Read Online Uncross My Heart by Austin, Andrews & Austin - Free Book Online Page B

until they can find their way out through forgiveness.”
    “What kind of talk is that? You’re saying people can find their way out of hell?”
    “Maybe.” I thrust my hands into the air as if I’d just scored a field goal. “They might have to reincarnate over time to find their way out.”
    “Reincarnate?”
    “Think about life and the afterlife in a less linear fashion, Gladys.
    Just go with me, for a moment. Free your mind. Do you think God selected thousands of people to be cavemen, die trying to discover fire, and that was their one shot at life?”
    “Well, I don’t know about cavemen. I don’t spend time thinking about cave—”
    “One guy got to be Russell Crowe and one got to be Cro-Magnon, and he froze to death, and that was his only shot at being a human.
    Luck of the draw. Too bad, cave guy. Makes no sense, does it? Neither does the idea that if you love someone of the same gender, you go to hell.”“Alexandra, the way you think.”
    “You believe that if a woman loves—let’s say kisses, or sleeps with—another woman, she goes to hell?”
    “I believe it is a very strong possibility, if she does it repeatedly and does not repent.”
    “Oh, Gladys, Gladys, Gladys—”
    “The Lord said it is an abomination and those who—”
    Unable to contain myself, I grabbed Gladys’s thick head in my hands and said, “I’m going to share the secret my neighbor shared with me.” I kissed her squarely on the mouth. “See you in hell.” I said it cheerily.
    Gladys yanked herself free of my grasp. Her eyeballs jumped out at me as if on miniature Slinkys, and she huffed loudly several times.
    With the back of her hand, she wiped her lips as if I’d pressed dog manure on them. “You are not fit to wear the robes of Christ.” She ran from my classroom, and I flung back my head and stared up at the ceiling. Probably right, I thought.
    * * *

    That night I sat cross-legged on the floor by the small fireplace in my farmhouse, talking morosely on the phone with Dennis, Ketch resting at my side.
    “I wish I could have been there when you kissed her. I’ll bet you she hasn’t been kissed in decades. Of course, you shouldn’t have done it.” He paused. “What did kissing her feel like? She looks like she has rough lips.”
    “It wasn’t that kind of kiss. It was a let-me-punch-your-ticket-to-hell kind of kiss.”
    “You know she’ll go to Hightower.”
    “No, she could never confess to anyone that she was kissed, which makes me feel like a sexual terrorist. I jumped her and she has no way to tell anyone about it. I need to apologize to her.” I took another sip from an old brandy snifter my grandmother only took down off the shelf for special occasions and wondered if she would have felt this particular evening qualified.
    “Probably a good idea. How do you intend to phrase it?”
    “Gladys, I’m sorry I…I don’t know. It will just have to come to me.”
    “Dr. Westbrooke, you need to think about one of two things.” His tone was teasing, but somehow I knew the mellow lilt was merely to cover the fact that he really meant what he was about to say. “Either button up your behavior, or get yourself to a seminary that is more liberal and will appreciate and embrace you. There are some, you know.”
    “I love Claridge.”
    “But priests can’t be mashers.”
    “What should I do?”
    “You might try praying for inner peace,” he said kindly.
    * * *

    I hung up and took my brandy and stood for a moment on the back porch, gazing out at the field dotted with fireflies twinkling under a harvest moon. The horses came up to greet me, and I walked down the back steps and a few yards farther to the slatted wooden gate and lifted the latch, letting myself into their pasture.
    They followed me in a slow processional southward, where a large stone altar rose out of the high grass. Field stones, really, ingeniously propped up like Stonehenge by my grandfather years ago to allow one of his sick