Miss Julia Speaks Her Mind Read Online Free PDF Page B

tipping it off the floor. He smiled and shook his head. “Not from him. Never a word of any intention like that. But I heard plenty about it while I was on the session. Seems W.L. hinted around about it to Larry Ledbetter, and Ledbetter took it to heart. He’s been planning how to spend that windfall for years and, since W.L.’s death, the whole session’s been discussing new building plans. That’s one reason I resigned.”
    “You what?” I couldn’t believe I’d heard right. “You can’t resign from the session! You were elected, Sam. How could you resign?”
    “Easy,” he said. “I just did it. I thought things would change when the church began to rotate elders, but they haven’t. Bunchof old coots on there now who haven’t had an idea of their own since nineteen-fifty. I got tired of fightin’ ’em.”
    “Well,” I said, not quite able to take it in. I’d never heard of anybody resigning from the session except for a terminal disease or a move out of town. “Well,” I said again, “I guess I shouldn’t be surprised at anything you do, Sam Murdoch.”
    I got up and walked to the window, maybe hoping my problem out there had disappeared. But there he was, sitting on a garden bench with his head down and that grocery sack hugged to his chest. Deputy Bates was leaning over, his elbows on his knees, talking to him. I watched as the boy shook his head, then a bit later nodded at something Deputy Bates said. The child hadn’t been raised right, which didn’t come as any surprise.
    “What am I going to do, Sam?” I turned away from the window as I realized how much I wanted Sam to approve any course of action I took.
    “I take it you’re planning to keep the boy?”
    “I don’t have much choice, though Deputy Bates is going to do everything he can to find that woman.” I fumbled for my handkerchief as the injustice of it all flew through me again. “I ought to sue her! And I just may do it, if he ever finds her.”
    “Careful with that kind of talk, Julia,” Sam said, very carefully himself. “The last session meeting I attended, there was some discussion of suing you.”
    “Me! What on earth for?”
    “Money. Some on the session, a good many, in fact, think there’s a better than even chance of laying claim to some of W.L.’s estate, based on what Larry Ledbetter calls verbal commitments to him. He seems to think that a promise made to a member of the clergy ought to carry more weight than a twenty-year-old will.” Sam paused, studied his empty plate, then looked me straight in the eye. “I’ll tell you this, Julia, when a preacher and his session decide the Lord needs a new building, there’s verylittle that can stop them. Except how to pay for it, and that’s where they figure you come in. So I want you to watch yourself. Don’t imply anything, don’t promise anything, and, above all, don’t sign anything.”
    Well, that really took my breath away, but at the same time a reassuring thought entered my mind. “That’s why you resigned, Sam, isn’t it?”
    “Since I’m the executor of the will, I couldn’t very well be party to an effort to have it set aside. I won’t deny that money’s important, but the idea of a church suing one of its own members to get it is more than I can stomach. Especially if that member is a helpless widow woman.” He grinned until I had to smile back.
    “Huh,” I snorted, “I’ll show them a helpless widow woman, and I’ll show them a few Scripture verses, too. ‘Ye shall not afflict any widow or fatherless child,’ Exodus twenty-two, twenty-two, and that’s just one. So with you and Binkie Enloe on my side, to say nothing of the Lord, I’m surprised they’d even consider such a thing.”
    “Oh, they’ll try to get some big firm out of Raleigh or Atlanta, but they won’t have any luck. The only way they could overturn that will is to come up with a later one.”
    “They’re a bunch of fools,” I pronounced, “and I can’t