Chapter 7
After the meeting with the deacons' wives had ended, I finally took the sedative my doctor gave. I'm only now waking up. There is a strange hush, and it envelops me. Light drifts like butterflies across the semidarkness in front of my eyes. My blouse is stuck to my skin. I sit up, reach around, and struggle to untangle it. A moment passes before I remember where I am and why I'm here. Leland is dead. On a slab at the morgue. Alone. In the dark. Cold.
I shiver.
Should I be there?
And do what? Hold his hand?
My first pregnancy, I carried the baby five months. I lost her in the middle of a hot July night, and I woke screaming—the pain, excruciating, as if someone had reached a hand through my back and ripped her out of me. Leland carried me to the car. He cried with me later wh
