Reverend Don shuffled his feet, the toe of his cowboy boot hitting the back of the podium. He was almost finished. His voice took on that smiling quality he used when offering salvation, and the people began to come awake again, shifting in the pews, blowing their noses, taking up their hymnals, and whispering to their children that in just five more minutes, they would be allowed to go downstairs and get punch and cookies.
Today, more than ever, Loreena wanted it to be over. She had one last hymn to play, several more tortuous bars of dragging the congregation along, and then the rousing exit, and she would be free.
Free to do what?
The question had plagued her often over the past two weeks. What was she to do now? Every day she hoped her brother might return, that she might know he was all right. Beyond that, a more secret wish—that he might take her with him again.
The congregation stood for the final hymn. Loreena set her feet on the pedals and played. Starting out at a brisk pace, she hoped to keep them from lagging, but by the second verse they had slowed to only half the beginning tempo. It felt like manual labor, as if she were pulling a heavy wagon of wood for the winter fire. This isn’t a funeral dirge. The hymn spoke of the joy of Christ’s love, yet they sang as if they felt only obligation, weariness, and toil. Loreena could picture them, row after row of dutiful faces, hymnals in their hands, invisible yokes around their necks tying them to the pews like oxen to plows. The slower they went, the angrier she became, until the music was marching ahead despite them, the chords sounding before they sang the accompanying words, the beat of the bass line like steady footsteps overtaking them, and with every measure she grew more confident in her tempo, the tempo the hymn required, the tempo she would stick to regardless of the fact that they so greatly outnumbered her.
At first their voices continued on behind the beat, trudging through the jungle of conflicting tones, proudly singing in discord with the organ’s overwhelming boom, confident that eventually it would wait for them. About the middle of the third verse, they realized they were lost. One by one their voices dropped away, with only a few struggling to keep up.
Loreena heard their diminishing chorus and reveled in it, delighting in the organ’s power, and when a few valiant souls caught up and struggled to lead the rest back into the ending verse, she pushed ahead even more, desiring to leave them behind as well, that she might end alone.
No one sang the final line. A few mumbled the “amen.”
The church fell silent. The last chord hung in the air around them, gradually rising to the top of the building to filter out into the mountain air. No one spoke. Loreena smiled.
“Let us pray,” Uncle Don said.
As he prayed for them all, his soothing voice speaking the same words he’d spoken so many times, Loreena felt her cheeks redden in shame. Then she got angry. Why should she feel embarrassed? She had played for these people for years and received nothing but the occasional compliment. Hadn’t she performed her duties on countless Sundays and Wednesdays, and other days in between, with never a complaint? Didn’t she deserve to get upset once in a while?
Dropping her hands into her lap, she sighed. What was the matter with her? She had always loved the church, always loved playing. Just a few weeks ago, she was fretting about the possibility of ever having to leave.
Now she could think of nothing else.
Uncle Don completed the prayer. The voices of the congregation erupted as the members started to make their way out. Loreena realized she hadn’t moved to the piano. She made her way there now, beginning the exit song before she had even sat down. No one seemed to notice. Their voices droned on in her right ear, Uncle Don wishing them well as they passed him in the doorway. By the time she finished, everyone had left.
Well, almost everyone. When she lifted her hands off the keys, she heard Mrs. Enger’s voice. Again the woman was badgering her uncle about how a bake sale would be so much better than a banquet, and really, they didn’t need to bother Mrs. Whitmore. Loreena stood up. Usually, she would join them all in the downstairs gathering room for tea, juice, and cookies. Today she wanted only to get away from them. Standing by the bench, she waited, unsure which direction to take.
It was several moments before she realized there was someone else present. A shadow in the second pew, middle row. “Saul?”
“I’m sorry, no.” A stranger. He stood up. “My name is Dominic.”
When he said no more, Loreena grabbed her gloves and cane and started down the stairs. “I’ll leave you to your prayers.”
“No, wait. I wasn’t here to pray. Well, of course, I’m in a church and that’s what one usually does in a church, but I already did that. Earlier. So I’m done. With that. Now.”
He sounded nervous, but still his voice was pleasing, energetic, with a full resonance. “I see,” she said, and started down the aisle again.
“No, wait. You don’t see.”
She stiffened.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it that way. Not literally, that you don’t see. Of course you’re, um…what do they say? I don’t know the official term. Anyway, that’s not what I was referring to. Not at all, so I hope you don’t think—” He paused, and then softer, “Crap.”
“Is there something I can help you with, Mr.…”
“Taylor. But please, call me Dominic.”
“Mr. Taylor.”
He cleared his throat and came out from behind the pews to stand in front of her. “Your name is Lo—Miss Picket. Is that correct?”
“Yes.”
“And you’ve been playing at this church since you were a young girl?”
“Why do you ask?”
“Because I was hoping, with your permission of course, that I might do an interview with you.”
“Interview?”
“I’m a writer, of sorts. I specialize in what they call human interest stories—though of course most stories are of interest to humans, and involve humans, or we wouldn’t write them, so it’s sort of a silly category, but there it is. The publishers use it as a way to put stories in neat little boxes so they know what to do with them.”
“Boxes?”
“Not literally, of course. Not like they actually put the stories in boxes. Though, I don’t know that for sure. Maybe they do. But figuratively speaking. Mental boxes.”
“I see.”
“I don’t imagine you do. I’m not even sure I do. See. Figuratively speaking, of course. I hope I didn’t offend you earlier.”
She stepped back and took hold of the nearest pew. His endless chatter was amusing, like being led around a harmless labyrinth only to end up exactly where one began. “I’m not offended.”
“Good.” He smiled. It came through his voice with a lilting upswing and an exhale through his nose. In her mind she could see that smile, a warm, self-effacing expression with closed lips and dancing eyes.
“So what do you think?” he said. “Of the interview, I mean.”
“You want to interview me? What about?”
“About your playing here. About your life in the church, in this little town.”
“And you think that would be…of interest to people?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Well, because the story of a, uh, a…”
“Blind girl?”
“Well, yes, I suppose. The story of a blind girl who plays the piano and the organ quite beautifully in a little church in the middle of a small mountain town in Idaho. Well, that sort of thing is interesting.”
“Why?”
He cleared his throat again. “Maybe I could take you to lunch, and we could talk about it then?”
Lunch?
“Loreena?” Her uncle called from the doorway. “Are you coming downstairs?”
Loreena lowered her head. She didn’t want to go downstairs. It was the last thing she wanted to do, to be around the church people for one more moment. She wanted to listen to Dominic talk.
“Mr. Clement?�
�� Dominic said.
“And you are?”
“Dominic Taylor. Nice to meet you.”
Loreena followed him down the aisle between the pews, her hand on each one as she passed. As she drew closer, she could smell a faint whiff of pine needles over the distant scent of campfire smoke.
“Mr. Taylor,” Uncle Don said.
Loreena heard the mistrust in her uncle’s voice, a slight hesitation at the back of his throat. Rarely did he greet people that way. Did the man appear threatening?
“I was just telling your niece how much I enjoyed her playing,” Dominic said. “Her way with music rings true, you know?” He turned. “Oh, and there you are.” He seemed startled, as if he hadn’t noticed her following him. “Can’t blame you for trying to bring them along on that last hymn. Why they drag the tempo so much I can’t understand, but it happens in other churches too. Get a bunch of people together like that and it all bogs down.”
Loreena felt she must be staring at him. How had this stranger managed to so completely speak her mind?
“Yes, well, she rarely does that,” Uncle Don said. “Usually, she’s quite patient.”
Loreena felt her cheeks flush.
“Was there something you needed, Mr. Taylor?”
“Actually, I was just talking to Loreena about maybe doing an interview.”
“Mr. Taylor,” Loreena said, “you do not need to ask for anyone’s permission but mine.”
“Permission?” Uncle Don said.
Loreena faced him. “Mr. Taylor wants to do a human interest story on my time here, playing for the church. We were just going to discuss it over lunch.”
“We were?” Dominic said. Then: “Yes, Mr. Clement, Loreena and I had just decided to discuss the idea over lunch.”
“You’re leaving now?”
Loreena felt them both turn to her. “I need to change first.”
“Of course,” Dominic said. “I’ll wait at the front steps.”
“You won’t be joining us downstairs?” Uncle Don asked.
“I’m sorry.” Loreena passed him quickly and moved into the hall, five steps through the entryway and out to the cement stairs that would take her to the sidewalk.
“Who is it you work for?” she heard her uncle ask as the door slid closed behind her.
“I’m a writer, Mr. Clement. I work for myself.”
For only the third time in her life—the first had been her eighteenth birthday, when Saul took her out, the second when they’d gone to the bar—Loreena put on lipstick, carefully following the line of her mouth. When she finished, she ran her finger around the outer edges to be sure there were no smudges. If only someone were around to tell her how it looked. It was something she would have gone to Saul for, years ago.
Shedding her Sunday dress, she searched through her closet. She wished she had a pair of denim pants, like those she’d heard about the other girls wearing, but her uncle wouldn’t allow it. She found the shortest skirt she had—it came just to the knee—and paired it with the button-up blue shirt with the gathered sleeves, along with her creamy pumps and light cotton jacket. He was wearing cotton, too. She had sensed it when she stood near him, the smooth fabric the cozy type that begged to be touched. Flicking her hair upside down, she brushed and brushed until the bristles went through smoothly, and then raised her head and let the strands settle on her shoulders. No clips, no bands. She was going to let it hang free. As a last addition, she pulled her brown leather gloves from the back of the drawer.
For a moment she stood in the center of the room, wishing she had a mirror, and that she could see her own reflection. What would her mother have thought? Adjusting her shirt one last time, she exhaled and started toward the door.
The stairs beyond creaked. “Loreena?”
Shit. She had hoped to escape without another confrontation. Placing her purse strap over her shoulder, she opened the door and stepped through.
“Are you going to tell me what’s going on?” Uncle Don asked.
“You can’t stop me from going.”
“Is this about Saul?”
“I haven’t seen Saul for two weeks.”
“Would you tell me if you had?”
“Are you accusing me of lying, now?”
Her uncle shifted, his robe rustling. “So why are you going to lunch with him? This isn’t like you, Loreena.”
“What’s so awful about going to lunch?”
“You don’t know this man. I don’t know him. Who knows what he’s into?”
Loreena sighed heavily and leaned against the wall. God, how she wanted out of this house. “Don’t you have to get back to your sheep?”
“You’re going to talk like him now, too? What’s next, Loreena—all-night benders in the bar?”
“Would that be so bad? I mean, look at me, Uncle. All I do is sit here, holed up in some church playing the piano and the organ and the cello. I have no friends, no boyfriend, no hobbies. Weren’t you the one who said we needed to talk about my future?”
He stepped back and took hold of the railing. “Since when have you wanted a change?”
The clock in the living room downstairs rang out once, signaling the early afternoon hour.
“It’s not too hard to know where all this is coming from. I already lost Saul to the work of the Devil. I’m not about to lose you, too.”
Loreena rolled her eyes. “It’s not the work of the Devil.”
“Well, it sure isn’t the work of God.”
“How do you know? How do you know it isn’t some part of his grand plan?”
“What, that you and your brother end up getting yourselves killed?” He raised his voice. “Or that you run after Saul, copying every little thing he does, until you end up just like him, dealing with thugs like the one at the bar? That’s what you think God has in mind for you?”
“So what? I’m just a willing pawn in the Devil’s play?”
“Loreena, for Heaven’s sake!”
“That is what you think, isn’t it?” she said. “Ever since Ben?”
“That was an accident.”
“But you’re not so sure of that, are you?” Pushing away from the wall, she stood up straight. “That’s why the mercy killings. That’s why all the talk about how this is a gift from God.” She held up her hands and one by one loosened the fingers of her gloves until they fell on the floor at her feet. “Because you don’t know where it comes from, this power, and so you’re trying to control it. Well, I’m sorry, Uncle, but you can’t.” Her voice shook, her nerves taking hold. “You can’t control it. No matter how many mercy killings, or how many sermons, or how many years inside the walls of the Lord’s house. You can’t control whatever this is, and you know why?”
Standing directly in front of him now, fingers spread near his face, she could smell his spicy cologne and the coffee on his breath. Her eyes moved rapidly back and forth like they always did when she got nervous, but she didn’t shut them.
“Because even I can’t control it, and it’s in me.”
The thought occurred to her then that she might go further, that she might admit she’d killed the man in the parking lot, but at that moment he turned away from her, his shoulder bumping her arm, and walked five steps up the hallway, along the banister, creating a distance between them that felt as if he had just taken off in a spaceship to the moon. Loreena dropped her arms, picked up the gloves, and started for the stairs.
“That’s why you need to stay here,” Uncle Don said.
She paused, her hand on the railing.
“When I was talking about the future, I didn’t mean you would leave.” He came back toward her. “If you can’t control this thing, don’t you know what that means? What could happen?”
All too well, she thought. A part of her wanted to shrink back into her room, crawl into her bed and cover her head with her blankets at the thought that what had happened the other night could easily happen again.
Uncle Don reached across and took
her arm. “You can’t go out there by yourself, especially with a strange man, until we get hold of this thing. It’s too dangerous. Surely you can see that.”
Still in his grasp, she heard his words, and knew the wisdom of them. But something new had been born inside her—something dark and free and angry, something more at home on the back of Dirk’s motorcycle than here in the peaceful halls of this quaint little home, or in the majestic sanctuary of the church. That something was rising like a weed, voracious and wild, and she had long lost the desire to hold it back. Pulling away, she took one step down.
“I’m going to go to lunch with Dominic Taylor.”
His body stiffened. Loreena waited, ready for the next argument, but he didn’t say anything. After several tense moments, he reached into his back pocket, pulled out his wallet, and placed a stack of bills in her palm. He curled her gloved fingers over the top and passed her to walk slowly down the stairs.
Loreena felt the bills, but had no way to tell what they were. Her purse had a special slot for them, so she unzipped it and placed them neatly inside. She had won. For the first time in her life, she had stood up to him, and she had won. The victory felt hollow in her throat.
The front door opened and shut. It would take him a couple of minutes to reach the church. Hand on the railing, she walked down the stairs and paused in the living room. The scent of coffee was still strong on the air. In the kitchen, she rinsed out the pot and the filter cage, then replaced the coffee grounds for the next morning. When she was positive her uncle had disappeared inside the building, she retrieved her cane from the corner and walked out.
It took ten steps to reach the angel. Loreena followed the rounded red stones, and then turned left after the eighth one to pause at the base of the marble statue. The figure stood eight feet high, donated to the church by an elderly couple that had made their fortune raising beef cattle in the green hills outside of town. Some artist had made the sculpture, a college student who had most likely moved on to California or New York by now to pursue her profession. Haley Attenburough was her name, so Loreena often thought of the angel by that name too—Haley.
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