“He’ll be waiting for a long time if that’s what he’s doing,” Nessa said. “I don’t love Samuel.”

“You could give him a chance.” Cora’s voice turned slightly icy.

“No, thanks,” Nessa said.

“Well, then, can’t you let your dad use that house for a retreat in the winter months when you’re back in Turkey at your job?” Cora asked.

Now we’re getting to the real reason for this call, Nessa thought.

Cora O’Riley was a master manipulator, and she’d played her hand well. Nessa should feel so guilty for not going to Israel with the group that to make up for it, she would agree to let the Reverend Isaac use the house.

“Only if April and Flynn both agree to the idea,” Nessa said, “and I doubt they will. They both say they’re sticking around for a long time. There just wouldn’t be room for any more adults in the house.”

She was amazed at how good it felt to be able to say that to her mother, but somewhere in the back of her mind, she expected to be sent to her room to pray for forgiveness for talking to her mother like that.

“Sometimes I wonder how two godly people like your father and me ever produced a child like you,” Cora said.

Nessa could easily visualize her mother setting her jaw and her mouth in a firm line with her dark, perfectly arched brows drawn down in a frown.

“You should have studied his mother a little more before you married Daddy,” Nessa said. “They say I’m just like Nanny Lucy.”

“God forbid!” Cora said, and she hung up on her.

April stuck her head in the door. “You about finished? Flynn says he’ll be ready to set the air conditioners in a couple of hours, and it’s looking like it could blow up a pretty fierce storm out here.”

“I’m ready,” Nessa answered. “Just let me run to the house, make a trip through the bathroom, and grab my purse. You can wait for me in the SUV if you want to. Just get the AC going.”

April nodded and jogged in that direction as Nessa closed the shed and took off in a slow run to the house. Storms aren’t always on the outside of a body, she thought as she cleared the porch and ran to the bathroom.

She could hear her father quoting that verse about loving thy mother and father. “I do love you,” she muttered, “but the Bible doesn’t say I have to like you.”

April hated thunder and lightning, but at least she had a roof over her head, and if things got too bad, she could always take shelter in the cellar. She wasn’t too fond of that closed-in space, either, but she and Nanny Lucy had spent lots of nights down there waiting out a storm.