Amy Welborn has published three short stories, available as a Kindle e-book.
The pews were new, light wood, and as Marie moved up to the tenth row from the front, Joseph side, she passed the one constant: old women, murmuring. Not prayers, anymore though, unless they now prayed to each other, foreheads meeting, laughing softly.
She slid into the pew, instinctively started to kneel and almost hit the floor. No kneelers. She sat back and remembered the last time, in this same spot – old, dark pews then, not only with kneelers, but also with that clip on the back of the pew in front of you for men’s hats. She remembered, at that Mass, a shrunken Auntie trying to maintain her perfect organ-bench posture, and failing, leaning against Marie’s shoulder – she remembered that even with what had been stripped and added, the wedding cake had still dominated that back wall, the bare wood floors still creaked, and the organ still loomed behind and above. Not that anything was played – by whomever was playing – up to Auntie’s standards. “Listen,” she sniffed. “That girl doesn’t even try to pedal at all. The sound is so thin.”
