At least not until recently.
She added a line to the description of the fundraiser she'd been preparing, and glanced up at the clock on the bookshelf. Three-thirty.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the darkened doorway that led down the hall to the chapel, and she quickly focused her attention back on her paper.
She didn't like being left alone in the church. Itwas a strange thing to admit, but it was true. She felt comfortable and at ease when the pastor was around, but as soon as he left, the whole tenor of the place seemed to change. Noises that had been unobtrusive became disconcertingly loud. The hallway and chapel seemed darker, the locked doors to the vestibule and storage room appeared to be hiding something. Her office remained unchanged, but the atmosphere in the rest of the church altered palpably, and the empty hulk of that new addition seemed downright threatening.
He has spoken to me.
Corrie reached over and turned on the desk radio, found the faint rhythmic stade of a powerful Top Forty station out of Phoenix. She shifted her chair so that in her peripheral vision she saw the window facing the street rather than the doorway opening onto the hall.
She focused her attention once again on her work and began writing. c The spider was still there when she got home. Corrie stared at the hairy black body in the upper right corner of the living room as she took off her shoes. She knew Rich had seen the spider that morning, and she'd watched him studiously avoid that entire section of the room as he prepared for work. She had purposely not touched the spider, had waited for him to take care of the creature, though she'd known that he wouldn't kill it.
Sure enough, he'd left it there for her to deal with.: : A grown man afraid of a bug.
She heard Rich talking to Anna in the kitchen, and she felt suddenly annoyed with him. Why did she always have to be the one to take responsibility in this relationship? Whether it was their finances, their domestic arrangements, or even a simple spider, she always had to make the decisions, she always had to take action. Anything outside of the precious newspaper automatically became her responsibility. If he worked as hard on their marriage as he did on that damn paper, they might be able to have a fairly decent relationship.
She heard Anna laugh, heard Rich say something to her. His voice was light, happy, relaxed. As always, he was acting as though nothing was wrong. That annoyed her too. It was fine to behave that way around your daughter; children needed their parents to be strong. But it was quite another thing to put on that same happy face in front of your wife. Part of her felt guilty for resenting his behavior. It wasn't up to her to tell him how to deal with his feelings, how to cope with his grief. But then again, maybe it was. She'd been sympathetic with him. She'd been there for him. She knew how he must feel having the graves of his parents desecrated--she knew how she'd feel if her parents died and their bodies were dug up--but he had not shared his feelings with her, had not opened up to her the way she'd expected.
The way he should have. The way, at one time, he would have. That angered her. What made her even angrier was that she knew he wasn't even discussing it with Robert. She knew that the two of them, when together, would tiptoe around the subject, talk about it like reporter and cop, not talk about it like brothers, not talk about the way they felt inside. What the hell was wrong with that family?
She picked up one of her shoes and, standing on her tiptoes, smacked it against the spider. The black body fell down onto the carpet, where she hit it again, pressing the heel down as hard as she could to make sure it was dead.
Anna heard the sound, came running out from the kitchen. "Mommy["
Rich looked at her over their daughter's head. "What was that you just killed? A spider?"
Corrie picked up Anna, gave her a kiss on the forehead, then looked flatly at Rich. "Yes," she said. "It was."
At the church, the days passed quickly, much more quickly than they had at the paper. The work was by no means challenging, but she felt less stifled than she had working with Rich all day, and some of the edge seemed to wear off of her dissatisfaction. She still wanted to get out of this town and move back to civilization, to raise Anna in a more culturally enlightened environment, but some of the urgency had gone out of her need. She was more laid back now, more willing to take things easier, to wait a little.
Perhaps it was the influence of Jesus. She preferred not to think about that, tried desperately hard to keep it at the back of her consciousness. If she allowed herself to even consider the idea that Jesus had returned to earth, had come here to Rio Verde, she would become so frightened that she would not be able to function. She knew that Anna was still worried, still scared-she'd had nightmares every night this week--and she wished she could do more to set her daughter's mind at rest. To set her own mind at rest as well. In truth, she was not sure what to think. She and Pastor Wheeler discussed only the practical matters of the parish, the day-to-day operation of the church. She knew from Wheeler's bearing and attitude, from the assumptions underlying his statements, that he truly believed he had seen Jesus Christ. But her own certainty had waned with the week, the al most palpable belief that had been imparted to her and the rest of the crowd by the pastor's sermon now seeming more and more like the by-product of a good speech.
But if she didn't believe, why was she dreading this Sun day's services?
Why couldn't she reassure Anna that there was nothing to be afraid of?.
And why was she keeping it all from Rich? She had the feeling that if she could just talk to Rich, if she could just tell him what was going on, if she could just share her confusion with him, everything would be okay. Wasn't that what marriage was about? Sharing and support?
She pushed such thoughts away. The bottom line was that, despite the fear, she enjoyed working here, and she felt better now than she had in a long time. The words that came immediately to mind were "tranquil" and "at peace."
Church words.
He is going to establish the kingdom of heaven on earth.
"Jesus loves you," the Pastor Mr. Wheeler said. Corrie looked up.
The pastor was smiling at her. There was something a little off about that smile, a hint of fanaticism in its too wide parameters, and it would have frightened her had he not spoken, had he not said those words, had he not addressed the doubts inside her head.
But he had spoken, he had said those words, he had addressed her doubts. And his voice was comforting, soothing, making her feel warm, wanted, and content.
The Pastor Clan Wheeler had truly been blessed by God. Wheeler stood and walked out from behind his desk, holding in his hand the pristine white Bible from which he drew his sermon topics. "Glen Lyons did not show up last night," he said. "He was supposed to take over the night shift from Gary Watson and construct that installation in the walkway to the addition. I am very disappointed in Glen. Very disappointed.
Would you call him and tell him that? Would you call him and tell him that the next time he volunteers his time and reneges on his promise, I will personally rip his balls out by the roots and feed them to Jesus?"
The pastor was still smiling. Somewhere in the back of her mind, a warning buzzer sounded, telling her that these words were not normal, not right. But her perceptions seemed to have been encased in Lucite, and that warning was just a dull hum somewhere far in the back, ground.
Corrie nodded. "I'll tell him."
Behind the preacher, on the wall, she could see a calendar for the year. Small black X's filled the squares for the months of January through September. October 31, the date of the Second Coming, was circled in red. The rest of the year had been whited out.