“She wild wild.”
We only felt sorry for Robert Turner. He’d already been through too much. Half a year earlier, his wife had stolen his gun and blown her head clean off her body. A little past sunrise, she’d parked her blue Tercel along some back road and sent her car rocking from the gun blast. A jogger had found her an hour later. Robert had driven the Tercel home from the police station, the headrest still darkened with his wife’s blood. No one knew what had happened to that car. Rumor was that after combing it for the rest of his wife’s things—her pocketbook, overdue library paperbacks, a ruby red hair clip he’d bought her, years ago, from Mexico—he’d put a brick on the gas pedal and sent it right into the San Luis Rey River. But a man as sensible as Robert had probably sold it for parts, and sometimes we wondered if a passing car had Elise Turner’s muffler, if her turn signal blinked at us from the next lane.
All of that, and now a reckless daughter too. No wonder Robert looked so troubled.
That evening, we found a prayer card with his name on it in the wooden box outside the door. In the center, in all lowercase, the words pray for her. We didn’t know which her he meant—his dead wife or his reckless daughter—so we prayed for both. It’s more than just a notion, you know. Praying for someone dead. When there’s no body to slip into, you can only try to find their spirit, and who wants to chase down Elise Turner’s, wherever it’s hiding?
Later that night, when we left the prayer room, we felt something in Upper Room shift. Couldn’t explain it, something just felt different. Off. We knew the walls of Upper Room like the walls of our own homes. We’d soft-stepped down hallways as the choir practiced, noticing that corner in front of the instrument closet where the paint had chipped, or the tile in the ladies’ room that had been laid crooked. We’d spent decades studying the splotch that looked like an elephant’s ear on the ceiling above the water fountain. And we knew the exact spot on the sanctuary carpet where Elise Turner had knelt the night before she killed herself. (The more spiritual of us even swore they could still see the indented curve from her knees.) Sometimes we joked that when we died, we’d all become part of these walls, pressed down flat like wallpaper. Near the stained-glass windows in the sanctuary or in a corner of the Sunday School room or even attached to the ceiling in the prayer room, where we met every Sunday and Wednesday to intercede.
We didn’t know then that the banged-up truck had knotted Nadia Turner’s future to our own, that we would watch her come and go over the years, each time tugging that knot a little tighter.
—
ON SUNDAY NIGHT, the Turners received a visitor.
Nadia had spent most of the weekend in bed, not because her stomach still hurt but because she had nowhere else to go. She wasn’t pregnant anymore but she had wrecked her father’s truck. What if it took weeks to fix? How would he stand it, no truck to turn to, no errands to run, only work and home? He loved one thing, her father, and she had ruined it. Worse, her father hadn’t even yelled at her. She wished he would rage when he was angry—it’d be easier that way, quicker—but instead, he coiled up tight inside himself, moving silently around her in the kitchen or avoiding her altogether. She felt herself disappearing into the silence until she heard two high-pitched notes stepping through the air, so light she thought she dreamed them. Then she heard three knocks and a brief stab ran through her. Luke. She jumped up, finger combing her hair into a ponytail, tucking her bra strap under her tank top, adjusting her shorts. She padded barefoot across the cold tile and opened the door.
“Oh,” she said. “Hi.”
Pastor Sheppard smiled from the doorstep. She had never seen him look this casual before, not in his church robes or a three-piece suit but a polo shirt and jeans and black sneakers with special soles he wore, Luke said, because his knees were bad. She’d always imagined pastors as mousy old men in sweaters and glasses but Pastor Sheppard looked more like the bouncers she sweet-talked outside of clubs, tall and wide, his shiny mahogany head nearly touching the doorframe. He seemed even larger on Sunday mornings, stalking across the altar in his long black robe, his voice booming to the rafters. But in his polo shirt, standing on her front steps, he looked relaxed. Kind, even. He smiled at her and she saw Luke for a second, a fragment of him, like a vein of light through smashed glass.
“Hi honey,” the pastor said. “Is your dad around?”
“In the yard.”
She backed up, letting him inside. He filled the entrance, gazing around the living room, and she wondered what he made of her house. He probably visited so many homes, he could read them as soon as he stepped inside. Some houses filled with sickness, some with sin, others with sorrow. But hers? It probably just seemed empty. The silent, uncluttered rooms, the whole house open like a wound that would never scab over. She led the pastor to the backyard, where her father was bench-pressing on the concrete slab. He racked his weights with a loud clink.
“Pastor.” He wiped his face with his gray USMC T-shirt. “Didn’t know you were stopping by.”
She slid the screen door shut and started back down the hallway. As she turned, she felt the pastor watching her and she wondered, for a second, if he knew. Maybe his calling had imbued him with divine knowledge and he could see it hanging off her shoulders, the heaviness of her secrets. Or even if he had no holy power, maybe he just sensed it. Maybe he could feel the once-connection between the two of them, and as soon as she’d turned, he’d reached up to touch its frayed edges.
She tiptoed down the hall to the bathroom and perched on the toilet lid, listening through the cracked window.
“I was in the area,” the pastor was saying. “Saw your truck earlier. Everything okay?”
“It’ll be fine,” her father said. “Just needs a little bodywork. Sorry about the picnic—I know I said I’d haul those chairs—”
“We’ll manage.” The pastor paused. “Folks are saying your girl crashed it.”
She gripped her knees tighter on the toilet lid.
“Were we that crazy when we were young?” her father said.
“Crazier, maybe. She okay?”
“She’s a smart girl,” her father said. “A lot smarter than me, that’s for sure. Going off to college soon. She should know better. That’s what worries me.”
“You know how these kids are—they just want to push the limits. Think they’re invincible.”