A Truth for a Truth Read Online Free Page A

last part, but I caught her words anyway. I wondered if Fern really approved wholeheartedly of the Dorchesters, or if this was nostalgia. She had been fifteen years younger and fifteen years less disappointed when Win was minister here. But she had always been Fern.
    I followed everyone through the social hall, which was decorated with flowers and photos of Win and his family, as well as Win in our pulpit and others. In the reception area I passed our secretary’s desk. I was three steps past when I turned and went back. I was right. I’d done too many “what’s wrong with this picture” activity books with my daughters. The object on the left corner really did not belong there.
    I picked up the iPhone and turned it over in my hand. A label with Ed’s name and our address peered back at me from the case.
    “Yikes!” I slipped the phone in my purse. The iPhone was Ed’s most prized possession. The girls and I had saved for six months to buy it for his fortieth birthday last month. It did everything except preach his sermons. If I ever climb into a lifeboat with Ed’s iPhone in my hand, he’ll grab the phone first, maybe even check to see if it’s working, before he helps me inside.
    The fact that the phone had been lying forlornly on Norma Beet’s desk was a bad sign. Ed was feeling terrible, but that terrible? I shuddered and hoped he remembered where the pulpit was and the name of the man he was about to eulogize.
    As I made my way toward the church, people stopped to talk, and by the time I got inside, there were only a few seats left, all at the front. Hildy and her daughters, as well as almost a dozen out-of-town relatives, were standing by the entrance to one aisle, with Ed and two ministers from our area behind them in robes. I recognized the introduction to a hymn often used at the ordinations and installations of our clergy, and knew the procession was about to begin.
    I scooted up the aisle. The available seats were one behind the other, smack dab in the middle section on the first and second rows. I reached the second row and inched my way in front of people, apologizing in whispers as I stepped on feet and knocked an old man’s cane to the ground. Finally I reached the empty space. Someone harrumphed and told me to move over so she could see the coffin, which had already been placed at the front. I had landed right in front of Fern and her husband, Samuel, a rotund little man who functions as the enforcer of Fern’s edicts.
    We stood for the processional. The coffin had been placed in front of the pulpit, rimmed by at least a dozen pots of lilies wrapped in gold foil. There were lilies everywhere, along with fragrant hyacinths and narcissus, but none on top of the coffin, as if the florist had wanted to make sure Win could pop out on cue and preach his own eulogy. The image made me shiver. Or maybe that was Fern staring at my neck. No matter, the mood was set. Good Aggie hoped the service went well. Bad Aggie wished it were over.
    Things started well enough. The processional was stirring, and best of all, Win did not rise and join the other ministers. The Dorchester family took up one long pew at the front, and whatever they were feeling, they looked stoic and resigned. The choir’s first selection was blessedly short. Then the readings began, and Ed announced that Teddy would be first.
    “Oh, for heaven’s sake, what was Ed thinking?” I heard from behind me. The remark had been addressed to her husband, but Fern’s whispers eat through silence like battery acid.
    I wanted to turn and assure Fern that this had not been our idea, but that, of course, was pointless. I watched my daughter, dressed in a dark skirt and pale gold blouse, climb to the pulpit. Ed turned the microphone to accommodate her, then he sneezed into the arm of his dark robe, cleared his throat, and sneezed again.
    So much for extra-strength antihistamine times two.
    Teddy looked adorable, at least what we could see of her.