her role as senior minister of one of the largest Protestant churches in Asheville, North Carolina, should lend enough weight without trappings.
On the other hand, maybe if she had been wearing her collar, the man who had attacked her would have thought better of it.
Definitely an unworthy thought. She had another as she wondered if wearing her collar more often would help with the council executive committee. She sighed and stood still for Ethan’s inspection.
“Am I presentable?”
Another smile. He stretched out his hand and brushed something off her cheek, rubbing it with the tips of his fingers until he was satisfied. “You’re sure you’re okay?”
“He gave me a great opening for my speech. Life on the streets is difficult, even terrifying, and it can have consequences for everybody, the homeless and the onlookers. We need to help people rebuild their lives.”
“Are you practicing?”
She answered his smile with one of her own. “Thank you. I’m glad you found me.”
“You so rarely need help, it was a pleasure.”
She liked the way Ethan always made it clear he approved of her. There was nothing between them except friendship, but he reminded her that she was a woman as well as a pastor.
“You held your own at the meeting this afternoon,” he said. “Now go hold your own up there.” He nodded to the front. “I’ll find you when it’s over.”
She squeezed his hand in thanks, and then one final time she brushed off her skirt and started around the crowd.
She reached the stand and watched as another speaker, a local homeless advocate, stood to offer her a hand up the rickety steps. At the top, before she greeted the others on the platform, she turned for a quick survey of the crowd. She scanned the closest faces, but her goal was impossible.
Even though she’d only glimpsed him, the man who had protected her and helped her off the ground had looked disturbingly familiar. For just a moment she would have sworn it was Isaiah Colburn, who, the last time she had communicated with him, was serving a Catholic parish in San Diego.
Father Isaiah Colburn who, in recent years, had carefully, tactfully, separated himself from the young Protestant minister he had once befriended, the same young woman who, despite knowing the pitfalls, had fallen hopelessly in love with him.
FOURTEEN-YEAR-OLD SHILOH FOWLER was so used to disappointment that when the old lady in the church office told her it was too late in the day to get help and the Fowler family should try elsewhere, she wasn’t surprised.
“We’ve tried elsewhere,” she explained, although she knew better than to think continuing the discussion would make a difference. “My mother’s sick, and we just need a place to stay for tonight so she’ll be out of the cold. I’m not asking for anything for myself.”
Shiloh hated sympathy, but for once she was sort of glad to see it in this stranger’s eyes. On the other hand, as always, sympathy wasn’t much help.
“I don’t know what to tell you,” the woman said. “I’m leaving for the night, and I have to lock up. Our minister is gone, and everybody else on staff is gone, too. You have the list of social service agencies I gave you?”
Shiloh was holding the list in plain sight, so it was clear the question was rhetorical, a word she was fond of and had recently added to her vocabulary. “Like I said, we don’t have much gas. All these places are downtown.”
The woman nodded. Then she walked behind her desk, got her purse and rummaged through it, coming out with a ten-dollar bill, which she held out to Shiloh. “I don’t know what else to do for you.”
They needed that money. Really needed it, because all they had was a ten to match it and a few ones to go with it.
Shiloh had taken money before, but this evening her hand remained closed, her arm by her side. “I can’t take money from you. That’s not what I was asking for. I just thought, well, maybe your church...” Her voice trailed off.
The woman walked around her desk, took Shiloh’s hand and put the bill inside it, closing the girl’s fingers around it. “We help when we can. It’s just that there’s nobody here, honey. Reverend Ana’s away...” Something flickered in the woman’s dark eyes. “At a rally for the homeless downtown.” She clearly realized how ironic that was. “There’ll be people at the rally from the different agencies on that list. It’s pretty late, but if you leave right now, maybe you can still catch the end of it.”
Shiloh knew about downtown. The Fowlers’ Ford inhaled gas as if it knew each fume might be the last, and parking inside city limits was so expensive the ten dollars would be long gone before they could find anybody who might help. Besides, she already knew that housing for homeless families was pretty much nonexistent. If they were lucky she and her mother might be able to stay one place, and Dougie and her father another. But Man—Shiloh’s father—would never allow that. He liked to say that all the Fowler family had right now was each other, and that was plenty good enough.
When he talked at all.
“I appreciate your kindness,” Shiloh said, words she had practically patented in the years since her family had left their snug little ranch house in southern Ohio to begin a fruitless search for a new life and home.
The woman averted her eyes and began to stack papers on her desk, clearly ready to leave for the evening. “I hope you find the help you need.”
Shiloh murmured more thanks, then she left by the front door and wound her way toward the sheltered nook between this building and the rear wing of another with a sign that read Covenant Academy. She knew her family would be huddled there against the cold, waiting for her.
The afternoon had been almost pleasantly warm, and Shiloh had been hopeful the evening would remain warm, too. But hope was a funny thing. Anything she wanted, any yearning that eventually formed into words, was nearly always denied her. Her mother, Belle, was superstitious, and Shiloh worked hard to have absolutely nothing in common with her, but in this one way she was superstitious, too. Most of the time she was adept at pushing away thoughts of anything worth yearning for. Because wanting anything was the best way never to have it.
She shivered and reached down to zip up her coat in response. The coat was a hand-me-down from her cousin Lilac in South Carolina. There were three kinds of hand-me-downs and handouts. The rarest were those that not only met a need but made her feel good inside. The rest were evenly distributed between “good enough” and “completely unacceptable.”
Lilac’s old coat was good enough. Pillowy, slick, dark green. The cuffs were frayed and the lining was tattered, but the coat was warm and it more or less fit, with just a little room in case Shiloh ever grew taller. She had been lucky to get it, because Lilac’s younger sister, Daisy, who, by rights, should have gotten it next, had received a better hand-me-down from somebody at her church.
If she slept in the coat inside her sleeping bag Shiloh would be warm enough tonight. Man had once been a hunter, scouring the hills near their home with men he’d known since boyhood, so he was used to camping in rugged conditions. Belle could sleep in the car with all their blankets. Dougie, Shiloh’s
