And that ended his day’s adventure. At least until that night, when he woke up his mother, yelling, from the first nightmare he could remember since he was ten. And in later years, even after he had walked, awake, through nightmares of men blown to a pulp and helicopters falling out of the sky, he still sometimes remembered the sensation of sinking into the cool, dark water. The pale, withered face. The black, black eyes. And he would shiver.

Ash Wednesday, March 8, a Day of Penance

The rector of St. Alban’s Episcopal Church, town of Millers Kill, diocese of Albany, spread her arms in an old gesture of welcome. Her chasuble, dark purple embroidered with gold, opened like penitential wings. “I invite you, therefore, in the name of the Church, to the observance of a holy Lent,” she said, “by self-examination and repentance; by prayer, fasting, and self-denial; and by reading and meditating on God’s holy word.” Her voice echoed off the stone walls of the church and was swallowed up in corners left dark by the antiquated lighting system and the heavy, gray day outside. “And, to make a right beginning of repentance and as a mark of our mortal nature, let us now kneel before the Lord, our maker and redeemer.”

She turned toward the low altar and knelt. There was a thick woolen rustling as the twenty or so persons who had risked a late arrival at the office to attend the 7:00 A.M. Imposition of Ashes knelt behind her. A vast and somber silence settled around them as they all considered the sobering idea of their mortal nature. At least, Clare hoped they were all considering it. Undoubtedly, some were worried about the imminent storm, promising ice and freezing rain, while others were already thinking about what awaited them at work or contemplating the pain in their knees. There was a lot of kneeling in Lent. It was hard on the knees.

Clare rose. She took the silver bowl containing the ashes and turned back to the people. She cupped the bowl between her hands. “Almighty God, you have created us out of the dust of the earth; grant that these ashes may be to us a sign of our mortality and penitence, that we may remember that it is only by your gracious gift that we are given everlasting life; through Jesus Christ our Savior.” They said “Amen” in unison.

She nodded to Willem Ellis, who had cheerfully agreed to act as the acolyte for the early-morning service if it got him a note excusing him from homeroom and first-period geometry at school. He hopped down the steps from the altar and drew a kneeler across the bare stone before swinging the mahogany altar rail shut. Clare waited while the penitents slid out of the pews and made their way up to the rail. As one coat-muffled form after another sank down onto the overstuffed velvet kneeler, she stepped forward. “Remember that you are dust,” she said, dipping her thumb into the ashes and firmly crossing Nathan Andernach’s forehead. “And to dust you shall return.” She made a sooty cross beneath Judy Morrison’s heavily teased bangs. Down the row, again and again. “Remember that you are dust. And to dust you shall return.” The black crosses emerged beneath her thumb. “Remember that you are dust. And to dust you shall return.” Finally, she turned to Willem, who helpfully scraped his bangs off his face to bare his forehead. She almost smiled. No sixteen-year-old ever remembered he was dust.

She turned back to the altar and, bowing slightly, dipped her thumb into the ashes one last time. She crossed her own forehead, feeling the grit of it pressing into her, marking her skin. “Remember that you are dust,” she whispered.

The ice storm everyone was expecting had arrived by the end of the service. Clare shook hands and said farewells near the inner narthex door, in a spot strategically chosen for its relative lack of drafts. As members of the congregation opened and closed the doors, she could see glimpses of the hammered-steel sky and hear the ticks and splatters of sleet and freezing rain.

Dr. Anne Vining-Ellis paused in front of Clare to wrap a muffler around her throat. “I’m glad I insisted on bringing Will this morning,” she said. “This is nasty weather for an inexperienced driver to be out in.”

Clare waved to a departing parka-clad back and shivered as a cold wind speared through the doorway. “Amen to that,” she said.

“I don’t suppose I can suggest you stay close to home today.”

“I’m never going to live down my winter driving reputation, am I?” Anne-universally called Dr. Anne-was the closest thing Clare had to a good friend among her parishioners. She was willing to let her fuss a little. “Don’t worry, I’m not planning on making any home visits today. I’ve got two more Impositions scheduled, at noon and five-thirty. Those will keep me plenty busy.”

The emergency-room doctor glanced up at the shadowy rafters. “It’s Wednesday. You always go to the Kreemy Kakes Diner on Wednesdays.”

Clare pressed her lips together in what she hoped was a smile. “Well, you see then? That’s right in the middle of town.”

“I’m not the only one who’s made mention of your habit, Clare.” Dr. Anne looked at her. “You know I’m not a gossip. I just think you ought to be aware that the fact you have lunch every week with a married man hasn’t gone unnoticed.” Clare opened her mouth. Dr. Anne cut her off. “And I know it’s all perfectly innocent. You don’t have to tell me that.”

Clare rolled her eyes. “If having lunch once a week in a public diner is going to start stories, I can’t imagine what I could do to stop them from circulating. Have the man over to my house where no one will see us together?”

Dr. Anne shook her head. “Take it as a friendly FYI.” She laid a gloved hand on Clare’s arm. “There are still some people in this church who aren’t too keen on the idea of a female priest. Don’t give them any ammunition, okay?”

“I’ll try to be a credit to my gender,” Clare said.

Dr. Anne laughed. “Good enough. Hey, where’s that rotten kid of mine? Willem?”

The boy’s voice came from the far side of the church. “Mom! Reverend Clare! Take a look at this!”

Dr. Anne looked questioningly at Clare, then set off toward her son. Clare followed, pulling her chasuble over her head as she walked. Willem was standing near the halfway point of the north wall of the church. As Clare and his mother approached, he pointed to the deeply embrasured window there, a stained-glass depiction of stately angels leading a group of children to the Throne of Glory. It had always been an odd window to Clare’s thinking-it was obviously a recent addition, done in a modern mosaic style favored in the 1970s. And the inscription wasn’t, as one might expect of such a scene, “Suffer the little children to come unto me” or “Unless ye be as little children.” Instead, two of the angels faced the viewer, holding shields with a verse from Lamentations: “But though he cause grief, yet will he have compassion according to the multitude of his mercies. For he doth not afflict willingly, nor grieve the children of men.”

It was not the singular artwork or the gloomy verse that had caught Willem Ellis’s attention, though. It was water. Seeping from the top of the embrasure, running down the edges of the window, puddling at the deep sill, and making ugly brown tracks along the pale stone wall.

“Oh my Lord,” Dr. Anne said.

St. Alban’s had been built along traditional Gothic Revival lines, with the long walls to the north and south jutting away from the lofty-ceilinged central nave. These north and south aisles were sheltered under roofs a mere ten or twelve feet high, so that when Clare looked up, she could easily see the warmly stained pine boards, carefully lapped like ship’s planking. And although the storm darkness outside leached away much of the light that normally spilled through the stained-glass windows, Clare could also see the blotches spreading along the boards’ joints, giving the interior roof the brackish, mottled look of something old and unpleasantly moldy.