I was always prone—as prone as one could possibly be, I feel. But could I actually love? Not until I met you, Timothy, who is Love’s truest yeoman.

For everything that you are to me and to many, for your kindness of spirit and unbounded generosity, I love and cherish you with all my being, and if God choose—please forgive me for borrowing this—I shall but love thee better after death.

Bookends forever,

C

Thomas blew into the room bearing an enormous tray. Jelly donuts, cookies, Danish, crème horns, lemon squares. The still-unlighted room hummed with energy.

‘Winnie’s comin’ with th’ muffins, but we’re runnin’ behind on th’ cakes,’ said Thomas, mildly desperate.

‘I’ll pray!’ he said, and did. Retail these days needed all the help it could get.

‘Anything you’d like before you go, Father? We have sugar-free Danish, you know.’

‘No, thanks, Thomas, and much obliged for the coffee. I have everything I need.’

He checked his pocket, making sure the letter was there. ‘Absolutely everything.’

•   •   •

HE WAS BREATHING HARD as he came around the bend at the Methodist chapel, looking neither right nor left, and ignoring the thought of the bench—there would be no more sitting, he was done with sitting. He was flying now, zooming, really, in some rare transport he’d seldom known. And while there was no real need to stop by Esther’s—he could call, Cynthia could call—he liked the idea of seeing his old parishioner and personally delivering his OMC order. Besides, three miles was three miles, nobody said he couldn’t make stops along the way.

How could he top such a letter? He could not, and anyway, topping it was not the point. That she could say such things to him, as woolly as he’d been of late, was yet another testament to her own boundless generosity. As for the pitiable effort sitting unfinished in his desk drawer, surely he would get his wind—be able to go deeper, step up higher, somehow hit the mark.

He would be wringing wet by the time he reached Esther Bolick’s; maybe he should call her, after all. And maybe he should order a three-layer, not a two. While the two-layer was heaven’s gate, the three-layer was heaven itself.

There went the mailman tooling along in his mail cart; he threw up his hand in salute, reminded that he was feeling letter-challenged. He couldn’t seem to finish the one to Henry, either. He would give a shout to Holly Springs on Sunday—voice-to-voice was always good—and say hello to Peggy while he was at it.

As a boy, he had prayed with desperation for a brother—roughly sixty years later, he had one. For that reason alone, the business of Henry was beyond blood or color or Matthew Kavanagh’s duplicity. The smart, sensitive, considerate Henry Winchester was a tailor-made brother with whom he shared major understanding from the get-go.

He remembered their talk while sitting on Henry’s garden bench in the frying heat of a Holly Springs morning. They had connected on a level too profound to plumb straight off, but which, with time, might be plumbed for the rest of their lives.

In the end, his mother’s memory could not be shamed by a gift from God. Don’t worry about me, she would say, and never worry what others may think. I worried too much about what others thought—I can tell you it’s a tragic waste of time and energy and pokes God in the eye.

Yes, yes, and yes. If allowed, the dead still spoke.

On his left, Lord’s Chapel, built of stone laid by local workmen in the early twentieth century. He glanced toward the rose garden, but the trees had grown up considerably in just a few years, and he couldn’t see much that lay beyond.

This had once been the center of the universe for him; sixteen years of memories stored in a vault to which he alone held the key. Dooley’s confirmation, his own wedding day with the church packed and the bride late and the groom on search-and-rescue and the organist hammering away to fill the gap and the two of them running, no, racing down Main Street, and how she ever did it in high heels was beyond him. Uncle Billy’s funeral, which turned into a laugh-in he’d never forget; the long procession of cars with people paying their last respects to Sadie Baxter, his favorite parishioner of this life or any other; the annual Advent Walk and everyone’s freezing fingers warmed by the heat of apple cider in a paper cup; the annual All-Church Thanksgiving that made ecumenism so lively and quick in these mountains . . .

He noted a bit of trash caught in the overgrown hemlock hedge, and stopped, blowing like a horse. He removed the bandanna and wiped his head and face and neck. What salve was the common bandanna.

But if he picked the stuff out of the hedge, where would he put it?

A fast-food wrapper, a plastic fork, a grocery receipt, a baby diaper, of all things, and the inevitable plastic bag, which he stuffed with the other detritus. He hadn’t noticed the trash before, perhaps because he’d been running on the opposite side of the street. Trash had never lingered in the hedge when he was priest. Dooley’s now-deceased grandfather and church sexton, Russell Jacks, had seen to that.

He moved along, stooping, filling the bag. Where did this stuff come from? Tourists, some might accuse, but that dog wouldn’t necessarily hunt.

He straightened up, looked at the church building in the September light. There was a spirit about it that he didn’t quite recognize—something—he searched for the word—doleful, perhaps. As they were members now of the Wesley cure, he hadn’t kept up with his old parish—it was, in fact, against church tradition for him to meddle in the business of a former congregation. Some hierarchy hadn’t been thrilled that he’d chosen to remain in Mitford—most retiring priests moved to other pastures to make the severance complete.

He started his run again, jogging to the curb, where he paused before crossing Main.

The limo was moving south, flying. Headed down the mountain, apparently, and too fast for a good look at the license plate. Either George Clooney had closed the deal with the realtor and was in a hurry to get home, or Elvis was after barbecue on the bypass in Holding.

He continued up Old Church Lane toward the minuscule office he had shared, for what seemed eternity, with Emma Newland. How had he done that? Emma, Emma, Preacher’s Dilemma, someone had said. But she was loyal. Oh, yes, and to a fault. She would flog any man, woman, or child who stepped out of line with her erstwhile boss.

And there was the time he’d been minding his sermon and Russell Jacks brought his grandson to that very door. He could see as plain as day the barefoot Dooley Barlowe in filthy overalls, looking up at him. ‘You got anyplace where I can take a dump?’

Right there, their lives had changed forever. X marks the spot.

He was wiping out too quickly this morning, but avoided looking at the memorial bench under the tree on the office lawn. That’s pretty much where he’d been standing when half the parish showed up for his Big Six-Oh. They had wheeled in a red motor scooter for their priest, who had given up driving a car eight years prior, and set him on the thing and turned the key. Drunk with astonishment and adrenaline, he had gunned it up the hill and out of view with everybody whooping and hollering like pagans.

Ah, but his bit of carless Lenten devotion had been exactly what was needed to put him on the street. Wearing out shoe leather was how he got to know his parish up close and personal—he wouldn’t take anything for those years. Was he looking for something like that again, and if so, wasn’t he bound to be disappointed?

He surprised himself by hooking a right straight to the bench, where he sat clutching the trash bag, grateful for shade. He felt the letter in his pocket, and considered taking it out and reading it again.