Cast Me Gently Read Online Free Page A

covers. KC curled up, pressed against her side.
    “Good night, Dad. Good night, Mom. Good night, Daniel,” she whispered before closing her eyes.

CHAPTER 3
    “Teresa, will you hurry up?”
    “Coming,” Teresa called as she came down the stairs, tucking her blouse into her slacks.
    “You are not wearing pants to church,” Sylvia said, glaring at her daughter.
    Teresa clenched her jaw as she searched through the coats and jackets on the hall tree in the foyer. Finding the jacket she sought, she said, “Yes, Ma, I am. It’s nineteen-eighty, not nineteen-fifty. Get used to it. I’m not wearing a hankie on my head.” She glanced at the lace already bobby-pinned in place on her mother’s hair. “And I’m not wearing a dress. If you don’t want to be seen with me in pants, fine. I won’t go at all.”
    “Stop already,” said Lou. “We’re gonna be late if we don’t get going. Y’uns can argue about this in the car.”
    Sylvia continued to grumble under her breath as Lou locked the door and they all got into his maroon Cadillac Sedan Deville. Teresa, from long practice, ignored the grumbling. It’s not going to work . She longed to say it but kept her mouth shut.
    Lou drove three blocks and stopped in front of a two-story brick house that had been Sylvia’s home growing up. He gave a loud honk of the horn.
    “Don’t blare the horn like that,” Sylvia said.
    Teresa opened her door. “I’ll go.” She walked up the porch steps just as the front door opened.
    “Hey, Nita,” Teresa said with a smile. “Everyone coming today?”
    “Not Elisa,” said her aunt. “She has a headache.”
    Two other women came out and locked the door behind them.
    “Here, Ana Maria,” Teresa said, offering an arm. “Let me help you.”
    “You’re a good girl,” said Ana Maria, grunting a little as her arthritic knees creakily lowered her down the steps.
    The three aunts, all with their lace in place on their heads, their features clearly marking them as Sylvia’s sisters, crammed themselves into the back seat while Teresa slid into the front seat next to her mother.
    As they neared St. Rafael, Sylvia turned to Teresa. “Did you get to confession yesterday?”
    Teresa looked at her mother. “Ma, I worked until closing yesterday. I didn’t get home until after eight. When was I supposed to go to confession?”
    “Then you don’t take Holy Communion today,” Sylvia said. “It’s a sin.”
    Let it go, said a voice in Teresa’s head, but “Oh, well, we wouldn’t want sinners to go to Communion now, would we?” Teresa heard herself say.
    “What did you expect?” Aunt Anita said, laughing at her sister as Sylvia fumed. “My goddaughter has a brain and she knows how to use it.”
    “She has a mouth and she knows how to use that, too,” Sylvia replied testily.
    All Teresa’s life, it had irritated her mother when Anita came to Teresa’s defense. Teresa turned and looked out the window with a small smile on her face.
    Lou took two parking places in the church lot. “What?” he said when he saw Teresa staring at his blatant straddling of the line. “I just had it washed and waxed. I don’t want any idiot dinging my doors.”
    Teresa shook her head. “So much for Christian charity,” she muttered as she turned toward the church, helping Aunt Ana Maria up the steps.
    Several people waved as the Benedettos and the Martelli sisters settled in their pew, third from the front on the right, the same pew they sat in every week.
    “Where’s Gianni?” Anita whispered as people shifted and coughed, waiting for Mass to begin.
    “He went out last night,” Sylvia whispered back. “He’ll go to a later Mass.”
    Teresa coughed to cover her laugh. Like hell he will, but she didn’t say that, either. Her mother would never hear anything against Gianni. Sylvia blindly chose to believe that Gianni was waiting until he married his girlfriend, Angelina, before having sex, but Teresa knew better. If Gianni was out last