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Damn. She slapped on her new sneer. “Hello Kitty.”
He grinned. “Badass.”
THE BASIL PLANT ON THE baker’s rack was getting a little droopy. She hopped up from the chaise to water it, pulled some dead leaves off the geranium, and then resettled. She wiggled her pen between her fingers and started to write.
My mother’s dedication to children’s causes had its roots in her teenage years when she visited sick children in hospitals and refugee camps …
Something Lucy’s grandfather was writing about in detail and wouldn’t appreciate Lucy duplicating.
She tore up the page, pulled her reverse bucket list from her pocket, and jotted down a new item.
Blow off homework.
Then she added an asterisk.
BREE HAD NEVER FELT MORE out of place. It was fine for African-Americans to attend white churches—it gave white congregations a pleasant feeling of inclusiveness—but being the only white person in the island’s sole black church made her uncomfortable. She’d never enjoyed standing out. She liked to blend. But as the usher led them down the center aisle of the Heart of Charity Missionary Church, she didn’t see another face as pale as her own.
The usher handed them bulletins and gestured toward a pew in the second row. So much for her plans to sit in the back.
After they were seated, her discomfort grew. Was this how it felt to be a black person going solo into the white world? Or maybe her own insecurity was at play, and all her reading had made her more racially conscious than she needed to be.
Heart of Charity Missionary was the second oldest church on the island, a squat, red brick building that would never win points for style, although the airy sanctuary looked as though it had been recently remodeled. The walls were ivory, the high ceiling paneled in blond wood. A purple cloth covered the altar, and three silver crosses hung on the front wall. The congregation was small, and the air smelled of perfume, aftershave, and stargazer lilies.
The people sitting nearby smiled in welcome. The men wore suits, the older women hats, and the younger women bright summer dresses. After the opening hymn, a woman she assumed was the minister, but who turned out to be a deacon, greeted the congregation and announced upcoming events. Bree felt herself flush as the woman looked at her. “We have some visitors today. Would you introduce yourselves?”
Bree hadn’t been prepared for this, and before she found her voice, she heard Toby speak up. “I’m Toby Wheeler,” he said. “And this is Bree.”
“Welcome, Toby and Bree,” the woman said. “God has blessed us bringing you to join us today.”
“Whatever,” Toby muttered under his breath as the congregation delivered a chorus of “amens.” But unlike her cynical ward, Bree felt herself begin to relax.
The service began in earnest. She was used to cool, cerebral religion, but this was hot religion, loud in supplication and praise. Afterward, she lost count of the number of people who came up to greet her, and not one of them asked what a paleface like herself was doing in their church. A woman talked to Toby about their Sunday school program, and the minister, a man Bree recognized from the gift shop in town, said he hoped they’d come back.
“What do you think?” she asked Toby as they headed back to her used Chevy Cobalt.
“It was okay.” He pulled his shirttail out of his pants. “But my friends are at Big Mike’s church.”
The only friends he talked about were a set of twins who weren’t on the island now. Myra hadn’t done him a service by keeping him so isolated. “Maybe you could make some new friends here,” she said.
“I don’t want to.” He jerked open the car door. “I’m calling Big Mike and telling him I’m going to church with him next week.”
She waited for the familiar weight of defeat to claim her. But it didn’t happen. Instead she grabbed the car door before he could slam it shut and leaned down. “I’m the boss, I like this church, and we’re coming back next week.”
“That’s not fair!”
He tried to wrestle the door away from her, but she held on, and in the same tone she’d heard Lucy use, she staked her ground. “Neither is life. Get used to it.”
“ALL SHE CAN THINK ABOUT is black, black, black,” Toby complained to Lucy, those thickly lashed golden eyes flashing in outrage. “Like that’s all I am. This black kid. Not even me. She’s prejudiced. She’s a ray-shist.”
“Racist,” Bree called out from behind the counter where she was nailing a new set of shelves in place after moving her precious bumblebee Christmas ornaments to safety. They’d been such a success that she’d placed a second order.
“A racist,” he repeated. “Just like Ames in Roots.”
“The sadistic overseer.” Bree popped up long enough to explain.
“Right.” Lucy smiled. Bree had been watching the old miniseries with Toby this week, and it was hard to say which of them was more caught up in it. “Kids need to know about their heritage,” Lucy said. “Being African American is part of your heritage just like it is my brother Andre’s.”
“But what about the white part?” Toby countered. “What about that?”
