry.

While we all tended to sit on the left of the aisle, as if we were used to sitting on the bride’s side, many of the townspeople filled in on the right. One white-haired woman drew my attention by the stony and determined look on her face but I couldn’t place her. After the casket was rolled down the center aisle, I whispered the question to Diane.

“That’s Daphne Wallace,” she responded.

Well, I could add Daphne to the list of those who came to make sure Laura was gone. Although from the look on her face, I was pretty sure that for her it came under the header of doing the right thing; she wasn’t required to look like she was mourning.

Marcia Travis came in late, pale and looking a bit shaky, on her husband’s arm. He was a mousy guy with a bad comb-over, looking dwarfed in an old blue suit. It gave me the feeling he had lost weight and hadn’t noticed. Apparently, his wife hadn’t either.

Some folks were noticeable by their absence. Stacy wasn’t there and I couldn’t say I blamed her. Jake had let her go home with instructions not to leave town.

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