A Truth for a Truth (23 page)

“I’ll be back eventually.”

Ed didn’t ask where I was going. He rested a hand on my arm. “She just lost her husband. She’s under suspicion of murder.”

“I may be, too. If I’m not home by six, call Jack and withdraw our life savings. You’ll need to bail me out of jail.”

Hildy answered the door so fast I thought she’d probably been waiting for me to appear.

“You don’t have to thank me,” she said, putting her arms around me and pulling me close. “You’re trying so hard to help me, I wanted to return the favor.”

“Hildy, I—”

“Come in! I’m baking treats for tomorrow’s reception.” She had a real smile on her face, a pre-shrimp-dip smile, and for just a moment, I considered forgetting the whole thing. Then a vision of the new floor danced in my head, a floor I didn’t want and hadn’t chosen. A floor that Hildy had chosen out of nostalgia, and a sad desire to still have her say about what happened in our parsonage.

I followed her inside, but not all the way into the house. Just far enough that the neighbors wouldn’t hear me.

“I’m really upset,” I said, once we were both in the foyer. “Really, really, really upset, Hildy. I know you’re going through an awful time right now, and I’ve tried to cut you some slack. I really have. But what were you thinking badgering the board that way, then choosing a floor for
us
? Ed and I live in the parsonage now. And we deserve to have a say in what happens inside it!”

She stared at me. It was clear my words were not computing. “You’re unhappy?” she asked at last.

“You don’t live there anymore, Hildy. It’s not your house. It’s mine. You have a different life now. It can be a great one if you let it. But this life is mine and I want it back. I don’t want you choosing my floors. I don’t want you telling me how to be a good minister’s wife. I don’t want you cutting the crusts off my bread! My bread is wonderful. People love my bread, crusts and all. And nobody but you cares what I pay for my living room furniture or what that says about Ed’s paycheck.”

Okay, I was getting out of line, I was getting weird. I could hear it. I could feel it all the way to my toes, but my tongue was tap-dancing to its own rhythm.

“I like you,” said my tongue. “I like your energy and your genuine kindness and your desire to do the right thing. But you need another project. You need a new life, Hildy. Because the one when you were the wife of the Tri-C minister is over, and you can’t get it back by taking charge of mine.”

I was finished. I knew it, and so did my tongue, which seemed to wilt in my mouth. I just threw up my hands as a final statement.

“Aggie!”

I didn’t want to argue, and I didn’t want to stay and listen to her side. Even now I could feel guilt beginning to spread its shaky tendrils. I so rarely lose my temper I was already unsure I’d had a right to confront her, or if I should have swallowed my anger, stayed home, and served lemonade to the workers tearing out my floor.

My
floor.

I stiffened my backbone.

“I’ll talk to you tomorrow,” I said. “When and if I’m calmer.”

I turned and left before I could say one more thing. This time she didn’t try to stop me.

All the way home I replayed our scene. And every time I told myself I shouldn’t have confronted her, I envisioned our brand-new floor, a shinier, unscarred version of the same darn floor Hildy had walked on and waxed and loved in her years in our house. Hildy’s reminder that the parsonage still belonged to her.

I told myself I’d better get used to that vision. Unless the board was willing to pay the fees for returning Hildy’s floor and purchasing mine, I might be seeing black and white for all the years we spent in the parsonage, too.

Here’s the problem with anger. It’s easy to feel righteous when you’re venting. After all, I did have cause to be unhappy with Hildy. She’d been trying to “improve” me since the moment she came back to Emerald Springs. And choosing a new floor for a house she no longer lived in?
My
house? She’d been wrong. No sweat.

But so had I. By the time our takeout pizza was eaten in our relatively dust-free living room, and everyone in the house but me had gone elsewhere—Ed to Columbus for a colleague’s retirement party, the girls to sleepovers—I was feeling hugely guilty. Wasn’t Hildy going through enough? I’d promised to stick by her, and didn’t that mean more than finding her husband’s murderer? Didn’t it mean understanding who she was and accepting her? I didn’t have to tolerate her choice of floor, but there had been many nicer ways to tell her so.

And bread crusts? Who cared about bread crusts?

I wasn’t sure how I was going to get myself out of this one. Ed had already called the board president and explained that as nice as it was for the board to put in a new floor, we had hoped to choose the pattern and color ourselves. Our prez promised to get us the floor we wanted. Call me skeptical, but I’ll be poring over Ed’s paycheck for the next six months to see if the shipping costs are deducted.

So my torn-up kitchen would be an inconvenience for at least ten more days while a new floor was ordered, but the problem wasn’t permanent. Dust could be wiped away. We could walk on the uneven, sticky subfloor. But my relationship with Hildy wouldn’t be so easy to fix. I was afraid maybe I had damaged it beyond repair.

With hours alone stretching in front of me, I didn’t want to go over and over the scene in Hildy’s foyer. I needed to make amends, but I didn’t know exactly how. I wished my mother was in town. Junie would listen carefully, then put her finger right on the best way to fix this. Others might think she’s flighty and, well, odd—okay, she
is
flighty and odd—but she has a deep understanding of human nature that transcends both.

I decided to spend my evening working on the church history. I wanted to see exactly what I had and what I needed. And one thing I needed for certain was more information about Win’s ministry. Without a sermon, I had very little to put in his chapter, but I did have board reports.

I’ll confess I had another reason for reading through board reports, too. I’d met Win, smiled and laughed at his jokes, and stood beside his wife when he was buried. But I really only knew him through the things others had said about him. I hoped that by reading more about his ministry, I’d learn more about the man himself. I wasn’t expecting anything major, no “If I die, it will be at the hands of John Smith” revelation deep in the middle of a report on the annual church canvas, but maybe something would trigger a new direction to investigate. More than ever I wanted to catch Win’s killer. Frankly I couldn’t imagine any better way to make up to Hildy for my outburst.

I threw on a sweatshirt, grabbed Ed’s church keys, and locked our door behind me. The sky hadn’t deepened into night, although it was well on its way. A few stars were twinkling, next to a silver sliver of moon, and the air smelled like unfurling leaves, fresh and new. There were lights in the parish house, most likely some meeting or other, possibly even Hildy and crew setting up for tomorrow’s reception. I would be friendly, but I wouldn’t apologize tonight. I needed quiet for that, and somewhere the two of us could have a heart-to-heart.

There were three groups meeting at the church, but Hildy and whatever helpers she had commandeered weren’t among them. An AA chapter was in the social hall, our hunger task force was in the kitchen making sandwiches to take to the homeless shelter, and the flower committee was decorating the church for tomorrow’s service. My potted hydrangeas were now gracing a flower-bed at the side of the church, and it was time for tulips and pussy willows.

I said brief hellos to people I knew and started up the stairs. By the time I got to the third floor, I was panting. The last flight is narrow and steep, and I was looking forward to having the archives one flight down in a room where they would have more protection. There was nothing between the present storage area and the roof except a shallow attic with wiring that had seen better days. An overhaul was in the budget, and I just hoped my new kitchen floor wouldn’t delay that repair yet again.

I unlocked and went inside to search for the file. Despite the substandard conditions, the room’s in much better shape than it was when I first took over. In addition to our new dehumidifier, last year we installed an attic fan, so the heat’s not so fierce in the summer. I spotted the cardboard file box right where it was supposed to be. Even if none of our past historians were much for organization, they did save every little thing, and there were boxes and boxes of material going back into the 1800s. The older the material, the more carefully I’d tried to organize and preserve it, although by now, some of the papers were nothing more than fragments.

I lifted the top and pawed through the box, searching for the correct years. I was on my way back to the door with everything under one arm when I stopped. Something was wrong. I could sense it, something out of the ordinary, something different. I did a 360-degree turn, looking carefully around me, but nothing looked out of place. I hadn’t heard noises, nothing except the possible featherlight scurrying of tiny feet in the space above. Squirrels aren’t unheard of in the attic, nor are mice. I would have to tell January, since mice in particular are fond of dining on wiring, a problem we don’t need. January has a shelf filled with live traps and removes his prey to abandoned buildings far, far away, making country mice out of city mice because he has such a kind heart.

I listened harder, wondering if I’d heard something else, something more suspicious, but just off my radar. But the storage room was quiet now. No creepy footsteps on the stairs. No creaking of floorboards.

The air felt the way it always does in spring. Cool, almost cold. Not as damp as it had been before the dehumidifier. Nothing there.

I sniffed, since I seemed to be going through a list of my five senses and there was nothing to taste. At first I only noticed the sweet decay of old paper, and the stale air of a confined space. These scents were so familiar I knew they wouldn’t bring me up short. I was about to admit I’d imagined the whole thing, when I realized there was more. I took a deeper breath and identified that hidden extra, which was no longer quite so hidden.

Smoke.

I froze. I’m not sure how the species has survived this long, since freezing right before panic sets in gives wild animals time to leap, storm surges time to sweep everything away, and fire time to take hold and spread. I was frozen only moments, but they were terrifying enough to seem like hours.

The second I recovered I ran to the door and down the first flight of steps screaming “fire!” By the time I got to the first flight, people were gathering at the foot of the stairs to see who was making such a ruckus.

“Fire! In the attic! Call the fire department.”

Two men I didn’t recognize stared at me a moment, then one took off for the telephone, unfrozen and helpful. The other thawed, as well, grabbed a fire extinguisher from the case just across the hallway, wrestled it off the wall, and started up the steps.

I didn’t think a fire extinguisher was going to be much help. My best guess was that this was an electrical fire in the space above the storage room, old wiring that planned to go out in a blaze of glory. But I ran back up in hopes I was wrong.

“I . . . think it’s in here,” I said, puffing from having taken the steps so fast both up and down. I threw open the door and saw there was no question I was right. The storage room was filling with smoke.

One thing about living in a “city” as small as Emerald Springs? Fire, police, ambulance? They’re only minutes away. I thought I heard sirens in the distance.

“What’s
in
here?” the guy shouted.

I’d been so worried about the church, I hadn’t thought to worry about my precious records. Now, horrified, I realized that if the room caught fire, they would all be ashes. And once the fire department arrived, whatever was left would be washed away.

“Records!” I screamed. “Our church archives.”

I have the good sense not to run into a burning building. At least I think I do. Unless, of course, someone had to be saved—pretty much anybody, if it comes right down to it. But this was just paper. No one cared all that much about our church history except me, and I wasn’t sure why I did. As a child I wasn’t baptized, christened, dunked, confirmed, or even assigned my own mantra. Not until I met Ed did formalized religion have much of a draw. So this wasn’t my heritage going up in smoke. But Tri-C and all the people to whom it had been so important through the century and a half since the doors were flung open?

They mattered.

I ran inside the room. No flames were visible. Had there been, I’d have said a sad farewell to all those good people and shed a tear or two. Instead I began to grab boxes and haul them out the door. I literally threw them outside to the top of the steps, and my unknown cohort grabbed them and heaved them to the landing below.