‘So about this call from Andrew Gregory,’ she said. ‘Do you think he wants you to run for mayor next time?’

‘He seems perfectly happy doing the mayoring himself. He’ll ask me to run for council, I’m certain, but don’t say I said it.’

‘You should run for mayor.’

‘Why on earth do you think that?’

‘You’d be perfect.’

‘I would be no such thing. I have no patience for budgets and five-year plans and whatever else goes on in that office.’

‘Then you should definitely run for council. It’s your town.’

‘So? It’s your town, as well. I don’t see you serving on the council.’

‘They haven’t asked me.’

‘Call the mayor’s office, please, and say I’ll get back to him next week.’

‘Got it. What do clergy down th’ mountain want with you?’

‘They want me to tell them everything’s going to be all right.’

‘Is it?’

‘All I know is that the gates of hell shall not prevail against the church. I can’t be more specific, thus I’m not the man for the job.’

‘So I’ll tell them you’re taking a break,’ she said.

She was hitting her stride; her chest heaved with the joys of power and purpose. Not one among the many would know what hit them.

‘Hendersonville,’ she said.

‘Father Buster Baldwin, Priest in Charge,’ he dictated, handing over the address. ‘Dear Father Buster, I must decline your invitation to supply St. John for the month of January upcoming, while you and Mary are in the Keys. Thank you for your prayerful consideration and for the very generous offer of your home during that time. I will pray for the right soul to provide the needs of your growing parish. In his grace.’

‘Hendersonville in January,’ she said. ‘You dodged a bullet. So what’s with this letter from the bishop?’

‘Open it and tell me what it says.’

She slid her glasses down her nose. ‘You can’t open it and read it yourself?’

‘Read it and give me the gist of it.’ He had avoided the thing like the plague. Maybe he was still holding on to Stuart Cullen, his former bishop and oldest friend. In any case, Bishop Martin wanted something, he was sure of it. In his early days as a priest, he developed a nose, an instinct about people who wanted something. He could see it in the way they looked when approaching him, even sense it by glancing at the envelope containing a request. As for this missive, they would be after him to raise funds, he could smell it.

‘It’s dated September third. How long have you had it?’

‘Eons,’ he said.

‘“Dear Father Cavanaugh.”’ She was silent for a moment, glanced up. ‘He misspelled your name big-time.’

‘With a u, I suppose.’

‘With a c and a u.’

Call him prideful, call him contrary, he disliked it very much—very much—when someone misspelled, and in this case totally botched, his surname. What was the matter with people?

‘So much for your new bishop,’ she said.

‘Read it and tell me what he says.’

She adjusted her glasses, bent to the task, read silently, shook her head, squinted, looked up, and met his gaze.

‘He’s leaving for the airport in thirty minutes and has just been advised of a grave issue in the diocese. He tried to call but your mailbox was full. Um, he wants you to come to Asheville.’

‘And do what?’

‘Meet with him about something private.’

He felt his brow furrowing, quite of its own accord. ‘What else does it say?’

‘It says you were beloved by your former parish.’

‘That’s nice. What else?’ He did not want to go to Asheville, however appealing the land of the sky may be.

‘He says he’s going to the Bahamas . . .’

‘Bishops always go to the Bahamas.’

‘. . . to a remote property with no cell phone service, and he’d like to see you when he returns in two weeks, he’ll call as soon as he gets back—which, if it was written on the third and this is what, the seventeenth? He should be calling any minute.’

‘What else?’

‘He asks you to pray.’

‘For what, exactly?’

‘He doesn’t say.’

‘He doesn’t say?’

‘Right.’

‘Let me see the letter,’ he said.

‘It’s about time—you acted like a snake would bite you if you touched th’ thing.’

I will covet your prayers in this desperate matter which must remain unspoken until we meet.

‘You haven’t drunk a drop of water since I’ve been here,’ she said. ‘You’re supposed to drink a lot of water. You may forget, but I remember these things.’

‘How’s Snickers?’ he said.

•   •   •

‘THREE HOURS EVERY TUESDAY MORNING, at the old rate, for somebody who knows how to dot every t and cross every i.’ She collected her handbag from his out-box. ‘You won’t get an offer like that every day. Think about it.’

He had already thought about it.

•   •   •

SHE HAD GONE THROUGH the garage and out to the sidewalk when he remembered and ran after her. ‘And call Vanita Bentley at the Muse,’ he shouted, ‘and give her the correct spelling of my name. Both names, for future reference.’

‘Both?’ she yelled back. ‘She can’t spell either one?’

He walked out to her at the curb. ‘Didn’t you read today’s Muse?’

‘Are you kidding me? I don’t read that rag.’

‘Who told you what you said when you came in?’

‘Ruby Greene. She called me the day after it happened.’

‘Isn’t it against the law to tell things known only to police officers?’

‘It was on the board down at th’ police station, they post reports of all their calls, don’t you remember? Anybody can go in an’ read th’ police reports.’

He walked back to the house, wondering where he and Cynthia might move. Possibly to Linville, where they had no newspaper, a loss more than generously repaid by the Thursday night seafood buffet at the lodge.

•   •   •

COOT HENDRICK WAS LATE getting home, as three people had stopped him on the street and talked his head off about the question going around town.

He heard the Wheel as soon as he walked in the house, and went to his mama’s room, hollering. ‘I got m’ name in th’ paper! I got m’ name in th’ paper!’

He had folded the Muse to show off the article just right, and held it close to her face so she could see it good.

‘What’d ye git it in there f’r?’

‘F’r answerin’ a question.’

‘What was th’ question?’ She was deaf as a doorknob, and talked loud enough to bust a man’s eardrums.

He sat in the chair with the broke seat and one arm missing, and leaned in to her good ear. He said what people on the street said the question was, and said it slow so he wouldn’t have to say it again.

‘Does . . . Mitford . . . still . . . take . . . care . . . of . . . its . . . own?’

‘What kind of question is that?’

He honestly didn’t know.

‘What did ye answer, then?’

He wasn’t sure what he answered, he’d been so rattled by the woman on the street poking a thingamajig in his face. ‘Talk right in this,’ she said.

He would give most anything to find out what he’d answered, but he couldn’t read nothing but his name. ‘Look there,’ he said, pointing to his name, which he had tirelessly searched for after picking up the paper from the street rack. ‘Can you see that?’

She lifted her head off the pillow and squinted at the two long columns of printed words. ‘What’s it sayin’? Read it out.’

She knew he couldn’t read, it was hateful to ask him to do such a thing. His daddy had run off when he was four years old and never come back, and if he’d knowed how hard it was to live with this old woman, he’d of run off with him.

‘I cain’t read over th’ dadblame TV!’ He hated her TV, it went ’til way up in the night, he had to get in bed and cover his head to keep from seein’ the light flickering on his walls from her room next to his. He would set it on the road one day, and let the town crew get out of it whatever torment they could.