LITMIR.BIZ

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why are you bothering me with questions about the Christmas cantata when you know I have to prepare my sermon?” Another sigh. Or, “Marilee, why on earth would you serve taco salads at the senior citizens’ dinner when you know elderly people can’t eat spicy food? Have you any idea how many complaints I’ve received? I swear, Marilee, if you had a brain, you’d have to wear a warning label.”

      There were times she felt she couldn’t do anything right, no matter how hard she worked. What about all the seniors’ dinners that had been successful? And had Grady forgotten just how many visitors they had at Easter and Christmas? Of course she wanted everything to go right. Some of those visitors became members.

      She shook her head sadly. Maybe Grady was right. What did she know about anything? She gave a sniff. Not that Grady was some kind of genius, mind you. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have gotten kicked out of the church for sleeping with a woman who had a tattoo on her fanny that read Easy Rider. At least that’s what Darlene Milburn claimed, and she should know since she taught water aerobics at the YMCA. Darlene had “excused” LaFonda from class for wearing a thong bikini, of all things.

      Another woman. That was the absolute last thing she had expected of him.

      Marilee wondered if Grady’s recent diagnosis of high blood pressure had something to do with the change that had come over him. Seemed he was always tired and out of sorts or feeling under the weather. Her mother had long ago accused him of being a hypochondriac and although Marilee had defended him, there’d been times she’d thought the same thing. Lately, he’d become so moody she’d found herself tiptoeing around him. Then one day, right out of the blue, he told her he planned to leave the ministry.

      Looking back, Marilee was surprised she hadn’t tried to kill herself sooner.

      With a heartfelt sigh, she stood and walked into the living room. The place was gloomy and musty from being closed up for so long, and she hadn’t had the heart to do anything about it the past few days, hadn’t wanted to remember how warm and inviting the house had been when her parents were alive. Grady had wanted her to sell it once her mother passed on; he resented the utility bills they received every month for a place that had been closed up for two years. “You’ll never find closure until you let go of that house,” he’d said more than once. But Marilee had resisted. She’d planned to put it on the market later, when property values went up, then use the money to send Josh to college.

      Sheets covered the furniture and the old piano where she had once practiced her scales under the tutelage of Mrs. Sadie Habersham until her behind felt as if it were growing into the piano bench. The wooden floors wore a thick layer of dust. Heavy brocade drapes locked out the early-morning sun. Lord, but they were ugly, what with those thick cords twisted together like a bunch of snakes in mating season. The tassels looked as though they belonged in a bordello. What had her mother been thinking? They’d obviously been on sale, because one thing Hester Brown had never been able to pass up was a K mart blue-light special or a clearance table.

      Wait a minute…Cords?

      Marilee stepped closer and examined them. Three nylon strands were braided to make one thick cord. She tugged hard. The fabric was still good and strong. She glanced up at the beam that ran beneath the raised ceiling, her mind working frantically. Her answer was right in front of her.

      She would hang herself!

      Marilee hurried into the kitchen, to the junk drawer where her mother had kept everything that would fit and crammed in those things that hadn’t. She found a pair of scissors and went to work. Each cord was about five feet long when she pulled the drapes open. She cut four lengths from the living-room drapes before making her way into the master bedroom and guest rooms, where the same drapes, different only in colors and degrees of ugliness, hung. It was no easy task cutting through the cords, and by the time she finished, she wore a blister at the base of her thumb. Gathering them together, Marilee realized she had enough cord to hang a gang of outlaws.

      Grady had underestimated her. He figured since she’d never earned a college degree that he was the smarter of the two. It didn’t matter that the reason she hadn’t earned a degree was that she’d had to work two jobs to support them while he went to seminary school. Not that she’d minded. They were a team, working toward a future. Even when Grady sometimes felt he wasn’t meant to preach, she would reassure him, bolster his self-confidence. Wasn’t that part of being a wife and team member?

      Once he’d become a pastor, she’d devoted her time to church activities. She’d been good at it too, or so she’d thought, until Grady began complaining about every little thing she did. It only made her more determined to work harder. Even if Grady found her lacking, others claimed she was the veritable backbone of Chickpea Baptist Church.

      A lot of good it did her now.

      Marilee sat on the sofa and began tying the cords together. The frayed tassels clashed with her outfit something awful, but she had no choice. An hour later, she had a sturdy, if gaudy-looking, hangman’s noose. She spent the next ten minutes trying to throw the noose over the beam, and was about to give up before she remembered the ladder in the garage. It could also be used as her jumping-off place.

      Heavens, but she could be brilliant at times!

      Marilee dragged the ladder inside the house and placed it beneath the beam. Holding one end of the cord between her teeth, she began climbing. Okay, so the ladder was a little wobbly. She suddenly remembered her fear of heights and became angry with herself. She didn’t have time to fret about every little thing.

      Pausing halfway up, she attempted once again to throw the noose over the beam, all the while struggling to hang on to the ladder. Finally! She tied it so it wouldn’t pull free. Marilee knew how to tie just about every kind of knot there was, thanks to Josh’s stint in the Boy Scouts.

      Crouching at the top of the ladder, she slipped the noose around her neck. Her hands trembled. She had no idea how much it was going to hurt, but the pain could be no worse than what she was feeling inside.

      With an angry burst of determination, Marilee stood straight up. And banged her head on the ceiling beam with such force she almost fell off the ladder. In fact, she would have, had she not grabbed the beam to steady herself. The room spun wildly beneath her and she felt her eyes cross. Her skull throbbed. Afraid she’d given herself a concussion, Marilee stood there, trying to clear her head. The floor seemed miles away. It felt as if she was standing on top of Chickpea’s water tower, where she and Grady had sneaked up the night she’d turned sixteen. They’d kissed under the stars and promised to love one another forever.

      Forever. So why, at age thirty-five, was she all alone in the world?

      Marilee swallowed the lump in her throat. Well, she wasn’t really alone. She had friends who loved her, people who were probably worried sick about her this very moment. And she had a son. He might not like her right now, but what if he—heaven forbid—ended up blaming himself for her suicide? Josh would have to spend his entire life living with it.

      What if he was just going through a stage and didn’t really hate her? What if there was the slightest chance of reconciliation?

      What was wrong with her? Hadn’t she seen enough suffering in her life to know that everybody got a dose of it now and then? Parents died, kids rebelled, husbands cheated. And here she was, standing on top of this shoddy ladder with a noose around her neck and what could possibly be a serious head injury. Not only that—her best outfit and makeup were ruined, her shoes were all wrong and she smelled like a Texaco station.

      She was being weak and selfish, Marilee told herself. She needed to stop wallowing in self-pity and start working on her problems, namely getting her son out of that den of iniquity. She needed to clean up her parents’ house, find a job and show folks that she was made of tougher stuff than this! And she was tough, dang it. As a minister’s wife, she had sat with the dying, comforted the bereaved and brought smiles to nursing-home patients who felt neglected, of no use to the world and wanted to die. “The Lord has a purpose for us all,” Marilee had told them. “He will bring us home when he’s ready. Until then, we must have faith.”

      She

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