A Light in the Window (6 page)

“What I hope I never see again,” said Tad, “is a mud slide. Have you ever seen mud slide? It’s as bad as lava out of a volcano. I’ve seen it cover houses above the roof line ...”

“You know what I like about the French?” asked their hostess.

All eyes turned toward her in the great pause she designed to follow this question.

“When they dine, they talk only of food. The meal in front of them is the topic of their most earnest conversation. They would never think of ruining their digestion by talking of politics, and certainly not ... mud,” she said icily.

“But Edith, honey,” said Tad, “mud is one of the things this meetin’ is about.”

Father Tim thought the look she gave her affable guest was needlessly patronizing. “This,” their hostess informed them, “is dinner. The meeting about mud will be held in the library by the fire, with a glass of brandy.” She drummed her fingers lightly on the table and smiled.

The rector could not avoid the thought that presented itself for consideration. It was that Pat Mallory probably threw himself down the stairs.

After the dessert of orange mocha cake with fresh cream, which, to the disappointment of their hostess, he feasted on with his eyes only, he excused himself to check his sugar. Diabetes was the sorriest of infirmities to drag to a dinner party.

In the guest powder room, awash with berry-colored chintz and black marble, he did what he had to do, then lowered the commode seat and sat there, wearily. To tell the truth, he would have preferred a meeting in the parish hall, with everyone drinking coffee out of Styrofoam cups.

What if the rain drew on for another week? Worse yet, for another two or three weeks? It had been known to happen in Mitford, which had its own exclusive weather system. Since nothing could go forward on the nursing-home site, did they want to put Buck Leeper’s crew to work in the attic?

This would mean a good deal of money up front, entirely separate from the construction budget for Hope House, and so far, not one cent had been raised for that effort. Also, the rain could stop, the crew would go back up the hill, and there the attic job would sit, leaving the sanctuary covered with a fine film of dust.

Beginning on the Sunday school now was untimely, he thought. Yes, his mind was definitely clearing on the issue. Mud was not a sound reason to initiate the attic project.

He got up and went into the hall and headed toward the library. Under the pounding of the rain on the skylights, there was an odd silence in the house.

“Where is everybody?” he asked Edith, who came to meet him.

“They thought they should go before it started pouring again, which of course it did. I told them to go ahead—Ed would take you home.”

“I thought we were all going to see your trompe l’oeil in the study.” He felt as if a noose had slipped around his neck. Desperate, he looked for Magdolen. Hadn’t she been standing near the dining room door when he came down the hall? If so, she had vanished.

Edith drew him along by the arm. “We’ll see it later, just the two of us.”

The fire gleamed brightly on the hearth. He saw that someone had pulled the sofa closer to the fire and that the little table where he’d left his notebook now held a silver tray, two glasses, and a crystal decanter.

Dead meat. That’s what Dooley would call him.

That she asked for counseling because it was his job was one thing. That she was holding him against his will was another.

As she moved closer to him on the sofa, he leapt to his feet and began pacing the floor. He couldn’t emphasize enough, he told her, how some involvement with others would help her regain balance. The Children’s Hospital in Wesley might be the best of outlets for her time and energy; he had supported it for years. They were currently anxious for funds to build a cancer unit, and he knew for a fact it was a responsible organization, capable of giving back the truest satisfaction.

But why should she get involved with sick children, she sniffed, which would only make her feel depressed? Besides, where would she find the time? She recited a stunning list of real estate that Pat Mallory had left in her care, including the Shoe Barn and the surrounding property on the highway, not to mention the building that housed the Main Street Grill.

He stood at last in front of the fire, so drowsy and exhausted from the long day, the heavy dinner, Edith’s tearful monologue, and the warmth of the room, that he had to steel himself against dropping down prostrate.

At eleven o’clock, Ed Coffey appeared, hat in hand, reporting the car was stalled and it would be awhile before he could get it going. It seemed rain had got under the hood, somehow.

A likely story, he thought miserably. Now it was too late to call Dooley and say he’d been detained. Of course, the boy had the Mallorys’ number in case he was worried. But chances were, Dooley was sleeping soundly, emitting that light, whiffling snore that he hoped was not a case of adenoids gone haywire.

The rain was still rattling the skylights as if a full batallion were marching over them. He would be lost out there in the storm, his umbrella ripped out of his hand and tossed into a tree, and no light to see by for miles. If, by grace, he made it to town, he might as well go straight to the hospital and check into the emergency room, as he would shortly be dying of pneumonia.

He sat on the sofa, defeated, only to have Edith grasp his knee. Would this never end?

“Edith,” he said firmly, in the voice he knew Emma hated, “it’s been a long day, and we both need rest. I think I’ll just move to the armchair and have a nap while Ed works on the car.”

“Don’t you want to see my trump Iloyd?” she asked piteously.

In reply, he stalked to the armchair and sat down, folding his arms across his chest as tight as armor plating. Just in case, he also crossed his legs and squeezed his eyes shut.

He deserved this. He had asked for it. He might as well have gotten down on his hands and knees and begged for it. Why hadn’t he asked Lew to charge the battery the day after he got home, so he could have driven here under his own steam?

If she laid a hand on him, what could he do besides run for it? Perhaps a coma, if worse came to worst. If he remembered correctly, one simply blanked out and fell down. That, however, could be the most compromising position he could put himself into.

If he ever got out of this one, he would ... what? He would tell Cynthia he would like to go steady.

There it was. The thought that had been waiting to be revealed, waiting to take him by surprise. And yet, he wasn’t surprised.

Instead, he was struck by the irrevocable understanding that Cynthia Coppersmith was a rare find, indeed. Her sweetness, her candor, her joie de vivre and fresh beauty—why had he been so long in appreciating it? And why not enjoy the unexpected gift of happiness that her companionship would surely bring?

He felt a relieved smile spreading over his face and something like freedom in his heart.

Edith sat down on the arm of his chair. “Ummmm,” she crooned, “you look cozy.”

Enveloped at once by the smell of perfume and stale tobacco, he refused to open his eyes. “I am not cozy,” he said through clenched teeth. “I am wanting my bed and a decent night’s sleep.”

“And you shall soon have it!” she snapped. “When will you ever loosen up?”

He drove toward home with a haggard Ed Coffey at daylight, neither of them speaking. The rain had subsided to a wan drizzle.

What if someone saw him bowling along in Edith Mallory’s car at five o’clock in the morning? He slid so far down into the leather that he was sitting on his spine.

What if they passed Percy Mosely, who often arrived at the Grill at five o’clock to do his bookkeeping and load the coffeepots?

Or what if Winnie Ivey spied him on her way to the bakery?

When they pulled to the curb at the rectory, all that could be seen of him was the top of his head, covered by a tweed cap. The five-minute drive had felt like the better part of a day.

Ed turned around as the rector opened the door. The message in the eyes of the exhausted chaffeur was clear: I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for this to happen.

He took Ed’s hand. “God bless you,” he said with feeling.

As he started around the side of the house to the back door, he saw something pink in the hedge. It was Cynthia, in a robe and gown with her hair full of curlers. She stared at him as Ed Coffey pulled quietly away from the curb.

He stared back for one agonizing moment, seeing a certain message in her eyes, as well. She was holding a dripping Violet, who had very likely stayed out all night.

He raised one hand, as if to salute his neighbor, but she turned and dashed through the hedge, the robe flying behind like a coronation mantle. Standing there in the drizzling rain, he heard her back door slam.

His lunch with Miss Sadie and Louella made him feel as if he’d really come home.

He realized he had taken a positive shine to their white bread, and even the processed cheese seemed to possess a certain delicacy.

“I never got Olivia Davenport’s hats to her,” Miss Sadie confessed. “Two whole months of good intentions and nothing more! But Louella and I are going up to the attic this very week and bring them down, aren’t we, Louella?”

Over the pineapple sherbet, his hostess said she wanted to have a meeting with him before too long. Not today, she said, but soon. He remembered other meetings with Miss Sadie and how something major always resulted. In this faded house among the ferns, a bright idea was inevitably taking form.

He told her about the garden statuary, about the moss-covered St. Francis with the missing arm, the seated Virgin with the child, the figure of Jesus carrying a lamb, and the host of wingless cherubs. “Beautiful pieces! A round dozen in all. We’ll see to having them restored and put in the church gardens.”

“I can’t seem to remember them,” she said. “We never returned to the churchyard after the fire. It was as if there had been a terrible death, and we never spoke of it. We never even glanced that way when we went down the road.

“But for years, when I looked out my window to the hill where the steeple used to stand against the sky, there was an awful emptiness there, as if something had been stolen from the heavens.”

Louella looked at him and shook her head. “Honey, it was mournful.”

“Louella, do you think you ought to call the father honey?”

“I think she should,” said the rector.

“Well, then,” said Miss Sadie. “Papa did everything he could to get the new church going, and we were having services before the roof was even on. Remember, Louella, we used to sit in canvas chairs like you take to a horse event, with just the framing around us. That was a beautiful time, a healing time—the fresh lumber, the new beginning. I remember the way our hymns sounded, out in the open like that, with nothing but grass and trees to catch the music. It was sweet and simple, like the early settlers must have worshiped.

“I remember Absalom came around one Sunday morning. He stood in the back holding his hat and his Bible, and afterward, he walked out front and said to us, ‘I’m so sorry.’ He was meaning the fire, of course, and everything else.

“You know, Father, I would give anything if I could have fallen in love with Absalom Greer.”