The Choir Director Called Her a Thief at the Potluck — Then the Count Sheet Fell Open
"You took it, Delia. A hundred dollars. From God's house." Brenda Lofton said it sweet as a hymn, loud enough for every table in the fellowship hall to hear it.
Delia Frame has counted the Sunday offering for fourteen years — quiet, plain, in a navy dress and a white apron. Nobody at that potluck wanted to believe her over the choir director in coral and gold.
The plate of green beans was still on the floor when the room turned. Then Roy Plaskett stepped in from the dessert table and made it worse.
Roy is the deacon who runs the church van. He's the one everybody asks about the benevolence fund, and he says the offering was never re-counted, so Delia must just be confused.
But here's the thing. Delia wasn't only carrying a casserole in her apron. She was carrying the count sheet from that morning, the one with the initials already on it, and she hadn't looked at it closely until the green beans hit the tile.
A card in the church office recycling bin says otherwise. It has Roy's handwriting in blue ballpoint.
Martha Pruitt, the church secretary, filed a benevolence request back in March. She says it got lost. She also looks at the floor every time Roy's name comes up in the office.
Delia's own ledger is worse for Roy than for her. It shows his initials on count sheets from three Sundays he wasn't even on the rotation.
The district treasurer happened to visit for the potluck — not invited, just there, holding her brown folder. She's the one who asks to see the page.
Delia lifts it to the window light. Two sets of initials on the same ruled line, and the blue-ink one pressed hard enough to dent the paper. The treasurer slides it into her folder and says the district office opens at nine.
Roy backs into the dessert table. The coconut cake goes over. Nobody helps him pick it up.
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