Clare’s silence made Dr. Anne and Willem look up, too. As they watched, a fat droplet squeezed from one of the patches and fell with a splat onto the polished wooden pew below.

“This is not good,” Clare said.

So what did you do?” Millers Kill’s chief of police dipped a steak fry into a paper tub of ketchup and popped it into his mouth.

Clare leaned back against the crimson vinyl seat and looked out the wide window of the Kreemy Kakes Diner. Icy rain splattered the passing cars and clung to the trees, bending their branches low to the sidewalk. Across the street, the Farmers and Merchants Bank had fluorescent orange warning cones on its granite steps, which were so slick that entering to make a deposit was an exercise in ice climbing.

“What could I do? I put pails underneath the drips and roped off the area. And asked Lois to call the vestry members for an emergency meeting.” She turned back to her lunch companion. “We’re hauling out the last roofing engineer’s report, from two years ago. They’ve been going round Robin’s barn about fixing the thing ever since I arrived, and I suspect they’d been debating it for some years before. Probably what finished off the late, much-lamented Father Hames.” She stirred a strand of melted cheese into her chili. “Now, of course, they’ll have to make decisions. Unfortunately, they’re going to be based on expediency instead of careful consideration.”

Russ Van Alstyne pointed to her onion rings. “Are you going to finish those?” She waved him to help himself. “You ought to set that janitor of yours on it. I thought he was supposed to keep things running around there.”

“The sexton,” she stressed Mr. Hadley’s title, “is unbolting the pew from the floor and putting it in storage.”

“I hear a but coming.”

“But he’s in his seventies and he’s not exactly in the best of health. I already have to do some fancy footwork to keep him from lugging heavy objects and climbing up the extension ladder to replace bulbs. I can just picture him clambering around an icy pitched roof trying to figure out what’s wrong. He might survive, but I’d probably have a heart attack.”

Russ laughed. “You young whippersnappers underestimate us geezers. I do my own roofing repairs. And my farmhouse is a good half century older than your church.”

“You”-she pointed her spoon at him-“are forty-nine, not seventy-three. And I’m going to assume you aren’t repairing the roof in this kind of weather.” She looked back out the window and shuddered. “I can’t believe it’s Ash Wednesday and we’re still stuck in full-blown winter. Do you know what the temperature was at my parents’ when I called them last Sunday? Fifty-seven degrees.”

“You’re the one who thought it was a good idea to move from southern Virginia to the Adirondack Mountains. Quit your complaining, spring is coming.”

“Two weeks in May. Some spring.”

“This is your second March here. You ought to be prepared for it this time around.”

“I was hoping last year’s weather was a fluke.” She ate a spoonful of chili and watched Russ as he deftly prevented a glob of ketchup from landing on his uniform sleeve. They were always in uniform during their Wednesday lunches, black clericals and brown cop gear. They always met on their lunch hours, so that they couldn’t linger. They always met at the diner, smack-dab in the middle of busy South Street, and sat, whenever possible, at one of the window booths, where God and everybody could see. As she had told Dr. Anne, everything innocent and aboveboard.

Except where it counted. In her conscience. In her thoughts. In her heart.

She realized she had been looking at Russ a little too long. She dropped her eyes and dug into her chili.

“So, what’s with the dirt on your forehead?” he asked.

“It’s not dirt. It’s penitential ashes.” She looked up to see him grinning. “Which you knew very well.”

“And folks say we heathens are unwashed.” He swiped another of her onion rings. “Should you be calling attention to yourself like that? I mean, doesn’t the Bible say something about praying and fasting in secret, and not wearing the sack-cloth and ashes on the street corner?”

“ ‘And your father who sees you in secret, shall reward you in secret.’ My goodness, I’m impressed. Have you been watching those TV preachers again?”

He laughed. “Not hardly. I was a faithful, if unwilling, attendee at the Cossayuharie Methodist Church until I got too big for my mom to forcibly drag me there. I guess some of what I heard stuck.” He picked up the diner’s dessert menu, which was larger than the meal menu and fully illustrated with saliva-provoking photos. “What are you giving up for Lent? Chocolate? Beer?”

“I’m not giving up food,” she said. “The whole giving-up-something-to-eat thing is a relic from times when we didn’t have a thousand food choices in every local supermarket. When you have an abundance-a superfluity-of something, giving up a little bit of it isn’t meaningful.”

“Woo-hoo. Did I stumble into next Sunday’s sermon?”

“Week after next,” she admitted.

“So what are you doing? Anything?”

“I figure the one thing we really have a scarcity of in our society is time. So I like to volunteer mine over the course of Lent. You wouldn’t believe how many not-for-profit organizations are swamped with money and assistance at Christmastime and begging for help in March.”

“But you already volunteer for a ton of stuff. I know you help out at the soup kitchen, and the teen mothers’ back-to-school program. And there’s the outreach you do at the homeless shelter.”

“Those are all sponsored by St. Alban’s. Showing up for the soup kitchen and the homeless shelter is part of my job.”

He suppressed a smile. “So, it doesn’t count if you do a good deed while you’re on salary. It only counts if it’s a freebie.”

“That’s not quite how I’d put it.” She scraped the last of the chili out of her bowl. “I’d like to help out at some place where I wouldn’t normally go. Some place that’s not associated with the church.”

“How about the dog pound?”

“Oh, Lord, no. I couldn’t. I’d wind up either adopting a bunch of strays I didn’t have time to care for or breaking my heart.”

“The library.”

“I’d have to clear up my overdue fines first. I’ve been dodging their reminder notices. I think next they send a big guy out to ‘talk’ with me.”

“Have you thought about the Millers Kill Historical Society? They always need help cataloging the collection. It’s a big, boring job, stuck up in the top floor going through boxes of stuff. Hard for them to keep people interested in it.”

She sat back. “That’s not a bad idea.” She thought of spending time with things, instead of people, for a change, up in a top floor all alone. It would be almost like going on a retreat. Monastic, even. “Where is the historical society?”

“Do you know where the free clinic is? On Barkley Avenue?”

“Yep.”

“Right next door.”

She crumpled her napkin and dropped it into her empty bowl. “I’ll swing by there tomorrow and see what they say.”

“Believe me, if you walk in and commit to a forty-day stint, they’ll greet you with open arms and cries of joy.”

“How do you know so much about it?”

He smiled, pleased with himself. “I’m on the board of trustees.”

She laughed. “You’re just full of surprises today.”

“I don’t want to get too boring.”

“Never that.”

There was a pause. Then Russ jerked around to wave their waitress over, and Clare twisted away to search for her wallet.

“It’s on me,” he said, plucking the slip from between the waitress’s fingers.

“You paid last week. And the week before that.”

“So what? I make more money than you do.”

“That’s not the point. We agreed to share-”

He stood up and pulled his billfold from his back pocket. “Make a donation to the historical society, then.” He laid down some money next to the ketchup bottle and waited while she struggled into her expedition-weight parka, a Christmas present from her concerned southern parents. Then he stood aside to let her go first to the door. On the way, he was greeted by two aldermen, and she said hello to one of her parishioners. It was all very open. Very aboveboard. Perfectly innocent.