A Christmas Secret

Sunday morning was awful. Dominic was so anxious, he barely spoke to her as he ate breakfast before church. He picked up books and put them down again, found quotes, then discarded them. One minute he wanted to be daring, challenge people to new thought; the next to be gentle, to reassure them in all the old beliefs, comfort the wounds of loneliness and misunderstanding, and say nothing that might awaken troubling ideas or demand any change.

A dozen times Clarice drew in her breath to say that he had no time, in three short weeks, to stay within safe bounds. No one would listen; certainly no one would remember anything about it afterward.

She nearly said so. Then she saw his slender hand on the back of the chair, and realized that the knuckles were white. This was not the right time. But she was afraid there never would be a right time. The next sermon would be for Christmas. One pedestrian sermon now, safe and colorless, might be all it would take to lose the congregation’s sympathy, and their hope.

“Don’t quote,” she said suddenly. “Don’t use other people’s words. Whatever they are, they’ll have heard them before.”

“People like repetition,” he said with a bleak smile, his eyes dark with anxiety and the crushing weight of doubt Spindlewood had laid on him.

In that moment Clarice hated Spindlewood for what he had done with his mealy mouth and grudging, time-serving spirit. “Do you remember how terrible it was when Unity Bellwood was murdered, and how the police suspected all of us?” she said quietly.

“Of course!”

“Tell them what you said to me about courage then, and how it’s the one virtue without which all others may be lost,” she urged him. “You meant it! Say it to them.”

He did so, passionately, eloquently, without repeating himself. She had no idea whether the congregants were impressed or not. They spoke politely to him afterward, even with warmth, but there was no ease among them. She and Dominic walked home through the snow in silence.