The Undoing of Saint Silvanus

by Beth Moore

  CHAPTER 56

  THE SUN SET ON CHRISTMAS EVE at Saint Sans as the temperature rose in busy ovens. Olivia was busy in the kitchen with David and Jillian offering what help they could. Had Olivia not had the forethought to equip that kitchen with one full-size oven and another half and a freestanding electric turkey roaster, they’d have been forced to suffer the shame of a single entrée.

  The whole house was astir with last-minute preparations. They’d expected to have a perfectly horrible Christmas, with Rafe’s room the cleanest it had been in six months and Olivia shut in her suite like the days of yore and Jillian long gone to San Francisco without a single glance back. That’s not what they’d gotten.

  “Jillian, if you eat another chunk of praline off those sweet potatoes, we may as well have dumped yams from a can,” Olivia scolded.

  “Why haven’t you said a single word to David while he’s downed at least four cloves of roasted garlic from the brussels sprouts?”

  “Seriously? You’re tattling on me?”

  “The first one that breaks off an edge of that pastry on the Wellington is going to supply a head on a platter for entrée number three,” Olivia threatened, and she hadn’t minded giving them the stink eye when she said it. She’d saved enough dough to shape two S’s on top, and they had come out posing for a Louisiana Living photo shoot.

  “Vida, is the table about ready?” Setting the table was her job since she didn’t need to be anywhere near a burner, particularly when she lacquered down her hair, which she always did at Christmas. Olivia set out the Spode Christmas plates on the buffet adjacent to the dinner table in advance to shorten the distance and reduce the breakage. So far only one saucer had jumped to its demise.

  David leaned over and whispered under his breath, “Mrs. Fontaine, you might want to double-check the table.”

  She glanced up between heaping spoonfuls of jalapeño cranberry sauce into petite crystal bowls. “Looks splendid to me!” And it did, alive with color, festive in mood, and bursting with flavor before a single morsel had graced it. “Excellent taste in placement, Vida. And the chrome chargers are perfect with all the silver trim. And haven’t we become quite the crowd? Look at that full table.”

  “My point exactly,” David whispered. “Does the table look slightly more populated than usual to you?”

  When she looked at him, confused, he held up six fingers. Olivia glanced back at the table. David was as right as rain. Six place settings. Olivia’s only wonderment was why on earth this would have amounted to an iota of confusion in this house. “Will Mr. Winsee be joining us tonight, Vida?”

  The elderly woman responded with complete surprise like it was the most absurd thing she’d ever heard. “Mr. Winsee? Don’t be ridiculous.”

  Olivia and the others all froze, holding their breath, terrified that she’d realized he was dead. Not one among them was prepared to let him go, particularly not on Christmas Eve.

  Wagging her finger at Olivia, Vida said, “You know as well as I do that he’s in bed again with the croup.” They all breathed a sigh of relief. “David, I can’t imagine you’ve gotten a wink of sleep either with these paper-thin walls. All that cigar smoking you two boys have been doing is catching up with him. And don’t think it won’t catch up with you either.”

  David shrugged his shoulders, wide-eyed.

  “Just listen to that hacking.” When they all inclined their ears the direction of Vida’s room, she offered a disclaimer. “Don’t let him fool you. He’s resting quietly right now so he can be ready to cough up a lung as soon as I crawl into bed.”

  “So, who’s the extra place setting for?” Jillian inquired this time.

  “What? Are you talking about this one?”

  Vida pointed to a spot on the other side of the centerpiece. Olivia caught a glimpse of the top of the goblet and realized what she had done. “Uh-oh.” She pitched the spoon onto the counter so she could make a beeline to the table for a quick intervention.

  Before she could clear three steps, Vida had already come out with it. “It’s the Lord’s Supper.”

  It was the Eucharist serving pieces, as plain as day.

  Crowded among the red-and-green confetti of five Christmas Spodes was a gold-plated paten. Beside it, a large matching chalice. While Vida stood behind the Lord’s chair gratified and near misty-eyed, the others stood by, speechless.

  “Will you be adding utensils?” For the life of her, Olivia could not think of another thing to say. Between the salad forks, dessert forks, dinner forks, steak knives, regular knives, butter knives, regular spoons, coffee spoons, and teaspoons festively framing the other plates, the Lord’s setting appeared conspicuously stark.

  Vida looked at Olivia like she didn’t have sense enough to come in out of the rain. “Olivia, the Lord eats with his hands.”

  The timer went off on one oven for the cajun oyster dressing and the other oven for the popovers. There was nothing left to be done but eat.

  After they said grace, that was. Caryn brought it up. “I feel like we should say a blessing or something.” This she said with her eyes shifting toward the Lord’s plate.

  No one could argue, nor did anyone volunteer.

  “Caryn, since you brought it up, why don’t you say it?” The request seemed reasonable enough to Olivia, particularly since the popovers would get stone cold if somebody didn’t get a move on it.

  “Uh, okay. I guess I’ll say what my daddy always says.” She bowed her head and then glanced back up to see if any other head was following suit. At that subtle signal, every chin dropped.

  “Bless us, O Lord, and these thy gifts, which we are about to receive from thy bounty, through Christ, our Lord. Amen.”

  “That was lovely, Caryn,” David said.

  “It was,” Jillian agreed.

  The others nodded, and all of them flew into a feast of unfettered joy.

  Oh, how they did eat. The whole oval table was elbows, passing plates and platters and sweeteners and grinders of salt and pepper. The five of them chattered and chewed and mouthed off and mused and ate and ate till they ached.

  Two hours later, all five were on their feet clearing the table, covering the leftovers, rinsing the glasses, and scrubbing the plates. The only thing fuller than their bellies was the dishwasher. It groaned like it had dreaded this day for months. They’d promised Olivia that the kitchen would be spotless and the table empty before they reposed in front of the fireplace with hot cocoa.

  And it was soon empty. Except for the Lord’s plate, with one lone popover right in the center of it.

  David stood at the table, holding the dishrag he’d used to wipe off the last few crumbs and scattered salt. “Mrs. Fontaine, what would you have me do here?” he asked with an impressive balance of practicality and reverence. “He hasn’t eaten a bite.” He leaned over and peered into the chalice. “Nor, from what I can tell, has the Lord had a single sip.”

  What to do wasn’t all that simple, seeing as how Vida was standing arm’s length from Olivia, ears attuned to every word.

  Olivia always did her level best not to take the wind out of the sails of Vida Winsee, and not just because she had made that promise to Mr. Winsee before he passed. In a wretched world, selfish and shriveled, that old woman was as full of hope as a sky-high balloon is full of hot air. One day Vida Winsee would go to sleep and not wake up, but thanks be to God, it hadn’t been today. And this was Christmas Eve.

  “Just leave it, David,” she instructed with a wave of her hand. “I’ll tend to it later.”

  Caryn and Jillian sat on the hearth with their hot cocoa. Olivia, with hers, sat in the gold-and-red wingback, Clementine asleep in her lap. Vida was audaciously cheerful in an armchair with a half-moon of whipping cream on her upper lip. David walked back into the circle carrying five Christmas gift bags.

  Everyone instantly protested. “We said we weren’t doing presents!”

  “These are not from me,” he claimed. “They’re from Adella. She a
sked me to distribute one to each of us tonight, and that’s precisely what I intend to do.”

  Vida said, “That little dickens,” and Caryn, “She’s so sweet.”

  “Sweet,” Olivia interjected with a perfect smirk, “is not the exact adjective that comes to my mind when I think of Adella Atwater.” Everybody laughed.

  “How about thoughtful?” Caryn returned.

  “I can go with thoughtful. And mouthful. To Adella,” Olivia said, lifting her gift bag like a glass of champagne.

  “Hear! Hear!” the others chimed in and lifted theirs.

  It was no easy feat to win a prize in absentia for best white elephant gift, but Adella had managed to accomplish it. Their presents were identical: framed pictures of the five of them walking into Adella’s church the night of the Christmas pageant. A photographer had been stationed in the foyer to capture the gleaming expressions of expectant gatherers come to hear glad tidings.

  Having fought a cold for three days, David had never been paler or the end of his nose redder, which explained why he was picking at it. Something had gone badly wrong with Caryn’s hair to make it look that much like an isosceles triangle, and it didn’t help that she, a virtual teetotaler, looked three sheets to the wind. Olivia could only guess that Vida had sniffed out the photographer since her likeness was captured bent at the waist, head thrown forward, taking a bow. Jillian appeared to be patting her head and rubbing her stomach, and somewhat vigorously at that, although she claimed she’d undergone an attack of severe itching. Olivia looked like she’d been caught in a stampede under the very hooves of Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Comet, Cupid, Donner, and Blitzen—and had come back crazed with vengeance.

  Four of them howled and one of them grinned until most of them spilled their cocoa. They told stories on Adella and on one another and how they’d each ended up at Saint Sans.

  Finally it was getting close to midnight and the firewood was embers, so all agreed to call it a day. Olivia swept Clementine to the floor, got to her feet, and picked up her empty cup and Vida’s.

  “What was that?” Jillian asked, straightening her back.

  “What was what?” David responded.

  Jillian sat still for a moment and her eyes grew wide. “That!”

  Olivia glanced at David and saw that he was as perplexed as she was.

  Caryn put her hand on Jillian’s wrist. “Do you hear something outside?”

  After the last six weeks, they’d all earned the right to get spooked. But Olivia hadn’t heard anything out of the ordinary.

  As if echoing Olivia’s thoughts, Vida sat up and looked around her. “All I hear is some thunder.”

  A rumble vibrated the floor. Jillian picked up her feet, squeezed her knees to her chest, and ducked her head between them. A clap of thunder followed. “No, don’t!” she cried out, shaking all over.

  Olivia was bewildered. Jillian had never reacted this way to a storm before.

  “Jillian,” David said gently, “everything’s fine. It’s just a typical winter thunderstorm. We have them all the time.”

  With the next bolt, the lights flickered off and back on. Jillian whimpered.

  “There, there,” Vida said tenderly. “Don’t be afraid. We’re perfectly safe in—”

  Lightning split the sky, lighting up the garden as if it were day. Rain hammered on the metal roof. Thunder cracked like a massive branch breaking off a mighty redwood.

  Jillian let out a bloodcurdling scream.

  CHAPTER 57

  CHRISTMAS EVE 1921

  The chapel was pitch black when Reverend Brashear turned the key in the lock of the side entrance to Saint Silvanus. Instead of turning on a light, he reached into a drawer and pulled out several long matches and walked methodically to the pine altar near the pulpit.

  It was a moonless night, not quite midnight, though the clock in the parsonage was unwound and mute. The first match refused to strike, and after several tries, the thin stick broke in his hand. The second match lit with a burst of white and held its flame for all six slender candles. Shadows shivered and jerked like uneasy spirits scared of the dark.

  He turned slowly and faced the empty pews. He pictured the faces of his congregants, the grim and the gracious, in their established places.

  As early as the third Sunday of Saint Silvanus’s abbreviated existence, families had already claimed their territory. What God appeared to lack in dependability, they made up for in predictability, both in seating and in countenance. Those who smiled, smiled every service. Those who grunted and growled never ceased. Those who yawned could never catch up on their sleep.

  Raymond hadn’t minded the claiming of the pews in the early days. Colonizing seats was the signature of a community staking its claim on a house of God they felt they co-owned. He’d looked forward to the young church’s rite of passage since the day he’d been ordained. But the familiarity also meant that, when pews began to empty one Sunday at a time, Reverend R. J. Brashear knew at a single glance precisely who was missing.

  His gaze was drawn to that front row, where he’d seated Brianna next to Evelyn Ann every Lord’s Day she was strong enough to come. The leg at the end of the pew bore nicks from the braces of her shoes, though it was out of view in the dark. He’d run his hand over them for the first time a few days before. He knew they were there before he looked. At times when he’d pause between superlatives in a sermon, he’d hear a knock of her heel against the wood. Evelyn Ann, eyes never wavering from the pulpit, would reach over with her eyelet-laced glove and gently pat Brianna’s knee. Both gestures had been a strange comfort to him.

  His special graces, in pools on the front row, tended to wane in a thin tide toward the back. Old man Woffard tapped his empty pipe on the armrest if the preaching went too long—and not rhythmically either. Mildred Cunningham made a honking sound when she blew her nose, which she did incessantly into her husband’s handkerchief every Sunday. But the annoyances were not always audible. Milt Mahachy twisted the end of his beard during the sermon, and by the end of the service, it looked like it would spear the open page on his hymnal.

  This had been his congregation. This and a smattering of other saints, long-suffering and sentimental, full of faith, full of hope. It had been harder than he’d supposed. And it had been better. And woefully worse.

  He forced his gaze away from the front pew. Candle wax had begun to collect on the marble top of the pine altar. His eyes had adjusted to the darkness now and he made his way to the small kitchenette just off the chapel. He reached into a cabinet and withdrew a carafe of wine and picked up the loaf of bread from the countertop. When he returned to the altar, he poured the wine into the chalice, hands steady, the room motionless, soundless.

  He broke the bread and uttered the words he knew by heart.

  “‘For I have received of the Lord that which also I delivered unto you, that the Lord Jesus the same night in which he was betrayed took bread: And when he had given thanks, he brake it, and said, Take, eat: this is my body, which is broken for you: this do in remembrance of me. After the same manner also he took the cup, when he had supped, saying, This cup is the new testament in my blood: this do ye, as oft as ye drink it, in remembrance of me. For as often as ye eat this bread, and drink this cup, ye do shew the Lord’s death till he come.’”

  He dipped the bread into the wine. He lifted his chin and stared at the stained-glass image of Jesus, the rocking boat, and the daring disciple. Then he took the bread.

  Not a single ear was open when the gun went off.

  Suspicion taints sorrow like few other poisons. Once it is offered in a silver chalice, full and tipping, most people cannot help but sip. Held on the human tongue long enough, its rancid taste turns sweet. Swallowed, suspicion sinks so deep into the mire of bored and fickle hearts that it resurfaces as fact. It killed Saint Silvanus Methodist Church, and at last, it killed her pastor.

  Over the years, several valiant efforts were made toward resuscitating the church. Bu
t no matter how promising the man at the pulpit, fate seemed to forbid it. It was not a question of God. If God had ever been there, he had vanished without a trace.

  No one remembered who first nicknamed the church Saint Sans, but it stuck like storm shutters to broken windows. Some argued that it was a kindness. They could have called it Ichabod.

  CHAPTER 58

  OLIVIA TOOK SEVERAL STEPS in her granddaughter’s direction. “You’re perfectly safe, Jillian. All of us are.”

  The house rumbled and Jillian continued wailing and screaming. “No, no, stop it! No!”

  Caryn’s lip quivered and she looked at Olivia with the face of a scared little girl. “What’s wrong with her, Mrs. Fontaine?”

  Motioning for Caryn to scoot from the hearth, Olivia sat down next to Jillian and placed her hand on her back. She could feel the girl’s heart hammering. “Tell me what’s the matter. Talk to me right now.”

  When the electricity went off and the house went black, Jillian threw her hands over her head and yelled, “Run! Everybody, run!”

  Olivia held her as tightly as she could and David sat down on the other side of her and wrapped his arms around them both. Vida stood flailing her arms frantically and started toward the front door.

  “Caryn!” Olivia called. “Tend to Vida. Right now.” Caryn jumped to her feet and charged toward her. “Don’t let her out that door!”

  Competing with the crackling thunder, Olivia struggled to maintain the calm in her voice that Vida required in an episode like this. “Vida, come over here by me and let’s you and I talk to Jillian. She’s a little upset.”

  Panicked, Vida turned the lock on the front door while Caryn tried to pull her away from the door by the waist. “I don’t think I can hold her!”

  When David let go of Jillian so he could help Caryn with Vida, Jillian grabbed on to Olivia’s shirt with both fists.