paired off—why, one of the centennial functions had been a wedding ceremony for fifty couples!—he’d felt more and more alone, and he wasn’t sure why that should be so. Since the death of his girlfriend, Theresa, he’d had a difficult time even forming friendships with women, let alone romantic attachments.
Until Robin Frazier. Suddenly, he felt as if he’d found a friend, but it was foolish to even think that he’d found anything more in her. He hardly even knew her! More to the point, she hardly knew him, and if she did, she would almost certainly be appalled. That was one reason he chose not to wear his clerical collar outside the pulpit or when not on official church business. While ignorant of the details, people needed to know that their pastor was a man like any other. In this case, many might find his failings difficult to forgive.
When Ethan had taken over this post, the former pastor had advised that Ethan give himself plenty of time to get established within the community before deciding to share the tragedies and failures of his past. Sometimes Ethan wished he still had Pastor Peters to talk to, but after his retirement Peters had moved to Colorado to be near his daughter and grandchildren, and Ethan didn’t feel comfortable imposing on their short acquaintance with chatty telephone calls. As his own family barely spoke to him and his few friends from seminary were all married and busy, Ethan sometimes felt quite alone.
Oh, he’d made friends in Jasper Gulch, but he hadn’t found anyone in whom he felt he could confide. What made him think that Robin could be that person? he wondered as Robin crawled gingerly down the ladder.
Quite without meaning to, he found himself guiding her to the bottom, his arms bracketing her slender body, his gloved hands gripping the narrow side rails until her feet safely touched down on the stone floor. Backing away so that she could turn and face him proved surprisingly difficult, which he covered by sweeping off his cap and stuffing it into a coat pocket.
“Let’s get the belfry closed so it’ll warm up in here.”
Grabbing a long pole with two odd hooks on the end, he pushed up the ladder, locked it in place and slid the trapdoor closed.
“That looked easy enough to do,” Robin commented.
Ethan nodded as he returned the pole to its corner. It fit snugly into a pair of holders bolted into the rock.
“There’s just one thing,” she went on, staring up at the closed trapdoor in the rock ceiling. “Where do the ropes come down?”
He lifted a finger and led the way to what had been a deep shelving unit set off to one side of the vestibule. Its twin space on the opposite wall made a tidy coat closet.
“I always thought this was a strange sort of cupboard, recessed as it was with shelves as deep as my arm. When I removed the contents, I found another space with the pulleys and ropes. The ropes themselves are no good, but the wall fittings are all fine. I’ve already ordered the right type and size of ropes, and they should be here in a week or so.
“I should be able to attach them to the bells. Then all we have to do is hope the bells aren’t too badly out of tune to make a pleasant noise for Christmas.”
“I didn’t know bells could be out of tune.”
“Apparently they can, but I think that’s when there are several bells involved.”
She looked up at the ceiling. “Those two sounded fine to me.”
“Do you have musical training?” he asked.
Her clear blue eyes met his, and she touched the mole beneath her eyebrow before calmly saying, “Not much. I sang in glee club in high school and college.”
Glee club. He couldn’t help thinking that many pastors’ wives often had service callings of their own: music, teaching, women’s or children’s ministry, chaplaincy, even a pastorate of one form or another. He told himself not to be an idiot. All he needed from her was help getting the bells roped and the church decorated.
“I’ll let you know when the ropes get here, and we’ll set up a time to attach them,” he said.
“Sounds like a plan.”
“A plan that needs a lot of prayer if it’s to succeed,” he added with a chortle. “Now, about those pictures you brought with you...”
She went to the credenza that stood against the wall and opened a file folder, spreading out several sheets of paper. Ethan hurried over to take a look. As he studied the pictures she’d brought, he casually unbuttoned his coat.
One photo showed the inside of an unnamed couple’s cabin where a small, spindly evergreen tree had been decorated with berries, beads and bits of broken glass. Another showed the front railings of a porch swathed in evergreen boughs. An arrangement of candles and mistletoe on a fireplace mantel with an open Bible and a Christmas postcard was the focus of a third black-and-white photograph.
The final offering had been shot right there in front of the church. It showed the pastor and two others in white smocks with big bows on them, presumably red, and the entire cast of a pageant, including two real sheep, a donkey and, oddly enough, a chicken. Most of the actors were garbed in blankets with lopsided halos and crowns, wings and sashes askew. Most wore cowboy boots beneath their tunics, and one mulish youngster sported his cowboy hat, too, and had a rope slung over one shoulder, despite the shepherd’s crook in the other hand. The youngest children all carried chrismon patterns—simple symbols of the Christian faith, such as the shape of a shepherd’s crook, dove, Bethlehem star or trumpeting angel. Ethan had to smile.
“Now, that’s a congregation to keep a pastor on his knees.”
“It looks like fun, though, doesn’t it?”
“It does. Just look at the smile on the pastor’s face.”
“I wonder what part the chicken played.”
They both laughed over that. Ethan squinted at the tiny type beneath the photo.
“Those are readers in those smocks. They probably read the Christmas story out of the Bible, and the cast acted it out.”
“Makes sense.”
“We could do something like that,” Ethan mused. “That way no one would have to memorize lines.”
“I thought you might like to have these, too,” she said, offering him several more papers.
“Chrismon patterns.”
“They’d be very simple to make out of fabric. And you might want this.”
The final sheet contained a list of websites where he could order modern versions of antique Christmas bulbs.
“I think you can find everything else you need out there,” she said, waving a hand to indicate the great outdoors. “The various types of greenery have different meanings, you see, and the locals would have been aware of that back then.”
“Robin Frazier, you are a gem beyond price. I don’t have internet access here, but I can find it. Now, I have just two more questions for you.”
“And they are?” she asked cautiously, narrowing her lovely blue eyes at him.
“First, will
