Jeremy didn’t move, as if he was frozen in this moment.

"Jeremy?" I shook his leg.

He blinked a couple of times, then muttered, "Huh?" before he shifted his shoulders so that he faced me.

"You were surprised, too," I repeated, wanting to make sure this hadn’t been a secret he’d kept from me.

He nodded slowly. "I...I don't. I didn't see this coming."

He was telling the truth. I knew because Jeremy’s body had a built-in lie detector — he’d always get this little eyebrow twitch when he was telling a lie, and right now, not a thing moved on my friend. That meant that Jeremy hadn’t a clue and if he didn’t know, then no one did. The Robinsons would have told the man they called, ‘son’ first.

"Do you want to go back there and talk to him and Lady Robinson?” I asked.

"And say what?" he replied, over the choir’s singing.

“My help...all of my help cometh from the Lord.”

It was an appropriate song because right now, Pilgrim’s Rest needed a whole lot of help that would only come from the Lord. But there didn’t seem to be anyone in the congregation who noticed our award winning choir. Everyone was chatting with their pew neighbors as if they were sitting in their dining room spilling tea over Sunday dinner.

"I...I gotta get out of here.” Before I could react, Jeremy stood and crossed over the five people to get to the aisle.

Following him, I jumped up and did the same, excusing myself to the faces that were so familiar since this third row was where Jeremy and I sat for every service.

This New Orleans church was the spiritual home for both of us. I was a Senior at Xavier University, a college that was about ten minutes away from Dillard. But no matter how lit our Saturday nights were with my sorority’s events or his fraternity’s parties, come Sunday morning, we were seated in this third row in church, standing on the Christian foundation that our parents had laid within us.

I rushed behind Jeremy as he dashed toward the doors and for a moment, I wondered if the deacons would let us out. Not that anyone would have been able to stop Jeremy. He barged past like he was a speeding locomotive and the deacon had to jump out of my friend’s way.

I was in a full sprint when I passed by the deacon and smiled an apology to him before I stepped from the sanctuary into the lobby.

“Hey,” I shouted out as I ran behind Jeremy, catching him before he stepped outside. “Are you all right?”

He shook his head. “Reverend Robinson just stepped down,” he said as if I hadn’t been sitting next to him. “Do you know what had to happen for him to decide to do this? After what this church means to him? He built this place,” Jeremy said, pointing to the stained glass ceiling, just one of the opulent features in the building.