Hadley let out an, “Oh, no,” before she could catch herself.
Reverend Fergusson looked at her. Then at the children. “You’ve been traveling a long way.” It wasn’t a question. “How ’bout you come with me. You can wait for your grandfather in the Sunday school room. We’ve got a comfy sofa and some squishy chairs—and,” she said to Hudson, “a TV with a VCR.”
“Do you have movies?” Hudson asked, as they entered the hallway leading to the church offices.
“Yep. But I have to warn you, they’re all religious. We’ve got Veggie Tales, and The Prince of Egypt, and Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, and the Star Wars movies.”
“Star Wars isn’t religious!” Hudson said.
“It’s not?” Reverend Fergusson paused at the head of the stairs, her mouth open. “Darn it, why doesn’t anyone ever tell me this stuff?”
It did Hadley’s heart good to see her son’s tentative smile. Divorce, disruption, relocation—these past months had been brutally hard on her little boy. She followed him down the stairs to the undercroft, watching him stick close to the rector.
“Next you’re going to tell me Power Rangers aren’t religious.”
Hudson giggled. “They’re not.”
“Dang it, somebody is going to have to answer for this. Who bought these unsuitable movies?” Her eyes widened, and she pressed her fingers against her mouth. “Uh-oh.”
Hudson laughed openly, guessing the joke. “You did! You did!”
The Reverend Fergusson’s whole body sagged as she plodded down the dimly lit hall. “I’m so ashamed,” she said. Hudson giggled again. “And here we are.” She opened a door. She switched on the light to reveal a room that had been made as cheerful as a windowless fluorescent-lit space could be. Hudson ran to check out the low bookcase filled with toys, and even Genny wiggled out of her mother’s arms to explore the play kitchen set in the corner.
Reverend Fergusson rolled the television, on its stand, away from the wall and plugged it in. “We don’t get any reception down here, so it’s already set to play videos,” she explained. “You just turn it on and press the PLAY button.” She straightened. Looked at Hadley again, the same way she had upstairs, as if she could see beneath her skin. “What can I do for you?” she said, half asking, half musing to herself.
The answer popped out before Hadley could help it. “Tell me where I can get a job around here.” She wanted to call it back as soon as she had said it. The rector had meant something like Can I show you the bathroom or Can I get you a drink of water. Acting the hostess. Cripes, she thought Hadley was here for a visit with Granddad, not to repackage her life.
Except her eyes narrowed and she got an abstracted look, as if she was thinking hard. “What are you looking for?”
Something where I don’t have to speak to another human being. Yeah, that sounded great. “Anything that doesn’t require college. I only have a GED.”
Reverend Fergusson, who probably had degrees up the wazoo, didn’t blink. “There’s a lot of seasonal work come summer. Agricultural work, construction. All the places in Lake George hire waitresses and chambermaids. But right now?” She frowned. “Shape’s not hiring. The Reid-Gruyn mill is letting people go, now they’ve been bought out. Let me ask around and see if anyone I know has a position open. What did you do in . . . where are you from again?”
“California. LA.”
“Ah.”
“What?”
The Reverend pinked up. Embarrassed. “I was thinking you don’t look as if you come from around here. Your tan, for one thing. And your hair.”
Hadley ruffled her short hair. “What about it?”
“Well, it’s . . . trendy. We don’t have a lot of trendy here in Millers Kill.”
Hadley almost laughed. “It’s a cosmetology school special. Fifteen bucks. Twenty if you want the shampoo and blow-dry. Which I didn’t.”
“Were you”—the rector paused, as if she were searching for the tactful word—“an actress? Or a model?”
Hadley thought for a moment before answering. “I wanted to be when I first went to California. I discovered when I got out there that gorgeous girls are literally a dime a dozen.” There wasn’t any bitterness in her tone anymore. It had been so long ago, it seemed as if those days were something she had seen in a movie rather than something she had lived. “The past few years I worked for a company that took inventories, I waited tables, stuff like that. Before that, I worked for the state department of corrections.”
“As a secretary?”
“As a guard.”
The reverend’s eyebrows shot up. “Well.” Her mouth stretched, as if she was smiling about something not very funny. “I know one place in town that has an opening. One of their officers has left for the state police in Latham. The police department’s hiring.”
II
Clare sat mesmerized by the falling snow. With her sermon outline cooling on the desk in front of her, she watched the flakes float past the diamond-paned window, each one a spot of brilliance against the soot-gray sky. Flick. Flick. Flick. She had been like this all morning. Unable to focus on her tasks. Unable to care about them—or about much of anything.
Mr. Hadley stuck his head in the door, bringing with him the odor of furniture polish and cigarette smoke. “Mornin’, Father.” His usual address for her. She figured he thought of it as a gender-neutral honorific—like Captain, her other newly resumed title. “Thanks fer takin’ care of my granddaughter yesterday.” Mr. Hadley’s North Country accent made the word come out yestiddy.
“How’re they doing?”
He grunted. “They’ll all be better now she’s left that turd of a husband floatin’ in the bowl. Sorry, Father.”
“Mmm.” She squelched her smile. “It must be good to have her back home.”
“ ’Tain’t really her home, though mebbe it comes as close as never no mind. My daughter, God love her, dragged the girl all over the country. Never was able to settle, my Sarah. The only place Honey ever came to twice was here. Sarah used to send her to me an’ my wife every summer.”
Clare had lost track of the players. “Honey?”
“That’s her christened name. She changed it to Hadley when she was in her teens.”
I can see why.
“Anyhow, I was just checkin’ to see if you wanted me to get you a fire goin’.”
Clare looked at her hearth, the best thing about her mid-nineteenth-century office. On cold winter days, she could warm herself in front of its brick and iron surround. Now it lay dark and ashy. There was a metaphor there for her life, but she was too flat to pursue it. “I don’t think so, Mr. Hadley. I’m leaving for an ecumenical lunch in Saratoga soon.”
“ ’Kay. I’ll stock your wood up some, though. S’posed to be colder’n a Norwegian well digger’s you-know-what the rest of this week.” He withdrew, leaving the scent of lemon and tobacco to mark his passing. She heard him addressing someone in the hall—“ ’Lo, Father”—and was therefore unsurprised when her lunch date appeared in her doorway a half hour early, tall and gaunt and hunched forward like a fastidious vulture.
“Father Aberforth.” She got up from her desk to greet the elderly deacon, best known as the bishop’s hatchet man.
“Ms. Fergusson.” He surprised her by trapping her hand within his much larger ones. He studied her with his penetrating black eyes. “How are you?” he asked. It was not a pleasantry.
“I’m sorry. Were we doing a session today?” The diocesan deacon had fallen into the role of her counselor and confessor. It was not a comfortable relationship. Their talks were like scalding showers: cleansing but painful.
“Sarcasm ill becomes you. How are you?”
She let her eyes slide away to the vine-and-fruit pattern of her carpet. “Okay. Good enough.”
He let her tug her hand free. “Good enough, hmm?” He lowered his towering frame into one of the two admiral’s chairs fronting the empty fireplace. “I suppose it’s alw
ays a relief to know one isn’t about to be dragged off and tried for manslaughter.” Willard Aberforth was nothing if not blunt.
She turned to her desk. The letter from the District Attorney for the state of New York, Washington County, was still there, half covered by the sermon draft.
Upon hearing evidence in the matter of the death of Aaron MacEntyre, the grand jury has declined to indict. Therefore, in accordance with the Medical Examiner’s testimony, the state of New York rules your participation in the events leading to said death is consistent with self-defense as defined in N.Y.S.C Sec. II, p. 1–12.
“Oh, yeah,” she said. “I dodged the bullet on that one.” She could hear the bitterness in her voice.
“You were justified, girl. I know it and the bishop knows it and the state of New York in its magisterial wisdom knows it. Let it go. You saved three lives. Perhaps more.” He paused. “Have you heard anything from this police chief of yours?”
“No.” Her tone would have warned off a lesser man, but the deacon, a survivor of the Battle of Cho-San Reservoir, wasn’t deterred.
“He is newly widowed,” he said reasonably.
“Yes.”
“Grief takes time.”
“Yes.”
“Perhaps you might approach him in a month or two.”
She folded her hands over her chair back and watched her knuckles whiten. “He isn’t going to want me to approach him in a month or two—or four. I’m the reason his wife is dead.”
There was another pause. “Would you do me the courtesy of turning around so I can talk to your face instead of your scapulae?”
She turned around.
Aberforth was looking at her through half-closed eyes. “Do you believe that?”
“Yes.”
He shook his head, sending his bloodhoundlike jowls swaying. “Good God, girl, your pride is truly monumental.”
“My pride?”
“Your pride. Did you or did you not make a full confession and repentance to the bishop?” He folded his black-coated arms.
“You know I did.”
“Did he, in the name of our Lord, absolve your sins?”
She knew where this was going, and she didn’t like it. “He did.”
“Then who are you to presume that your errors, your mistakes of judgment, your faults are so grievous that they stymie God Himself? Do you think your ability to sin rises above God’s ability to forgive?”
She blinked hard. She shook her head. “I can’t—”
“You cling to your faults like a woman clinging to a lover.” He leaned forward. “A lover who has betrayed her.”
She shook her head again.
“Are you angry with your police chief?”
She set her jaw. “Of course not. He’s the one who’s suffering.”
“I seem to recall that he entertained the possibility that you may have been responsible for a murder.”
“For an hour! God, why do I tell you this stuff?”
“Who else can you tell?”
Russ. But that time was gone. Now there was no one else.
“He chose his marriage over you,” Aberforth went on.
“I chose his marriage over me, too.”
“But as soon as he was in crisis, he was back at your door, asking for your help. Then, in his moment of deepest need, he turned his back on you.”
“His wife had just died!”
“And since then he has steadfastly ignored your existence. Yet you harbor no anger toward him. None whatsoever.”
She turned back to her desk. Gripped the back of her chair again to stop the shaking. Breathed in. Breathed out. Waited until she knew her voice wouldn’t crack. “You’re right. I need to let go of . . . my sense of complicity in her death. I’ll focus on that.”
“Oh, my dear Ms. Fergusson.”
She turned around at that.
“You are a very good priest in many ways. And someday, if your self-awareness approaches half your awareness of others, you might be an extraordinary priest.” He folded his hands. “I do not think that day will be today, however.”
III
Clare was profoundly grateful the ecumenical luncheon was arranged mixer-style. After the strained ride from Millers Kill—not eased by the fact Father Aberforth insisted on driving his Isuzu Scout a conservative ten miles below the speed limit all the way to Saratoga—she didn’t want to deal with any more togetherness with her spiritual advisor for a while. The deacon was seated at the other end of the Holiday Inn’s Burgoyne Room, while Clare was ensconced at a table with a nun, a Lutheran pastor, a UCC minister, and an American Baptist preacher—all of whom were a good twenty-five to thirty years older than she was. The only other person attending who was close to her age was Father St. Laurent, a devastatingly good-looking Roman Catholic priest who made the RC’s vows of celibacy seem like a crime against the human gene pool. He had glanced at Clare with a sympathetic smile from the middle of his own collection of fossils. Experienced clerics, she corrected herself.
The blessing was given by a rabbi from Clifton Park, and the three men, who all seemed to know one another, fell into a discussion of their grandchildren before Clare had even buttered her roll. The nun rolled her eyes at Clare.
“This is just like the get-togethers in my town.” Clare kept her voice low. “Dr. McFeely and the Reverend Inman always wind up getting out their brag books.”
The sister laid her hand over Clare’s. “I can guarantee you I don’t have any grandkids. That I know of.”
Clare almost expelled her bite of salad.
“Sorry,” the nun said. “My favorite soap opera just managed to introduce a secret-baby story line where the father knew but the mother didn’t.”
Clare had to ask. “How? Amnesia?”
“Split personality.” The nun speared a cherry tomato. “So I figure, you never can tell.”
Clare’s laugh drew attention from several tables away. She covered her mouth with her napkin and coughed. “I’m Clare Fergusson. Rector of St. Alban’s, in Millers Kill.”
“Lucia Pirone of the Sisters of Marian Charity.” She nodded as the waitress reached for her salad plate. “I’m guessing from your accent you’re not from this neck of the woods. North Carolina?”
“Close,” Clare said. “Southern Virginia. Then around and about a bit with the U.S. Army before seminary.”
“Really? One of my brothers was career army. He’s retired now, of course. What was your MOS?”
“I flew helicopters.” She caught herself. “I fly helicopters. I’ve just recently reupped with the National Guard.”
“Really?” Sister Lucia leaned toward Clare, heedless of the silverware in her way. “With a war on? And you say you’re a rector?” The nun’s sharp eyes seemed out of place on her wrinkled face. Clare suspected the sweet-old-thing look was a clever disguise. “Whatever did your bishop say about that?”
“It was . . . he supported my reenlistment. He felt it would help me clarify . . . where my vocation lies.”
“This is supposed to help you see if you have a true calling?” The sister’s glance went to Clare’s white collar. “Bit late in the day for that, isn’t it?”
“It’s not my calling that’s in doubt. Just . . . what it is I’m called to do.” She dropped her voice. “I think the bishop’s hoping Uncle Sam will take me out of his hair.”
Sister Lucia’s eyes lit up. “Ah. You have bishop troubles.”
“I’m sure the bishop would say he has Clare Fergusson troubles.”
“I’ll drink to that.” The nun lifted her water glass and looked at it. She sighed. “That’s the only problem with these ecumenical things. No wine.” She glanced meaningfully at the Baptist preacher before swigging her water. “At any rate, my sympathies to you. I have bishop problems as well, and he’s not even my bishop.”
Clare leaned back to let the waitress deposit a chicken breast on a bed of wild rice in front of her. “Not your bishop?”
“Are you f
amiliar with the Sisters of Marian Charity?”
“Sorry. I’m not as knowledgeable about Roman Catholic orders as I probably should be.”
Sister Lucia thanked the waitress for her salmon. “The order was founded in 1896 by a pair of rich sisters who wanted to better the lives of impoverished immigrants in Boston.”
“You mean like Jane Addams and Ellen Starr in Chicago?”
“Exactly. Over the last century, the order’s mission became focused on the plight of migrant laborers. The mother-house relocated west during the dustbowl, and the bulk of our work has been in California and Arizona. I’m here as a missioner, the first one in the northeast dairy country.”
Clare paused before forking a bite of chicken into her mouth. “Why? I mean, Washington and Warren counties are whiter than mayonnaise. Shouldn’t you be in—I don’t know—Albany or somewhere?”
“What would you think if I told you there were upwards of three hundred year-round Hispanic farm workers in Washington County alone?”
Clare blinked. “Three hundred?”
“Or more. Some with guest-worker papers, most illegal. The number may double in the summer.”
“I’d say . . . that surprises me. I didn’t think this part of New York had the kind of large-scale agriculture that requires importing labor.” She stabbed several green beans, wondering, for the first time, whose hands had picked them.
“It’s dairy farming country,” Lucia said. “Hard, thankless work. Dairymen have to be able to fix machinery, repair barns, bring in crops, deliver calves, and, most demandingly, milk. Corn or soybeans or wheat can wait twenty-four hours for attention, but cows have to be milked, morning and evening, three hundred and sixty-five days a year.”
“You sound like someone speaking from experience.”
“I grew up on a dairy farm in Vermont. Last year, I went back to Rutland for a family funeral and discovered my brother’s neighbor had six Guatemalans working for him. That’s when I realized we were needed back East again.”
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