The Hollows--A Novel by Jess Montgomery

Author:Jess Montgomery
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Publishing Group

CHAPTER 20

LILY

Sunday, September 26—10:00 a.m.

Sunday morning, Lily parks her automobile down the hill and walks up to the Stanehart Hollow Friends Meeting House. She’s dressed in her Sunday-go-to-meeting best, a crisply ironed navy blue dress, and her brown jacket. First frost has nipped the morning air, a brisk forewarning of fall that’s singed the roadside clover and bowed the black-eyed Susans. Some trees have turned from green to crimson and golden and orange, bold against a pensively pale blue sky. All these changes in just four days since Lily and Marvena had emerged at the behest of Sadie’s nose from the woods across from the meeting house.

Now Lily can’t help but smile. What a sight they must have been to Anna Faye, the Quaker woman who’d seen them as she came around the corner.

Lily looks for her among the people walking to the Friends meeting house. As she moves toward the worshipers, Lily realizes that she’s overdressed. The men and women are in plain clothes—some traditional Quaker garb, others not—that they would wear to work in their fields or kitchens. No one speaks as they go up the stone steps and enter the meeting house, though some folks give her a silent, welcoming nod.

Inside, Lily sits in the last row of pews. Everyone else moves up to the front, sitting as close together as possible. To her surprise, the men and women do not separate, as is still the custom at the Presbyterian church she occasionally attends. Here, family groups stay together.

Lily searches for a placard listing hymn numbers, for hymnals and Bibles tucked in the pew racks, for a pulpit from which a pastor will speak—but none of these items are to be found here. Where are the instructions, the order of worship, about what she is supposed to do?

A woman several rows up turns and looks back at Lily. It’s Anna Faye. She dips her head, a gesture inviting Lily to come up and sit with her family, but Lily stays put, waiting for the meeting to begin.

No one stands or speaks. Entering in silence was the start of service, Lily realizes. The only sounds are the rustle of clothes on wooden pews, of children fussing, but as mothers reprimand only by pulling them close even the children soon quiet.

This is it, then. The congregants are simply going to sit in silence. As people bow their heads, or lean forward, or tilt their heads back—howsoever they’re moved—the silence strengthens with a somber yet beguiling quality, binding the congregants.

To Lily, the silence is unsettling. Itchiness overtakes her skin, making her all too aware of the cloth of her dress, of the tight lacings of her boots. Itchiness claws her, nearly spurring her to spring to her feet, run out the door just behind her.

Her mind jumps to the tasks awaiting her at home, even on a Sunday. The past two days had been exhausting. The overnight guard had quit. One of the commissioners strongly suggested she hire his nineteen-year-old

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