“Yes,” he said. His voice was clotted. He coughed and tried again. “Yes. I’ll talk with him.”

Clare figured there might be places she felt more awkward. Fully robed in her vestments in the middle of a snake-handling-and-speaking-in-tongues revival, for instance. Wearing shorts and a sports bra in downtown Kandahar, maybe. But sitting in the Millers Kill High School principal’s office ranked right up there at the moment.

After Russ’s mother had delivered the message about a possible break in Linda Van Alstyne’s murder case, Russ had staggered up from the kitchen floor like a bull suffering from one too many cuts in the ring. “I’m going,” he said.

“Not like that, you’re not,” Margy said.

“What?”

“Russell Howard, you’re in no shape to be driving anywhere.”

From the depths of the last few minutes, Clare felt a bubble of humor rise. So that was his middle name. It sounded like a 1930s movie star.

“Mom-”

“Listen to me, sweetie. Losing a loved one and having a baby are two times when you can’t trust your own head. I remember one time right after your father passed. I nearly plowed into a tree. I just lost track of where I was and what I was doing. Let me take you back to town.”

“You have to be here when Debbie arrives.”

“I’ll take him, Margy.” The offer was out of Clare’s mouth before she had a chance to think about it.

Russ looked at her.

“I have to head back anyway. I left my new deacon in the lurch.” She looked at Margy instead of Russ. “I’ll carry him on over to the high school, and when he’s done, I’ll drop him off at the station. I’m sure he can get a ride home with one of the officers.”

“Okay.” Russ’s voice, tired and acquiescent, surrendering.

“Oh.” She sounded stupid. “Really?”

He nodded. “I guess I ought to listen to Mom.” He turned to retrieve his tartan scarf from the top of the washing machine. “I picked up too many guys who thought they were fine after drinking a few beers. Sometimes, you’re not the best judge of whether you’re good to go or not.”

Margy unhooked his coat and handed it to him. “Will you be home in time for supper?”

“I’m not hungry.”

Margy opened her mouth; Russ seemed to realize this was an unacceptable answer. “I’ll call you if I’ll be late,” he amended.

She nodded and contented herself with a fast, fierce hug, one for him and one for Clare. Margy didn’t say anything more, but the look she gave Clare as she followed Russ through the kitchen door didn’t need any words. Take care of my son.

He didn’t say a thing to her during the drive down to the center of town. Which was okay by her. She didn’t know what he needed from her, and she sure as hell didn’t know what she ought to be giving him. She pulled into the buses-only zone to let him off by the door. “I’ll be waiting for you in the parking lot,” she said.

“Would you come in with me?”

“What?”

“It shouldn’t take long.”

“I don’t think that’s appropriate. I don’t have anything to do with this investigation.”

He snorted. “Never stopped you before.”

“Russ. Doesn’t the phrase ‘people talk’ mean anything to you? We agreed-”

“Please.” He laid his hand over her coat sleeve. “I feel… I could use a little support.”

He sounded embarrassed. He was never going to be a man who was comfortable asking for help. It wouldn’t make it any better if she told him his reaction was common in the recently bereaved. It was almost impossible, in the face of loss, not to cling to those around you. A good pastor-

Oh, who was she kidding. She didn’t feel pastoral about any of this. She was just too stupid to say no to him.

She opened the door and stepped out. The sky overhead was the clear winter blue that looked as if it went all the way up to the edge of space, but northward she could see a solid line of gray massing over the mountains. The next storm.

The high school was long-and-low, an ugly, early seventies assemblage of unnaturally even bricks and orange panels. It had been built end-on against the old high school, a narrow three-story building with high windows and undoubtedly even higher heating bills.

“That’s where the admin offices are now,” Russ said, pointing toward the old school. As they crossed the parking lot, Clare could see the two schools didn’t actually touch but were instead connected by a paved and low-walled walkway.

“Mine was one of the last classes to graduate from the old school.” Russ opened one of the wide central doors for her, and Clare walked beneath the initials M.K.H.S. chiseled in Gothic lettering on the lintel.

“Nice,” she said, and she could see it must have been, despite the file cabinets and spare chairs now lining the halls.

“Classrooms were great,” he said. “The gym was in the basement, though. No windows, and when you went up for a dunk shot you nearly brained yourself on the ceiling. Here’s the principal’s office.”

It wasn’t, exactly-it was the secretary’s office and waiting area, a former classroom that still had a blackboard running along one wall. Mottoes, quotes, and aphorisms had been scribbled all over it in different colored chalks. Clare wondered if the sayings were the work of students or teachers.

Russ zeroed in on the round-cheeked woman behind the desk. “I’m-” he began, but she jumped up and said, “Russ Van Alstyne!” before he got any further. “I’m Barb Berube,” she added, bright-eyed and breathless. “Or I am now. I was Barbara McDonald back when we were in high school.”

“Barbara-Barbie McDonald?”

She nodded, sending kinky red curls flying everywhere.

“I wouldn’t have recognized you. You look great.”

“Well, I stopped ironing my hair. That helped.” The smile that started across her wide face stalled. “I am so, so sorry to hear about your wife,” she said in an entirely different tone. “If I can do anything at all, or if you need someone to talk with, please give me a call. I know what it’s like to lose a spouse.”

Russ had stiffened as the secretary spoke; now he stood taut as a wire, his face a blend of pain and alarm. It hadn’t occurred to him, Clare saw, that his private grief was going to be the subject of public comment.

“Are you a widow?” Clare asked, stepping into the lengthening silence.

“No, I’m divorced,” Barb Berube said. She seemed not to have noticed Clare up to that point. “And you are…?”

Clare unzipped her parka, revealing her clerical blouse and collar. “Clare Fergusson, from St. Alban’s.”

Barb eyed Russ once more. He was still imitating a pillar of salt. She rallied, smiled at Clare, and said, “I’ll just let the principal know you’re here, shall I?”

As soon as she had disappeared through the door into the adjoining office, Russ rounded on Clare. “What was that?”

“What?”

“That… call me to talk thing? If I’ve seen her more’n a half dozen times at the IGA since we graduated, I’d be surprised.”

Clare sighed. “You’re a widower now, Russ.”

He winced.

“You don’t know it, and you’re not ready for it, but you’ve just become a hot commodity to unmarried women of a certain age.”

His look of horror would have made her laugh if it hadn’t been so heartbreaking.

“Russ? And, um, Pastor? Mrs. Rayburn will see you now.” Barb Berube smiled sympathetically at them. Russ gave her a wide berth on his way through the door.

Jean Ann Rayburn, the Millers Kill principal, was rising from her desk to greet them. She was an angular woman, whose flyaway gray hair and fuzzy cardigan fought against a stock-necked silk blouse and straight skirt.

“Russ Van Alstyne,” she said.

“Mrs. Rayburn.”

She shook his hand. “I’m so sorry for your loss. I met your wife a few times over the years since you came home. She was a lovely woman.”