Hadley thought for a moment before answering. "I wanted to be when I first went to California. I discovered when I got out there that gorgeous girls are literally a dime a dozen." There wasn't any bitterness in her tone anymore. It had been so long ago, it seemed as if those days were something she had seen in a movie rather than something she had lived. "The past few years I worked for a company that took inventories, I waited tables, stuff like that. Before that, I worked for the state department of corrections."
"As a secretary?"
"As a guard."
The reverend's eyebrows shot up. "Well." Her mouth stretched, as if she was smiling about something not very funny. "I know one place in town that has an opening. One of their officers has left for the state police in Latham. The police department's hiring."
II
Clare sat mesmerized by the falling snow. With her sermon outline cooling on the desk in front of her, she watched the flakes float past the diamond-paned window, each one a spot of brilliance against the soot-gray sky. Flick. Flick. Flick. She had been like this all morning. Unable to focus on her tasks. Unable to care about them-or about much of anything.
Mr. Hadley stuck his head in the door, bringing with him the odor of furniture polish and cigarette smoke. "Mornin', Father." His usual address for her. She figured he thought of it as a gender-neutral honorific-like Captain, her other newly resumed title. "Thanks fer takin' care of my granddaughter yesterday." Mr. Hadley's North Country accent made the word come out yestiddy.
"How're they doing?"
He grunted. "They'll all be better now she's left that turd of a husband floatin' in the bowl. Sorry, Father."
"Mmm." She squelched her smile. "It must be good to have her back home."
"'Tain't really her home, though mebbe it comes as close as never no mind. My daughter, God love her, dragged the girl all over the country. Never was able to settle, my Sarah. The only place Honey ever came to twice was here. Sarah used to send her to me an' my wife every summer."
Clare had lost track of the players. "Honey?"
"That's her christened name. She changed it to Hadley when she was in her teens."
I can see why.
"Anyhow, I was just checkin' to see if you wanted me to get you a fire goin'."
Clare looked at her hearth, the best thing about her mid-nineteenth-century office. On cold winter days, she could warm herself in front of its brick and iron surround. Now it lay dark and ashy. There was a metaphor there for her life, but she was too flat to pursue it. "I don't think so, Mr. Hadley. I'm leaving for an ecumenical lunch in Saratoga soon."
" 'Kay. I'll stock your wood up some, though. S'posed to be colder'n a Norwegian well digger's you-know-what the rest of this week." He withdrew, leaving the scent of lemon and tobacco to mark his passing. She heard him addressing someone in the hall-" 'Lo, Father"-and was therefore unsurprised when her lunch date appeared in her doorway a half hour early, tall and gaunt and hunched forward like a fastidious vulture.
"Father Aberforth." She got up from her desk to greet the elderly deacon, best known as the bishop's hatchet man.
"Ms. Fergusson." He surprised her by trapping her hand within his much larger ones. He studied her with his penetrating black eyes. "How are you?" he asked. It was not a pleasantry.
"I'm sorry. Were we doing a session today?" The diocesan deacon had fallen into the role of her counselor and confessor. It was not a comfortable relationship. Their talks were like scalding showers: cleansing but painful.
"Sarcasm ill becomes you. How are you?"
She let her eyes slide away to the vine-and-fruit pattern of her carpet. "Okay. Good enough."
He let her tug her hand free. "Good enough, hmm?" He lowered his towering frame into one of the two admiral's chairs fronting the empty fireplace. "I suppose it's always a relief to know one isn't about to be dragged off and tried for manslaughter." Willard Aberforth was nothing if not blunt.
She turned to her desk. The letter from the District Attorney for the state of New York, Washington County, was still there, half covered by the sermon draft.
Upon hearing evidence in the matter of the death of Aaron MacEntyre, the grand jury has declined to indict. Therefore, in accordance with the Medical Examiner's testimony, the state of New York rules your participation in the events leading to said death is consistent with self-defense as defined in N.Y.S.C Sec. II, p. 1-12.
"Oh, yeah," she said. "I dodged the bullet on that one." She could hear the bitterness in her voice.
"You were justified, girl. I know it and the bishop knows it and the state of New York in its magisterial wisdom knows it. Let it go. You saved three lives. Perhaps more." He paused. "Have you heard anything from this police chief of yours?"
"No." Her tone would have warned off a lesser man, but the deacon, a survivor of the Battle of Cho-San Reservoir, wasn't deterred.
"He is newly widowed," he said reasonably.
"Yes."
"Grief takes time."
"Yes."
"Perhaps you might approach him in a month or two."
She folded her hands over her chair back and watched her knuckles whiten. "He isn't going to want me to approach him in a month or two-or four. I'm the reason his wife is dead."
There was another pause. "Would you do me the courtesy of turning around so I can talk to your face instead of your scapulae?"
She turned around.
Aberforth was looking at her through half-closed eyes. "Do you believe that?"
"Yes."
He shook his head, sending his bloodhoundlike jowls swaying. "Good God, girl, your pride is truly monumental."
"My pride?"
"Your pride. Did you or did you not make a full confession and repentance to the bishop?" He folded his black-coated arms.
"You know I did."
"Did he, in the name of our Lord, absolve your sins?"
She knew where this was going, and she didn't like it. "He did."
"Then who are you to presume that your errors, your mistakes of judgment, your faults are so grievous that they stymie God Himself? Do you think your ability to sin rises above God's ability to forgive?"
She blinked hard. She shook her head. "I can't-"
"You cling to your faults like a woman clinging to a lover." He leaned forward. "A lover who has betrayed her."