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CHAPTER ONE
Faith
Nothing.
That’s what I felt.
Over a month and a half ago, I’d nearly met my maker, and I’d gladly take being stabbed and beaten again over this... numbness.
As I stood there in the last fading moments of dusk, staring at the house that now held false memories and lies, I felt like a fraud in my neon-purple leggings and black hoodie that talked about grace and blessings. I watched my breath blow out in a steamy vapor. I should feel something. Anything.
Nothing.
The same word Mr. Wexley, our longtime family attorney, had used yesterday regarding what was left to my sisters and me after the great Reverend Noel McMasters left this world.
The word still burned through me as I rolled the benign little wooden match between my fingers, feeling the squared-off edges and cheap rough texture. I ran my forefinger over the red sulfur tip, imagining the heat. The same heat that boiled like a fireball and kept splitting into a million liquid sparks in my veins, searing me as if he’d lit one of these himself and held it against my flesh.
He hadn’t, of course. Daddy always treated me like a porcelain princess, never raising a hand or even his voice in my direction. Showed me nothing but love.
He’d certainly never shown me any of the hell he rained down on my sisters and mother. The stuff of nightmares I’d always been too gullible to see or believe.
Just like I never saw Adam Bishop for what he himself said he was. An unworthy asshole that I needed to walk away from. He’d told me straight-up, and yet I wrote to him in prison every week for years, for nothing. They say to believe people when they show you who they are.
I do now.
My father—the man I’d worshipped my whole life—had tossed me aside now, too after his death, showing me exactly who he was.
“I’m sorry, ladies,” Mr. Wexley had said from behind his ornate wooden desk that our father had probably financed. His heavy-lidded eyes slowly moved from Grace, to Hope, and finally to me. They blinked away quickly when I lifted a brow in question. “I’m afraid the executor of Reverend McMasters’ will has been unreachable, and as such, I cannot proceed with—”
“Who is the executor?” Hope had asked, her dark eyes narrowing as her lawyer brain jumped ahead.
“There is no logical person but one of us,” Grace said, one hand resting on her large baby belly protectively.
“Banks can be executors,” Hope said. “Or lawyers sometimes if no one in the family—”
“Unreachable banks?” I’d interjected, shifting in my chair as fresh nausea washed over me in a sweat. Grace reached over for my hand and squeezed. Hers was cool and dry and I knew she was trying to soothe me. They stared at me all the time, now, like I was about to shatter or sprout horns. It was exhausting. I shook my head and met Mr. Wexley’s uncomfortable gaze, pushing the words out like they were laced with acid. “I don’t see a bank or a lawyer not answering a phone, Mr. Wexley. It’s Matthew, isn’t it?”
He’d picked up a pencil and gripped it with white knuckles, looking like he’d rather be vomiting upside down than sitting in front of us.
I remember nodding, hearing Grace and Hope utter in disbelief, registering Hope’s rise from her chair to pace the room—but the incessant ringing in my ears that my attackers had blessed me with grew louder.
Matthew Isaiah McMasters, our brother. Half brother, if we’re being technical, that we had no knowledge existed until we’d found a second set of altered church financials, and then I mentioned seeing the strange guy at the funeral and Hope started digging. A man the same age as me, living in Charlotte, North Carolina, where Dad had taken trips for conventions every year.
Conventionsclearly being code for second family.
“So why are we here?” I’d managed.
The attorney had cleared his throat nervously. “Miss McMasters—”
“Mr. Wexley, you’ve known us since we were born,” Grace said, her teacher tone mixed with irritability, “and have never once called us Miss anything, so please don’t talk down to us now.”
“I mean, the reverend believed in backups for everything,” Hope spat, still pacing. “Extra books. Extra families. Is there a third set lying in wait somewhere, or is this the full package?”
Mr. Wexley slumped back then, took a few breaths, and gave us the scoop.
The state of Louisiana required any beneficiaries or potential ones be at least notified of a deceased person’s wishes within two months of the passing, regardless of the existence of or contact with an executor. Even if the deceased’s wishes couldn’t be finalized, we had rights.
Hope had laughed out loud at that, and I got it. Neither of them had any grand ideas of receiving anything from our father, and I didn’t blame them. But there was the church, after all, that he had sunk his entire life into. I’d been handling his bills for some time and knew the bank accounts were healthy enough to keep the church going and continue to pay my salary for at least the next year. I’d arranged temporary pastors on a rotating basis from neighboring towns while he was sick and had planned to make an official outreach to find someone permanent.
