Read Online Walk on Water by Josephine Garner - Free Book Online

to go until the last song had been sung.
    I was dying to check my cell phone for messages. Through the soft leather of my clutch bag the hard plastic form of the flip-phone tempted me like Eden’s serpent. I had respectfully shut it off before service, but now I was obsessing, wondering whether or not there might be a message waiting to come to me with the phone’s ON button, a message from Luke.
    Of course I didn’t really expect there to be one—not from him. We didn’t talk on Sundays. He didn’t call me. I didn’t call him either. My Sundays were spent with Mommy. They began in the morning when I drove over to Mommy’s house to pick her up and drive her to Sunday School. They lasted right through the morning worship service, and then a Sunday lunch at a restaurant usually of Mommy’s choosing. They finished up with us watching Sixty Minutes together when a football game didn’t delay the broadcast.
    Since Mommy had been a teenage mother, we were close enough in age to make us good companions, and the older I got this seemed to become increasingly true. Sometimes we seemed more like sisters than mother and daughter.
    Luke must have his own family time too. Perhaps they even went to church sometimes. The older people got the more they recognized their own mortality. Maybe religion was still more social with the Sterlings than anything else, but it might have become a social relationship they took more seriously, since Luke had had to face his own mortality so much sooner than anyone could have expected.
    I fingered the form of the cell phone. Luke could be thinking of me, perhaps even missing me a little. He liked my company, and regrettably or not, my world was beginning to revolve around him again. Mommy, Corrine, work, other friends, the health club, even T-T and Agatha, all kind of had to fit in around the time I was spending with him. Corrine had nailed it that night at the gym, but I wasn’t about to give her the satisfaction of admitting it to her. I wasn’t admitting it to anybody. And especially not to Mommy or Luke. Making a fool of myself was a private affair.
    I had mastered my own art of diffident deportment. I would not forget that completely revealing myself to him had turned out badly. By coming on too strong I had seemed desperate. Asking for more than he could give me had driven him away. I had lost my best friend because I had been greedy. If Mommy was right about a man wanting to feel needed, then there must be a delicate balance between need and greed, and this time I was determined to strike that balance and hold fast. Okay, so I was always readily available, but it was up to him to make the request. Not crowding him must count for something.
    We were singing the final hymn finally . Then everybody started in with their hellos and good-byes, and warm wishes for a good week. Since there was still no chance to check my cell without looking preoccupied or impatient, I settled for throwing myself into the community ritual with my own friendly hugs and chit-chat. This was the real social part of Christian worship anyway, the communion of saints, the thing that made St. James Baptist Church sacred. It wasn’t political with us.
    For lunch today Mommy wanted to go to Red Lobster as usual. She loved seafood and she loved Red Lobster. The one we went to was noisy, busy, and crowded, particularly on Sunday afternoons when it was filled with lots of families with lots of children. Somehow in spite of a menu that mainly featured fish, in just about every single bite you could taste that there were way too many calories.
    One Mother’s Day I had taken Mommy to Sand Castles, an upscale seafood restaurant on the north side of town near the more popular Galleria Mall. Having double-checked the menu online, I had been excited about taking her there to celebrate her special day. Unfortunately the pompish, sophisticated background of classical music, low lighting, water fountains, and bevy of waiters buzzing