The Deal, the Dance, and the Devil by Victoria Christopher Murray Page A

my mother.”
    I held up my hands to the heavens. “What … did … I … say?” I asked, my voice now as loud as his.
    “All that stuff about how she was gonna have to go to another room and get a new roommate. That’s not gonna happen.”
    I shook my head, giving myself a few seconds to choose the right words. “First of all, Ruby is my mother, too, and I would never say anything to hurt her. Secondly, what I said was the truth.”
    “You must not be listening to me.”
    “No, I’m not. Because you’re living in some alternate world. We don’t have the money for Pearly Gates. Hell, we don’t have the money to live here.” I pointed to our house.
    “See? This is why I didn’t want to tell you anything.”
    A passing car’s horn stopped me from saying something that I knew for sure I would’ve regretted. We both lookedtoward the slow-moving, rust-colored Volvo. From the passenger side, Lucy Miller smiled and waved; I wiggled my fingers, too. But that was it; I didn’t have enough in me for a smile.
    The Millers driving by reminded me and Adam that we were on the edge of our garage, in the middle of a Sunday afternoon, airing our business for every neighbor to hear.
    I marched behind Adam into the mudroom.
    “Look,” he began once we were out of the sight and sound of the street. Calmer, he said, “I understand that you’re worried, but how many times do I have to tell you that it’ll all work out?”
    “And how many times do I have to make my point?” I wanted to stomp my feet and throw a tantrum. I would have if I’d thought that would make Adam listen.
    He said, “When I get this job with American Express …”
    “ If you get this job.”
    That made his head jerk back a bit. “When did we start talking about our life in terms of ifs?”
    “Since you lost your job.” I blew out a long breath that was meant to cool me down, but I wasn’t backing down. “Since we’ve struggled to pay every bill. Since we’ve been hiding what we’re going through.”
    “Because of that you’ve lost your faith?”
    He had to be kidding me. Adam said I wasn’t listening to him; what about him hearing me? “I haven’t lost anything, including my ability to face facts. And the fact is that between our mortgage, the children’s tuition, your mother’s care, and my family’s drama, along with everything else, we have twenty thousand dollars a month in bills and less than four thousand in income. That’s the fact, and faith isn’t going to change those numbers.”
    He lowered his head as if my words made him sad. “This is exactly why I didn’t want you involved. You’re emotional and Idon’t need that; it’s distracting. Just stay out of this, Shine. Let me handle our business.”
    He spoke as if he was the genius and I was the fool. And because I didn’t want to go off and act the fool, I just glared at him as I stuffed my hands into my purse and yanked out the keys. I was inside the Kia and edging out of the garage before Adam could blink twice.
    If he wanted to handle it, then fine. I just wondered how he was going to answer our children when they asked him, “Daddy, how did we end up in hell?”

Chapter 14
    T HE SMART THING FOR ME TO do would’ve been to call Tamica. Because with her good sense (when it came to other people) she would’ve listened, then told me to get my butt back to my perfect home and work it out with my perfect husband.
    But since I wasn’t looking to hear anything good about Adam right now, I called Brooklyn.
    “Where are you?” I asked the moment she answered the phone.
    “At church.”
    “Still?”
    “Yeah, I’m putting the final touches on the proposal for the expansion of the homeless shelter.”
    For all the bad press about Brooklyn and Cash being nothing but prosperity prophets and pulpit pimps, there was nothing you could say about their hearts and their commitment to the underdog, the underprivileged, and the underrepresented. From the church-affiliated