the computer, turned off all the downstairs lights, and climbed the stairs by the light of stars shining through the stairwell window.
* * *
Isaiah Colburn knew where Analiese lived. She was in the telephone directory, so finding her address hadn’t been hard. He had parked almost a mile away and strolled the picturesque streets of her neighborhood for most of an hour. While he wasn’t delusional enough to pretend he was just taking a walk before bedtime, at the start he had given himself permission to turn back before he reached her house.
Now he stood in front of it.
When he’d arrived a minute ago there had been lights downstairs. But now, one by one, they disappeared until the house was dark.
He wondered if she was alone. He had seen a man fight his way into the crowd after she was attacked at the rally. He had seen the quick hug, seen the man brush her cheek and walk her to the speakers’ platform. He didn’t think she was married. He had read her bio on the Church of the Covenant’s website, and he was fairly certain if a husband existed, or even children, they would have been mentioned. But Analiese was a beautiful, dynamic woman, and he couldn’t imagine she was ever lonely.
He was the one who had taken the vow of chastity, not her.
He considered walking up the sidewalk, knocking on the door, and waiting for her to answer.
He considered just how awkward it would be if a man answered instead.
The walk back to his car was shorter. The night itself was interminable.
AT 7:00 A.M. when Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto in A Major suddenly filled her room, Analiese wasn’t ready to get out of bed. She considered pulling the pillow over her ears, but during her last visit, Gretchen’s oldest daughter and budding clarinetist had downloaded every major work in the clarinet repertoire to Analiese’s new MP3 alarm clock, and the concert could go on for hours. Analiese hadn’t had the heart to tell her beloved niece that if she were ever asked to choose the instrument she liked least, the decision wouldn’t be hard.
At least the concerto gave her another reason to get up, and quickly.
After chopping off a trill midnote she went to the window and stared out at a gray, cheerless morning.
“Boy, I just can’t wait to start this day.” It wasn’t exactly a prayer, more like a “to whom it may concern.” She tried to think of all the reasons why she should be grateful for the hours ahead. Then she shrugged and headed for the bathroom.
After one shower, real prayers and a small bowl of cereal with blueberries, she was ready to go. Saturday Seminar, a three-month series of speakers on the Old Testament, was starting at ten, and she was responsible for the invocation. Then at eleven she had the emergency council meeting. She had left enough time to stop for bagel sandwiches and fresh fruit to take to the Fowlers.
While they ate, she would question them about their plans.
If she was supremely lucky, Man—or more likely Shiloh—would tell her that today they were traveling to a place with better job opportunities and friends who could shelter them until they got on their feet. Analiese would enlist Felipe to help them carry their meager belongings downstairs, and she would slip Shiloh all the money in her wallet to help the family buy gas and continue on their way.
Realistically she knew nothing was going to be that easy.
Just before she left the house she took a moment to check her laptop email, but there was only the usual: loops she belonged to, announcements, and a newsy email from Elsbeth that she would read later. There was nothing from Isaiah. That didn’t surprise her, although it certainly would have turned her day around.
After minimal traffic and a short line at the bagel shop, she knocked on the door of the apartment with a brown paper grocery bag clutched in front of her and waited for someone to answer. She wasn’t surprised when that someone turned out to be Shiloh.
“Breakfast,” Analiese said, holding out the bag.
Shiloh looked as if she’d just stepped out of the shower: hair wet again, feet still bare, clothes wrinkled as if she’d just pulled them from her suitcase.
“My mom’s worse,” she said, with no preliminaries. “I think she’s going to die. And she won’t go to the hospital, no matter what.”
* * *
At seventy-five Dr. Peter Thurman was nearly retired, or so he claimed. A self-proclaimed “country doctor,” he had handled nearly everything in his long career: bringing babies into the world, setting bones, delivering the bad news of terminal cancer. These days he saw only the devoted patients who refused to go elsewhere.
Peter was also a longtime member of the Church of the Covenant, and not always a supporter of the changes Analiese had nudged into place. Worse, when she got to her study phone and pleaded with him to make a house call to the church, he had been preparing for a well-deserved day of golf.
“What have you gotten yourself into?” he demanded.
“Lots of trouble.”
“And I’ll get into a lot more if this woman dies on my watch.”
She pictured him on the other end of the line, white hair buzzed into a military crew cut, blue eyes fierce under bristling eyebrows. She knew he liked her, even if he didn’t like change, and she also knew she could be honest with him.
“She may die without you.”
“You’re like all your kind, Ana. Great at inducing guilt.”
“First class I took in seminary. I think if you tell Mrs. Fowler she needs to go to the hospital and you’ll watch over her there, she’ll do it. But I’ll tell you what I think. I think she’s scared that when anybody in authority sees the way the family’s living, she might lose her kids.”
“Taking children away is nobody’s first response. Even when it ought to be.”
“She won’t believe that.”
“Damn you, woman.”
“When will you be here?”
“Give me fifteen minutes.”
Analiese hung up the phone and stared at her bookshelves. The awards she had won as a journalist sat in a recently dusted row. One seemed to stare back at her now, an Associated Press broadcast news award for a story she had done about crowding at a homeless shelter. She swallowed something too close to tears and took the stairs back up to the apartment. This time she let herself in.
“There’s a doctor on the way,” she told everyone but Belle, whose rattling cough filled the apartment from the bedroom, even with that door closed.
“We can’t pay much,” Man said. “But we’ll give him all we got.”
“He won’t take a cent, but, Man, you have to do whatever he asks you to. Please? If he says she has to go to the hospital, then we have to get her there, even if she doesn’t want to go. Nothing’s going
