Revival Season by Monica West (romantic novels to read txt) 📕

the sparkling linoleum that looked as though it had just been waxed. In its emptiness, the church’s familiar interior felt disorienting. Dawn and I walked past the empty pastoral offices and toward the double doors of the sanctuary. I took a deep breath and pushed the doors open. Rows of orderly pews cast long shadows into the aisle while the lonely organ sat on the edge of the stage. Jesus looked down from behind the altar with mournful eyes that followed us as we found a spot on the carpet in front of the pulpit. I placed Micah’s box down and reached around in my backpack for the bottle of holy oil that I had plucked from Papa’s stash.

“Stand here.” I touched Dawn’s shoulders and adjusted her position. Not directly in the path of the cross but a little to the left of it, exactly where Papa conducted his healings. When she was in place, I took a step back and felt breath enter my lungs as the weight of what I was about to do fell on me.

“Dawn Herron, do you believe that I have the power to heal you?” A noise rattled the windows: the whoosh of tires, followed by the rumble of a shaking load. A semi, not Papa’s car pulling into the parking lot. He’s not here; he’s not here. I repeated it as my hands bobbled the bottle of holy oil.

“Dawn,” I began again. I was standing upright, but it felt like I was collapsing, like I would fall if the slightest thing touched me—a feather, a hand, a gust of wind. I dug my toes in the carpet, hoping to root myself to the ground. Dawn looked up at me with eyes that were simultaneously desperate and pleading, and my gaze danced from the cleft in her chin to the smooth dome of her forehead. I kept my focus on her face even when I wanted to stare at the scar on her chest.

“What ails you, Dawn?” I had to ask the question even though I already knew the answer. It was part of the healing, and I couldn’t deviate from the plan now.

“I have a bad heart.”

I gripped her shoulders; either she was trembling, or I was. She crossed her arms over her chest before I even told her to. She had done this for Papa so many times that she knew the drill by heart.

“Do you believe that I have the power to heal you?”

Papa’s voice had a shape that filled up the space around it as it rose to the rafters and pressed on the eaves; my voice was a whisper in comparison. My watch glinted to the right of my face—ten minutes had passed. Dawn’s eyes were now wide open as they fixated on the ornate chandeliers. And even though some air that came from the nearby vent made the chandelier’s glass orbs dance, Dawn’s pupils weren’t moving.

I closed my eyes and willed the movements to come back to me, but now that Dawn was in front of me, the practiced ritual felt elusive. Was this the moment when I was supposed to trace the cross on her forehead or bow my head and say a prayer? I flipped the cap on the bottle of holy oil and doused my fingers with the warm liquid, watching a few drops escape to the carpet. In the thousands of healings Papa had performed, an errant drop had never slipped out of his holy oil bottle.

“In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, you are healed.” I traced a slick sign of the cross on Dawn’s forehead—top to bottom, left to right—and pressed my palm against the cross to seal the healing. A wave of heat came into my arm as my hand lingered on Dawn’s head for longer than Papa’s generally did; my hand burned as though a fever was seeping out of her body and igniting mine. I yanked it away from her head, but the heat was still there—radiating from my palm to my fingers and from my fingers through my arm and to the rest of my body. I shook my arm, but that only made the fire rage hotter inside. Dawn loomed in front of me; beads of sweat mingled with the glistening remnants of holy oil that dripped into her eyebrows.

Dawn swayed on her heels. I swallowed the pain and hurried behind her, sticking my knee out and straightening my left arm to brace myself for her fall. White heat flared behind my eyes, darkening the room little by little. I took deep breaths in and out, training my eyes on Dawn, even as she started to fade. The room grew darker in stages as Dawn’s swivel slowed and then her body flexed. She was supposed to fall—all of Papa’s people fell into his arms—but Dawn got steadier the longer she stood in front of me. I walked around to face her. Still standing, Dawn’s eyes snapped open, and she looked at the room around her. She didn’t have the glazed-over look of the newly healed.

She took a few slow steps toward the front pew and sat. Fifteen minutes had passed. I eased myself down next to her on the pew, but some kind of electricity flowed through my body along with the heat.

“Dawn?”

“Hmm?” She turned her neck ever so slightly from where her gaze was fixed on the altar—like a breeze had tickled her cheek—but her eyes landed over my head. Her lips were pressed together, as though opening them would require too much effort.

“Are you okay?”

She nodded. I wanted to ask her what she was feeling, but we had to leave—there would be time to talk later. It took more effort than it should have to pick up Micah’s box with my left arm and help Dawn to her feet with my right. She leaned into my quaking body, and we walked toward the sanctuary doors and out into the hallway, where the faint tapping