3. Jeb
Chapter three
Jeb
“Spring is the season for a rebirth.” The pastor’s voice booms through the microphone. They’re the first words I’ve listened to all morning. I’ve spent most of the service focused on the flower in the stained-glass window behind the pulpit, not hearing a damn thing.
It’s Easter Sunday, and I promised my nieces I would go to church to hear them sing in the choir. The stone church has all the windows open, a nice breeze flowing through. There are too many people for my liking, but the flowers strewn around and the fresh air make it bearable.
I don’t even deserve a re-birth.
“I know there’s someone out there thinking they don’t deserve it, but they’d be wrong.” I glance at the pastor when he says the words, but he’s not looking at me. I doubt anybody here knows my story anyway. My sister lives an hour and a half away, and goes by a different last name. My name was all over the news back home, but here…I can almost pretend to be someone else.
I don’t want to, though. That would be getting off too easily.
“Listen up, Uncle Jebby. It’s almost our turn to sing.” Vaeda nudges my side.
“We all do terrible things in life. It’s not up to us to judge the actions of our past. It’s up to God,” the man up front preaches.
Well, where the fuck was God six months ago?
Vaeda and Flora sing a lively little tune near the altar while I stare their way—not fully listening or being present. If my little league baseball coach were here, he’d smack my hat and shout look alive .
“Jeb, they’ll ask you what you thought of the song. You have to actually listen.” Sophie elbows my arm.
I half-ass listen to the band of children singing off-key and almost find myself enjoying the catchy refrain. When the girls are done singing that song and the next one starts, I lose my fucking mind.
“He lives. He lives,” the whole congregation bellows. It’s an Easter song, I know. I’ve heard it before. Hell, I even have most of the lyrics memorized.
I can’t appreciate the song lyrics today. My mind distorts all of my thoughts just like it has for the past six months. Six months and one week.
Rhett doesn’t live.
“I gotta go.” I mumble the words to my parents and my sister as I slide out of the pew, fleeing down the center aisle of the church where all eyes are on me.
The neutrality on my mom’s face made certain she knew there was a possibility I might run. I overheard her talking to my sister on the phone a few days ago, telling her she wished I could be cleansed . Whatever that means. My family thinks being cleansed is as simple as grooming a muddy dog or scrubbing your face in the morning.
I swing open the heavy wooden door in the narthex of the church. The sharp rays of the sun temporarily blind me. I release the rustic door, and a small gust of wind slams it shut. I blink and squint, gravel crunching beneath my feet through the parking lot to my truck. The hot, stagnant air hits me when I open the truck door, so I roll the windows down; the fresh Virginian air and the smell of lilacs infiltrate my nostrils as soon as the church is in my rearview mirror.
Fresh start. New beginnings. Cleanse. Rebirth. He is risen. Spring. New life.
He lives.
I’ve always been cynical about people's stories of God speaking to them. Then again, I always pictured a face in the sun like the Teletubbies show that used to be on when I was a kid. There's no way in hell that happens. God doesn’t speak to you like that.
There’s only one place in mind as I turn the GPS on and head toward Jubilee. I’ve thought about it every day since I was discharged from the hospital. Easter Sunday isn’t the day for my shenanigans, but I really don’t care. I’ve already ruined her life by killing him. If I don’t do it now, I might never.
Fallon McCann has quite possibly fallen off the face of the earth since her late fiancé’s death. I can’t find her on social media, though I found Rhett’s parents’. On my way to physical therapy one day, I saw his dad in his old red Thunderbird. I heard from Sophie that his sister Cara is about to have a baby boy.
But Fallon? Fallon is a roadblock. Has she been able to move forward? Is she knees and elbows with dark circles under her eyes like I am?
I know where she lives—the two-story brick colonial on a couple of acres just outside of town. Their address was printed as part of the police report. Rhett’s last address.
I’ve driven by a few times on the way to the supply shop at work, but there was no car in the driveway. The last time I drove by, a tree limb was down in her side yard. I wondered if Rhett would’ve had that cut and sorted in just a few hours if he were still alive.
I rest my arm on the ledge of the open window, starting to relax a little. Open fields give way to a thick forest, and the smell of honeysuckle infiltrates the cab of the truck, igniting my memory. Carefree childhood days, the joy of getting one little drop of honeysuckle nectar. A stab of pain hits my chest. The forest opens to more fields of hay and scattered houses, and I fight the urge to feel happiness. To enjoy spring. To have a re-birth.
And I drive on.
It just doesn’t feel right. A breakthrough feels like a cop-out.
I’m suffocating in my own fucking skull.