Eight
Saylor
Sister Mena wasn’t the friendliest person I’d ever met, but she wasn’t rude either. She wore a tight bun, and although she had very few wrinkles on her face, her hair was gray. The long-sleeved tan button-up top and khaki slacks she wore appeared as if she might need to go shopping for some items in here herself. I wasn’t sure whose sister she was or why she wanted to be called that, but I did it anyway.
The entire place was worse than the photos. Boxes and boxes of clothes with sizes written in marker on poster board taped to the front cluttered the place. The smell of unwashed laundry penetrated the air, and the piles of shoes weren’t helping the stench. Some of them didn’t need to be anywhere but a dump. I had a feeling the same could go for some of the clothes as well.
Sister Mena pushed up her wire-framed glasses, held together on the side by tape, and looked down at the ideas I had sketched for the display. When I had told her I wanted to volunteer my time, I hadn’t thought this was what she had in mind. Three times now, she had informed me this was not a paid position. It was solely charity. She must have thought I was either too stupid to understand that or I was hard of hearing.
“Other than me and Sister Helen, who rarely comes in due to her health, there is no one else who volunteers here regularly. This is an awfully big project, and quite frankly, I think it’s unnecessary. Those who need clothes don’t require this place to look like a department store. They’re in need. They are just thankful they don’t have to dig something out of the dumpster,” she told me, then straightened back up from where she’d been bending over the binder. “I appreciate the time and thought you put into this, Miss Rice, but it is just not something we can do with so little help and time.”
I was not going to get frustrated with her. Even though she hadn’t even seen half of all I had put together to show her. She had taken one look at me and immediately shut me out before I could say a word. I’d tried to dress conservatively. Businesslike. That seemed to have been the wrong decision.
“Yes, I understand that you are short-staffed here, but that is not an issue. What I am showing you here, I intend to do it myself. If I need help, I will do my own recruiting. Nothing will—”
“It’s just not what we need here,” she said, shaking her head as she cut me off. “This is simply a mission. It doesn’t need all this other stuff. The things you’re talking about will cost money we can’t spend. All donations should go directly to stocking more clothes.”
Again, she wasn’t letting me get to that part. It was in my binder—on page ten. I started to tell her that I would have the things we needed donated when the bell above the door rang, and she enthusiastically spun around, putting her back to me, happy for any reason to shut me up.
I took the moment to regroup, taking a deep breath.
“Father Jude,” she exclaimed with a clap of her hands.
All my other thoughts went right out the window as I jerked my head up to lock eyes with his. He looked exactly like he had an hour and a half ago. Nothing had changed.
“Sister Mena,” he replied, barely giving her a glance before his curious gaze was back on me. “Saylor, hello again.”
Did fate hate me? Seriously? I was trying to do something good, something that would be worthwhile—even though a very uptight, unimaginative woman was standing in my way—and I did not need a distraction.
“Father Jude,” I replied.
Sister Mena turned back to look at me with a surprised expression, which proved she had other ones that didn’t resemble a bored grimace. “You know each other?” she asked, turning to direct the question to Jude.
There was a twitch to his lips as he moved his attention from me to Mena. I was done calling her Sister. Even in my head. It was dumb. She wasn’t my sister.
“We do,” he confirmed. “Saylor has attended one of our Saturday meetings and a Sunday Mass.”
Mena swung her eyes back to me. This time, she was clearly sizing me up. Doing a once-over to make sure she hadn’t overlooked something. I hadn’t realized Mena was Catholic, but it seemed she was since she cared that I had gone to Mass. Once.
“What do you have there?” Jude asked me.
Maybe he would see the potential in it and help me persuade Mena since she liked him so much.
“My ideas to organize the place, to make it easier to find things, make it more appealing for those who come in so they feel less like they are digging and more like they are shopping.”
“And I explained, Father Jude, it isn’t in the budget. We don’t have the volunteers for that kind of thing,” Mena said, interrupting me yet again.
“And neither is required. I want to take this on myself. I’ll do all the work. No help needed, no funds required. In fact, I intend to get more funding and donations to give a wider selection. Things such as new underwear, socks, bras. This is a large area, and so much can be done—”
“The people who come in here are desperate. They do not care about those things. They care about having something to put on themselves—” Mena started, and this time, I was going to be the one to cut her off.
“I understand that, but why can’t they have a place they can walk into to get those things that doesn’t feel like charity? Where they don’t have to spend time digging in boxes? A place where they can feel like they have their self-respect?”
Mena shook her head. “Someone like you doesn’t understand the people who come in those doors. You’ve never wanted for anything in your life. It’s all been given to you.”
I held her gaze, more determined than ever to get her to listen to me. To get her to give in a little. “No one can give you a purpose, Sister Mena. That’s not handed out.”
She stared at me, as if trying to understand what I meant by that. Admitting I didn’t have a purpose was hard, but doing it in front of Jude, the sexy priest, was incredibly difficult.
“Can I see the binder? Will you show me your ideas?” Jude asked.
I shifted my gaze to meet his. He held out a hand for me to give the binder to him. Showing him seemed like a way to only make Mena angrier with me, but then, without her cutting me off, I might be able to get through the entire thing. If she’d listened to it all, I couldn’t see how saying no even made sense.
“It’s easier if you come here and let me point it out and explain,” I told him.
“She wants to make it look like some upscale place.”
Jude held up a hand. “Let her talk, Sister.”
Mena tensed, but her expression reminded me of a child who had done something wrong and was scolded.
He turned back to me. “Start at the beginning,” he encouraged.
Although I was a little gun-shy now since Mena had made me question my ideas, I flipped to the front and began again. Highlighting how my proposed set-up would make it easier to see the seasonal clothing, school uniforms. How we could seek out other churches to ask their congregations for donations for back-to-school clothing and items for the winter, when keeping warm was vital.
Mena didn’t interrupt me. Although, when I mentioned eliminating the smell here by washing items that had been brought in because everyone deserved to be given something clean to wear, she cleared her throat like it was literally killing her not to say something. Father Jude’s request, however, kept her silent. I was amazed.
When I finished, I pointed to the far-right back wall that held boxes stacked to the ceiling. “I was even thinking that once this was done, I could work on getting a food pantry started, run on donations only, just like the clothes—”
“That would demand more man-hours than one person can do. You do not understand—”
“Sister Mena.” Jude’s tone wasn’t gentle. There was a commanding edge to it.
The way Mena immediately shut the hell up put a whole new light on the kind, charming priest. And I liked it.
I had to gather myself because he’d just made my nipples hard.
Clearing my throat nervously, I closed the binder. “It was just an idea. One I would take complete responsibility for. There are a lot of resources in the area, and if we can pull them together to help those in our community who need it, then I don’t see why not.”
She was going to tell me no the moment Jude walked out that door. I already knew it. His telling her to be quiet twice were marks that I could never recover from. I wouldn’t let it stop me though. I’d just start one myself. Where, I had no idea, but I would figure it out.
“All right,” Jude said. “If you want to take this on, then it is yours. It would be an outreach for the community and a much-needed one. We’d probably draw in people from the surrounding cities too. Which isn’t a bad thing. We are here to help the ones who need it.” He turned his gaze to Mena. “The vows you took are to serve the world through your work. There isn’t a said limit on that work.”
Vows? What was he talking about? What vows? And why was he telling me I could do this instead of Mena?
“Yes, Father,” she replied, then turned to look at me. “I am sorry I wasn’t open-minded. I fear I’m used to picking up the slack, and I saw this as potential for that. However, my life is to serve the Lord. My time is his.”
I wanted to squeal and jump up and down, but I was still working this out in my head. Had she really just let Jude tell her what to do because she was Catholic and he was a priest? It’d sounded as if this was her charity or she ran it.
“When would you like to start?” Jude asked me.
Really?
“Uh, well, now. I mean, I can start going through all the boxes of clothes and sort them into loads to be washed, then take them home to clean.”
“We have a washer and dryer in the rec hall,” Jude informed me. “No need to take them back and forth to your house. I can show you where it is.”
“The water bill, Father. There are—”
“Sister Mena,” he said in a gentler tone this time, “this is the church’s ministry. We have neglected it for too long, and until I listened to all that Saylor would like to do here, I hadn’t realized just how much.”
My gaze swung to Mena—Sister Mena. As in a nun. She worked for God. This was owned by Holy Rosary. Father Jude was now sorta my boss.
Holy shit.
And where the hell was Sister Mena’s head thingy she was supposed to be wearing? And her robe? Anything would be better than what she had on now.