“I should have been there,” Dru said as if her presence would have changed things. “If I had been there and had been able to look into Reverend Robinson’s eyes, I would have figured it out.”

“I don’t know how you would have. He didn’t say anything except for what I told you.”

She nodded, then belted out, “He got a baby on the side,” as if that was a fact. “You know that's what happened to that reverend over at Fifth Street Baptist. He got a fifteen-year-old girl, who was a member of their church, pregnant. Word is her daddy pulled a gun on him and told him that if he ever came near her again, he’d be swallowing bullets."

"I know. That was something. But that reverend over there...there’d been rumors about him for years. I heard he may have gotten more than one girl pregnant. But Reverend Robinson? For twenty-two years you’ve never heard a thing about him. If he was in the streets like that, it would’ve come out by now."

"Hmph. You just never know what be going on behind church doors,” Dru said.

"Well, ever since I’ve been attending Pilgrim’s Rest, Reverend Robinson has been nothing but upstanding."

"Yeah," Dru said. "That's what he wanted us to believe. But you know when the lights go out some of them pastors are the biggest freaks.”

“You always say that, but my daddy - God rest his soul - never had any drama. As far as I know, he never had any issues at church. In fact, I’ve known a lot of pastors while growing up and most of them are men of God....”

“The key word: men. They are still men walking around in the flesh with all of their sexual organs on the outside just dangling around. It has to be hard for a human to operate like that.”

I chuckled. “You need to stop, Dru. This is serious. Whatever happened with Reverend Robinson is major.”

“It has to be,” she said, matching my tone.

“And Lady Robinson is standing by him.”

“Hmph. Let that be me. Let my husband shame me like that.” She stopped walking, but her neck and her forefinger kept moving. “If that had happened to me, four days later, there would have been a tear-jerking, flower-bringing, homegoing celebration going on. They would’ve been singing ‘Going Up Yonder’ and I would’ve been in the front row, the soprano soloist."

I laughed as Dru went into full-fledged sister girl mode.

“Oh no. I am not the one,” she said. “I’m not gonna be no stand-by-my-preacher-man-husband like these First Ladies out here.”

My laughter stopped, though I still smiled. I didn’t want Dru to know that her words had hit a little too close to my home. People always said what they would and wouldn’t do, but the truth was no one knew how they’d react in any situation. Dru was judging First Ladies when she didn’t know their struggle or their story.