All Mortal Flesh

TWENTY-THREE

The morning visits went better than Clare had hoped, considering she had trapped herself voluntarily with the bishop’s watchdog. Elizabeth de Groot never asked her outright about her “I had an affair with him” statement last night, a fact that would have eased Clare more had she not been sure that de Groot would find someone else to pump for details. Terry McKellan? Geoff Burns? One of the vestry was bound to get an invitation from the new deacon to meet for lunch. A very informative lunch. Clare found herself counting votes in her head, calculating who on the parish’s governing board would be for her and who against. Which is why she wasn’t paying as much attention as she should when de Groot complimented her on her new car.

“So practical for the weather around here,” the deacon said. “I had heard you had some sort of sports car.”

Would Norm Madsen be in her camp? He was conservative, which argued against it. “You’re thinking of my Shelby Cobra,” she said. “It got blown up this past November.” On the other hand, he was sweet on Mrs. Marshall. She might sway him to the pro-Fergusson side.

“It got… blown up?”

Oops. “In a manner of speaking.”

Elizabeth looked at her strangely. “That must be a manner of speaking with which I’m unfamiliar.”

Clare wrenched her attention away from vestry vote-counting and diverted the conversation by giving de Groot a complete rundown on the shut-in parishioners they would be seeing.

Elizabeth was good in people’s homes, a little formal, but with a well-honed gift for asking questions about photos and mementos that encouraged conversation. Year-round, there were always a few shut-ins, but the number tripled in the winter months, when snow and ice kept many of her frailer parishioners off the sidewalks and away from the roads.

“Have you thought about volunteer transportation for some of these people?” Elizabeth asked after they had left one lively old lady’s house. “It sounds like Mrs. Dewitt would come on Sundays if she had a ride.”

“I’ve tried,” Clare said. “It hasn’t been too successful. You get, say, a younger couple to volunteer to pick somebody up. Then two weekends later they decide to go skiing instead of coming to church, and the arrangement tends to fall all to hell after that.”

“When it comes to volunteer jobs, I’ve found it’s not so much having a rota of names to call, as it is having one person responsible for riding herd over them. I could take on the task, if you’d like.”

“Really?” Clare hadn’t seriously thought of de Groot as an asset to St. Alban’s. She felt a little embarrassed by her oversight. “That would be great.”

“I want to be of use.” Elizabeth’s face was serene and serious. Clare wondered if the woman ever laughed or cracked a joke. “You’ve taken on an enormous job all by yourself, when you think of it.”

“I don’t really think of rectoring as an enormous job. And I’m certainly not alone.”

“Well… I was under the impression you haven’t made a lot of connections with your fellow ministers here in town.”

“Dr. McFeely and Reverend Inman are supportive enough, I guess. It’s just they’re both a good twenty, twenty-five years older than I am, so we don’t have a whole lot in common. We’ve gotten together at a few ecumenical events. They both like talking about their grandchildren. They have these little photo albums.”

“There are younger priests in the area in our own church. That fellow down in Schuylerville, and Philip Ballentine at Christ Church in Ballston Spa. You haven’t gotten the chance to make their acquaintance, have you?”

“I’ve met quite a few people at the diocesan convention. The work here in Millers Kill has kept me pretty close to home the rest of the year.”

“Then that’s something else I can do for you.” Elizabeth sounded pleased. “Free you up to be not just St. Alban’s priest but the diocese of Albany’s priest as well. You must miss the collegiality you knew in the seminary.”

“I guess so.”

“I knew it. There’s a get-together at Father Lee’s house in Saratoga this Friday. Evensong at Bethesda followed by potluck. Why don’t you let me cover for you that afternoon, and you can go.”

“Uh…” The last thing Clare wanted was a social obligation with a bunch of priests she barely knew. Recent events had rubbed her raw; the only thing she wanted to do on Friday night was make soup and curl up in front of a roaring fire in her living room. Alone. Or with one other person, her mind mocked. And if you’re alone, what’s to keep you from calling him and inviting him over? She realized de Groot was watching her. “That would be great,” she said.

“Wonderful.” Elizabeth touched her fingertips together. “I appreciate your willingness to hand over some of the reins to me. I realize you must be used to a pretty independent style of leadership. Anyone who headed up a helicopter crew during Desert Storm has to be more comfortable making important decisions on her own.”

“Not crew,” Clare said. “I’m a-I was a pilot.” Oh, what did it matter if de Groot got the names wrong? All at once, it occurred to her that the new deacon knew a great deal about her. As in, read her personnel file at the diocesan offices. What else might they have let de Groot be privy to, if she was to be Clare’s Virgil, guiding her safe through the circles of disobedience and inappropriate relationships? The evaluations from her teachers at VTS? The psychological profile from her discernment process? And what about this potluck she had been so deftly manipulated into? Was it going to be stocked with a carefully vetted array of line-toeing peers? Maybe a few unmarried men thrown in, for interest?

Would there even have been a potluck if she hadn’t just agreed to go?

No. No, no, no. She wasn’t going to make herself paranoid. This was her diocese, after all, the same people whose monthly newsletter had at least ten typos and who had never managed to get all the box-lunch orders right at the annual convention. Besides, she was one very junior priest. She wasn’t worth that much effort.

Right?

For the rest of the morning, Clare remained taciturn, listening closely to de Groot’s statements-she noticed they were framed as questions, but worded in such a way as to call forth only one reply-before speaking. By the time they got back to St. Alban’s she was tense, jumpy, and more paranoid than she had been since her “capture” and “questioning” during SERE training, back in her army days.

Bless her heart, in the three hours they had been gone, Lois and Mr. Hadley had started the conversion of the copy room into de Groot’s office. The promised desk and chairs were in place, along with a small bookcase and a pair of lamps Clare recognized as white-sale donations. The copier now squatted in front of Lois’s desk, blockading Clare’s favorite spot to park herself when she and Lois conferred. Oh, well. It was a sacrifice she was willing to make. There was, of course, still no computer, but the sexton had drilled a hole through the baseboard and run a phone line in, connecting the new deacon to the wider world.

Clare left Elizabeth expressing her gratitude and hustled down the hall toward the sacristy. Her door, she saw, was still shut. Not that that meant anything. If Russ had left, he would have closed it behind him. She stashed her traveling kit and returned to the office. On the way, she tried her door handle.

It was locked.

“Lois, I’m going to hunker down and try to catch up with the paperwork,” she said, interrupting an exchange of office supplies.

Elizabeth’s eyes brightened. “Anything I can help with? Or should know about?” She shifted a box of envelopes and a rubber-banded bundle of pencils to one hand, indicating her readiness to tackle anything.

“No, no,” Clare waved away her suggestion. “It’s routine stuff I’ve let pile up. The best thing you can do is to get that homily out of the way. And… and…” She needed another task, in case the frighteningly competent deacon turned out to be someone who wrote her sermons in under an hour. “And Lois can give you the stewardship and capital campaign files. You’ll need those to get a clear picture of the parish.”

Lois looked at her oddly. Clare could tell she was wondering why the sudden eagerness to let the new deacon into every aspect of their business.

“You said you worked successfully in both those areas at St. Stephen’s, right? I’d like you to write up any recommendations you have for us to improve our ingathering during the upcoming year. I know the members of the stewardship committee will want to benefit from your experience.”

“Certainly,” Elizabeth said, her face reflecting a calm gratification.

Lois, on the other hand, was a study in skepticism. The stewardship committee had a hard time benefiting from each other’s experience, let alone that of a woman who had been at St. Alban’s for all of two days.

“You’ll see that Elizabeth gets that, won’t you?” Clare asked, hoping her bright tone masked her desperation.

“Mmm.”

Clare chose to take that as agreement. “I’ll leave you to it, then!” She escaped down the hall, fishing her keys out of her pocket as she went.

She unlocked the door quietly. It swung open easily. She stared. The lamp was lit and the computer was on, but her desk chair sat unoccupied. As did the sagging love seat and the two admiral’s chairs in front of the fire. A sharp cut of emotion slashed through her, low. Disappointment.

She pressed her lips together, determined not to feel like an abandoned child, and shut the door.

And would have screamed if Russ hadn’t clamped his hand over her mouth.