The Lone Star Lonely Hearts Club Read Online Free

“Are you Andrea Kendricks?”
    I nodded, hoping my forehead wasn’t blinking LAPSEDPRESBYTERIAN in bright neon and he wasn’t the religion police, come to arrest me for missing too many Sundays to count.
    “Come with me,” he said, though I merely saw his mouth move. The amplified voice of the choir and pump of the pipe organ filled my ears, drowning out all but the nervous thump of my heart.
    The fellow took my arm, leading me forward, down the aisle where I’d once, long ago, imagined my daddy would walk me one day, when I was a bride.
    So much for childhood dreams.
    I had rarely been back in the church since Daddy’s funeral, and I was almost afraid that lightning would strike. But it didn’t.
    I kept my gaze fixed ahead, at the portrait of Bebe, and, for an instant, I saw instead my father’s polished mahogany casket, blanketed with blood-red roses from my mother’s garden. I could almost smell the too-sweet scent of them, cutting off my breath, making me sick to my stomach.
    The passing faces blurred in my peripheral vision. I feared for a moment that we might keep going, straight up to the pulpit, before the usher stopped at the third row from the front, handing me over to a woman dressed in subdued charcoalgray Chanel.
    Cissy.
    My mother reached for my hand and drew me into the pew, beside her. Even as I sat down, she didn’t let go. Merely hung on more tightly.
    As the final strains of “Amazing Grace” rang out like the chime of a bell, resonating in the air and in my skull, I glanced into my mother’s eyes and saw her tears. Emotion bubbled inside me like Old Faithful, threatening to erupt.
    Despite my best intentions, I began to weep.
    For a woman I’d barely known.
    For my daddy.
    And for the irreparable hole in my heart that even time could never heal.

Chapter 3
    I t was nearly eleven o’clock when the service ended, sad hymns sung, psalms read, and eulogies rendered.
    My body sagged against the pew, drained in every sense.
    It astounded me, the number of people who’d gotten up to gush about the generosity of Bebe Kent. No wonder the woman never had children with all the foundations she’d run and fundraisers she’d chaired. She wouldn’t have had time for them.
    Which made me consider Cissy’s choice to bear a child—me—when she’d always been as devoted to philanthropy as her buddy Bea. As the story went, she’d had to leave in the middle of a thousand-dollar-a-plate dinner for the Leukemia Society at the Anatole in order to deliver. My birth, as I’d often been reminded, had lasted hour upon excruciating hour and had been unbearably painful, un-numbed by aspirin or an epidural.
    I would never call Cissy a hands-off mother—because she’d always been a huge presence in my life—but she had needed help raising me due to her busy social agenda. She wouldn’t have been able to do all the things she did if Sandy Beck hadn’t been there to dress and feed me, take me to the pediatrician, or drop me off at school when my mother—or Daddy—couldn’t. Still, I knew I’d been lucky to grow up with married parents who had truly loved each other and who’d wrapped me tightly in their protective cocoon. I’d known too many kids who were the products of bitter divorces and extended stepfamilies that didn’t in any way resemble the saccharine Brady Bunch save for the sibling rivalry. (“ Marcia, Marcia, Marcia! How come she got a brand-new BMW Roadster when I’m stuck with Mummy’s old Jaguar XJS? You must love her better!”)
    I glanced sideways at Mother, at her perfect profile, the gray pearls at her throat, not a hair out of place, and it amazed me to realize I had pieces of her inside me, genes that defined me as permanently hers (for better or for worse). At this stage of my life, I was only starting to recognize how much of myself came from her and my father: expressions I caught in the mirror, words that emerged from my mouth that sounded awfully familiar, quirks I swore