In Chester, the centerpiece of the whole town was Zion Church, which sat right in the middle of downtown. The church was the heart of the town, and my father, Samuel Harris, was the man who ran it, just as Grandpa James had before him, and Great-Grandpa Joseph had before him. Daddy never said it, but I was certain he was disappointed when he didn’t have a son to take over the church someday after he stepped down.

He had asked me, and I’d respectfully declined. Finn had gotten into medical school in Tennessee, and like the good wife I was, where he led was where I followed. I followed him many different ways throughout his schooling, and I thought Atlanta was the final stop. When he told me he applied for a position in Chester, I had to admit I was surprised.

He used to say he never wanted to return to small-town life, always said it suffocated him.

Dad respected my choice of not wanting to take over the church and said he was proud of me, and Mama respected that I stood by my husband’s side. There was a reason her favorite song was “Stand by Your Man” by Tammy Wynette.

The church was an integral part of my family’s history, and the whole town of Chester gathered in the building more than once a week for sermons, prayer circles, Bible studies, and pretty much any bake sale that took place. Church on Sunday morning was just as common as football on Fridays and whiskey on Saturdays.

In a way, my family was royalty in small-town USA. If you knew the church, you knew our family, and if you knew our family, you knew our wealth.

Daddy claimed the money didn’t matter and that his main purpose was to give back to the community and serve God, but Mama’s red-bottomed shoes and flashy jewelry told a somewhat different story.

She reveled in being small-town royalty. She was Queen Loretta Harris, the pastor’s wife, and boy, did she take that role seriously.

The closer I got to Chester, the tighter my stomach knotted.

It’d been years since I’d packed up my life and relocated with Finn, and the idea of returning home without him terrified me. I hated how loud my insecurities were lately, hated that I cared so much about how the town would judge me.

What would people think?

What would they say?

Worst of all, how would Mama react?

3

Jackson

“Five hundred today, five hundred next week,” I dryly told the woman who kept beating her fake eyelashes toward me. She tried her best to push out her chest in my direction, but it was pointless. I’d already seen what was under that blouse, and there wasn’t much for her to push out.

“But…” She started talking, but I tuned her out. Nothing she could say would interest me. Nothing about small-town USA interested me in the least.

Everything about Chester, Georgia, was a pain in my ass, and I hated that I somehow got trapped there.

It was all so damn annoying, from the small-town gossip to the small-minded folks. The people acted as if they were straight out of a cliché movie with every corny, fictional small-town stereotype, though I supposed the stereotypes had to come from some truth. Maybe Chester was the case study for those shitty films. Either way, I hated the place.

One couldn’t quite call the people of Chester ignorant to the realities of the real world outside of their small quarters because they weren’t unaware of life in the real world. They knew what was happening outside the town.

They knew the current state of the union was a disaster. They understood the poverty sweeping our nation, the drug trafficking stories. They damn well knew about the wildfires, school shootings, marches at the nation’s capital, and rallies for clean drinking water. They knew about our president, both past and present. Yes, the people in Chester, Georgia, knew all about the workings of the real world, they simply much preferred to speak about why Louise Honey wasn’t at Bible study on Thursday night, and why Justine Homemaker was too tired to make homemade cupcakes for the church bake sale on Friday.

They loved to gossip about shit that didn’t matter, which was one of the many reasons I hated living there.

For all the hate I had for the town, it was nice to know the distaste was mutual. Chester’s townspeople hated me just as much as I despised them—maybe even more.

I’d heard people’s whispers about me, but I didn’t give a damn. They called me Satan’s spawn and it had bothered me when I was younger, but the older I got, the more I liked the ring of it. People had harbored an unnecessary fear of my father and me for fifteen or so years. They called us monsters, and after some time, we stepped into on the role.