Sex In The Sanctuary. Lutishia Lovely

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      “Are you ready to go?”

      Vivian jumped, shaken from her walk down memory lane. She was sitting in the living room, waiting for her husband to come down. And here he was in front of her, still melting her just like he did fifteen years ago when she watched him deliver his eloquent tribute to King Brook at the Kewana Valley District’s Baptist Convention.

      “Yes, I’m ready,” she responded as she grabbed her purse, and, rising from the couch, kissed him lightly on the mouth. They headed to the garage and the iridescent, pearl white Jaguar waiting there. They all settled in as Derrick hit the garage door opener, started the car and drove down the long, winding driveway.

      “King called,” Derrick began after a brief silence.

      “When?”

      “Just now.”

      “Must have been important,” Vivian pondered aloud. “He knows how busy Sunday mornings are. What did he want?”

      Derrick’s brow creased slightly as he tried to figure that out himself. “I don’t know. I told him I’d call him later today, between services maybe.”

      Vivian leaned back and looked out the window. It was a beautiful Sunday in Los Angeles with clear blue skies, fluffy white cumulus clouds and picture-perfect palm trees lining the streets. Her mind drifted to the conversation she and Tai had a couple days ago. Tai had seemed unusually quiet and reserved, and when Vivian asked her if everything was okay, Tai had said she was just tired. Since they had four, Vivian had assumed it was the children. Now she was wondering if it was the kids, or something else?

      I think you got something that belongs to me

      Tai feigned illness to get out of morning services. Well, she didn’t really lie. She was sick—sick of perpetrating a fraud, acting as though everything was hunky-dory when it wasn’t. She just didn’t think she could go through the motions of blessed-first-lady-without-a-care-in-the-world today. She went downstairs and crossed the lovely yet cluttered atmosphere of the living and formal dining room and entered the large, ranch-style kitchen. At one time this had been her favorite place.

      She poured a cup of coffee and even though it was only ten in the morning added just a touch of Bailey’s Irish Cream. Tai didn’t drink often. In fact, she’d never drunk alcohol before until a friend’s baby shower, when she was twenty-six. Not that she thought it was a sin. It was just something she’d never been exposed to, or interested in trying. But this morning she felt that she had some serious soul-searching to do, some decisions to make. And she didn’t think God would mind too much if she asked Mr. Bailey to join her in the process.

      Tai leaned back on the island counter and stared out the window into their spacious backyard. She didn’t really see the large oak tree or her children’s brightly colored swing set and battered jungle gym. She didn’t hear the sounds of the robin and crow vying for attention in God’s feathered friends’ choir. Tai didn’t notice that the tulips she and her daughters had planted were budding open with bright color swatches of pink, purple, yellow and red, and had formed a nature necklace around the oak tree’s huge trunk. When Tai looked out into this Sunday morning all she could see was Hope Jones. Petite and powerful, funny and fiery, spiritual and seductive, she was in many ways the exact opposite of Tai’s subdued, almost shylike personality. Hope reminded her a bit of Vivian, except Vivian had more class in her toenail than this woman did in her whole body.

      It was, in fact, her similarity to Vivian and her zeal for God that Tai had initially appreciated when Hope had come to the church as a transplant from Tulsa, Oklahoma. She even had the same hourglass figure as Vivian, much to Tai’s weight-gaining chagrin. Hope had landed a job in Kansas City and said the second thing on her agenda after finding a place to live was finding a church home. She’d fit in immediately with the members of Mount Zion Progressive Baptist Church, a place where the membership, two thousand strong and growing, was more like family than anything else. Hope had attended the same type of close-knit church in Tulsa, though that congregation was much smaller, and she was always searching for the things of God. She had been active in her home church from the time she was baptized at the age of seven, until she left Tulsa. She’d been first a student and later a teacher in their Sunday School, a member of the drama department and lead singer and codirector of the church choir. Her father was head of the Deacon Board, a group of men who carried out the business of running the church under the pastor’s direction. Her mother had been the pianist for years, until she and Hope’s father divorced and her mother had moved her membership to the Methodist church on the other side of town. Hope had stayed at the Baptist church with her father and her friends and by the time she left had become a leader who was now sorely missed. At least those were the facts as told by Mrs. McCormick, and Juanita normally got her facts pretty straight.

      Hope had literally exploded onto Mount Zion’s small scene, a kaleidoscope of energy and enthusiasm, just what the church’s youth department needed. She’d immediately become invaluable to its director, Sister Juanita McCormick, and—although Tai didn’t notice it at first—to her husband as well.

      It wasn’t his first affair. That had happened years ago, right before Princess, their second child, was born. That one she had seen coming a mile away. Tootie “the Floozie” Smith had been her nemesis since high school, a woman who always wanted what she couldn’t have. She’d had an on-again, off-again relationship with СКАЧАТЬ