“Oh yeah, you told me about that.”

“The girls are really excited and I can’t wait to escort them through the fair tomorrow.”

“Uh...tomorrow?”

“Yeah,” I said, turning back to the racks so that I could find the outfit I’d set aside for Jean. “No worries. I cleared my schedule weeks ago. I’ll be fine because this is too important to me. I’ll be back at the church on Friday.”

“Well uh, I’m sorry about this babe, but Dru’s gonna have to cover for you at the job fair because I need you to handle the ministers meeting. I have to go out of town.”

I narrowed my eyes as I turned to him and over his shoulder, I saw Dru tiptoeing toward the exit. Good, she’d keep the girls occupied while I set my husband straight.

When we were alone, I said, “The ministers meeting? I never attend those. And you’re going out of town? Where?” Before he could respond, I fired another question at him, “And why am I just finding out about this trip?”

“Because I forgot.” Jeremy held up his hands. “I have a speaking engagement in Atlanta and Dana just reminded me.”

“You’re speaking at a conference and...you forgot?”

There were two things that bothered me about this as I folded my arms. How did one forget speaking at a conference and why was this happening so much? Maybe ‘so much’ was an exaggeration, but in the last three or so months, Jeremy had come home telling me about some emergency trip he had to take — because he’d forgotten more than a couple of times.

“Yeah, babe. I forgot.” Jeremy lowered his eyes away from mine and rubbed his brow. “Sorry, but I really need you to sit in the meeting for me this time. They’re voting on taking the irrigation funding project to the board, and that’s not something I want to do. You have to be there to sway the discussion and then make sure they vote my way. I want it nixed.”

I shook my head. “No, I can’t do that, Jeremy.”

He lifted his gaze and now, looked at me with a frown. “What do you mean?”

“I...can’t...do...it. I can’t drop everything because you have to speak at a conference that you forgot. You forgot, Jeremy, not me. So you need to either cancel the board meeting or the conference. Either one, it doesn’t matter to me.”

“You know that’s not possible.” He sighed with exasperation. “I can’t cancel the ministers meeting. Reverend Lewis is flying in from Los Angeles.”

I inhaled. That was true. The man who’d been the assistant pastor at Pilgrim’s Rest had turned out to be a valuable resource and mentor to Jeremy as we were building New Kingdom. Right away, Jeremy had asked and Reverend Lewis had agreed to be a part of his ministerial team, even though he didn’t live in D.C.. But that hadn’t mattered. For the last ten years, Reverend Lewis had mentored Jeremy from afar and flew in once a quarter for these meetings.