The rain had become a downpour as he ran through the hedge and up her back steps, huddling close to the door as he knocked. At last, he opened her never-locked door and shouted, "Cynthia! Are you there?"
"Cynthia!" he called again, going through the kitchen to the stairs.
She appeared on the landing in her bathrobe, her hair bristling with the pink curlers he knew so well.
"Hello," he said, dripping on the carpet. There was a long silence. "You'll never guess where I've been."
"I can't imagine." Her voice was as frozen as the dark side of the moon.
"New York. I've been to New York. I went looking for you."
"You...were in New York?" Even in the dim light, he could see the utter astonishment in her eyes.
"It was supposed to be a surprise."
"I don't believe it!"
"Miss Addison invited me to lunch, but I went to a deli with Walter instead."
He saw a thousand fleeting emotions in her face, then she flew down the narrow staircase and into his arms, weeping.
In all his life, he had never had such a hug. It was as if his neighbor poured every power she possessed into it. He became warm all over and full inside. "Cynthia," he murmured, wanting to weep himself, but only for joy.
"I'm so happy to see you!" she said, sobbing. "I can't believe you went to New York, that you really did such a wonderful thing, and then..."
"And then you weren't there. I was..."
"Devastated! Exactly the way I felt when I came home and you weren't here. Dooley said you had gone away for two days to see your cousin. I had so wanted it to be a surprise! I was going to knock on your door, and you would come padding out from your study, and Barnabas would jump up and lick my face, and you would kiss me, and..."
"And I was going to knock on your door, and you would open it and be astounded, and you would know that I really do..."
"Do what?"
"...love you. You would know it, then. I would have somehow...proved it. And you could be at peace about it."
She took his face in her hands and looked into his eyes. He thought her curlers had never been more beautiful.
"Ill never forget that you did this thing."
He kissed her. It was a long, slow kiss that penetrated some ancient armor. He felt the top of his head tingle, as if Joe Ivey had applied a lavish dose of Sea Breeze.
They sat on the bottom step, holding each other.
"I think the top of my head just tingled," he said hoarsely.
"I thought you were supposed to get cold chills on your right leg. It's me whose head is supposed to tingle!"
"You mean, it didn't?"
"I cannot tell a lie. It didn't."
He looked so crestfallen that she laughed deliriously "Goofy!" she said, kissing his cheek. "My goofy, goofy guy!"
He called the office and told Emma he would be late. "Late? I thought you were in New York City!"
"I was in New York, but now I'm in Mitford."
"Well, that explains it," she said airily.
At ninethirty, Cynthia popped through the hedge to the rectory.
He had laid the table for breakfast in the dining room, something he had done only a few times in thirteen years. On the other side of the window, the birds were at the feeder, and the sun shone warmly on every wet branch from the night's rain.
"Timothy!" she said, with something like wonder. "You've outdone yourself!"
And he had, rather. Grilled sausages from the valley, grits, an omelet with mushrooms and Monterey Jack, Avis Packard's homemade salsa, English muffins with a coarselycut orange marmalade, and coffee that was still in the bean only moments ago.
"I love salsa!" she said, helping herself after the blessing. "I love grits!"
His heart swelled at the very look of her; he was thrilled to see her eating like a stevedore.
She dipped into the salsa. "I've decided I'm not going to do Violet Goes to New York. James thinks I'm some kind of milk cow, I suppose, made to bring forth whatever strikes his fancy.
"Besides, I'm not going to work myself to death doing a book I don't even want to do. If anything, I'll do Violet Goes to Mitford! How's that?"
"Terrific! That's the spirit!"
"Violet Visits the Parson! Violet Takes a MuchNeeded Holiday in the South of France! Violet Gets Sick and Tired of Being a Cat and Becomes a Dog!"
"You're on a roll," he said, buttering her muffin. "Bestsellers, every one!"
"Oh," she giggled, leaning back in her chair, "I'm so glad to be home."
"Let's go for a walk after breakfast."
"And see Miss Rose and Uncle Billy?"
"Do we have to? She was threatening cinnamon stickies the last time they invited us, or was it banana pudding? Well, at least we can see the new sign the mayor put up in their yard."
"Let's go shopping at The Local, too, and I'll make dinner for you and Dooley tonight."
"Excellent! I accept. And we can stop off and see the new kneelers at Lord's Chapel. But of course, you'll see them on Sunday."
The light faded from her eyes. "I have to go back tomorrow afternoon."
"No..."
"It's the revisions, you see. There's no help for it. This...my dearest, is stolen time."
Stolen time.
He took her hand and turned it over to see the small, uplifted palm. He kissed its softness and placed her palm against his cheek.
Stolen time.
He would willingly be the blackest of thieves.
He remembered a speaker at a seminar who had put five large stones in a glass. Those were the important things in life, the speaker said and went on to demonstrate how the small stones, or less important things, could easily be put in and shaken down among the cracks.
However, if the small stones were put in first, it was impossible to add the large stones.
He called Emma. "I won't be in at all, actually."
The last time he hadn't come in at all, she remembered, he'd been deathly sick. He certainly didn't sound sick this time. He sounded like he had never felt better in his life.
They were going out the back door when the phone rang.
"Father?"
"Yes, Evie?"
"Forgive me for calling you at home, Father, but I just had to ask...Can you, would you please come by for a few minutes?"
He could hear Evie trying to suppress the tears that always threatened when she talked with her priest.
"It's nothing really bad this time, it's just..." She hesitated for a moment, then wailed, "...it's just general!"
"I'm on my way," he said.
"What did you get in your stocking?" Miss Pattie wanted to know.
"My stocking?" asked Cynthia, who inspected her legs at once.
"She thinks it's Christmas," said Evie, helping her mother to the sofa, where she sat down, plump and serene as a cherub.
"We baked it all morning!" Miss Pattie exclaimed.
Cynthia joined the old woman on the sofa. "Really?"
"I baked, Evie basted. But we do our cornbread dressing separate. We don't like stuffing." Miss Pattie wrinkled her nose.
"Now, she thinks it's Thanksgiving," said Evie, looking desperate. "She likes holidays."
"Have a drumstick!" Miss Pattie passed a green ashtray to Cynthia, who stared at it, then selected something imaginary from it and took a large bite. The rector noted that she also pretended to chew.
"Delicious!" she said bravely, wiping the corners of her mouth with her fingers. "Just the way I like it! Juicy on the inside, crisp on the outside!"
"Not too dry, is it?" Miss Pattie leaned forward with interest.
"Not one bit!"
"I like the part that goes over the fence last, myself."
"Mama, for Pete's sake!" said Evie.
Miss Pattie turned to the rector. "Have some cranberry sauce, and pass it to your wife." She gave him a copy of Southern Living from the lamp table. "It's homemade, you know."
"Thank you," he said, handing the ma
gazine to Cynthia as if it were a hot potato.
"Oh, mercy, I forgot." Miss Pattie lifted the hem of her dress and tucked it into her collar. "Father, would you say the blessing?"
"You're wonderful," he said. They had detoured to a bench in the bookstore garden.
"I am?"
"To eat the drumstick." She leaned her head to one side and smiled.
"I thought," he said, feeling oddly moved, "that was the most generous thing I've ever seen anyone do."
"Wouldn't you have done the same?" He saw the laughter in her eyes.
"You know I wouldn't, and I'm less the man for it. But for you, it was...natural."
"Yes, well, you see, I prefer dark meat."
They laughed so hard that someone passing on Main Street looked suspiciously into the tiny garden.
"To tell the truth, I was frightened to death," she said at last.
"Whatever for?"
"Because I didn't want to embarrass you, or hurt Evie's feelings, or disappoint Miss Pattie. But I couldn't just sit there staring at that ashtray in the shape of a frog. So I ate the drumstick."
"Well done," he said, squeezing her hand.
"It's the first time I've been part of your...work. It was an honor, Timothy."
As they walked to The Local, he thought of the relief they'd seen on Evie's face and Miss Pattie sitting upright on the sofa, snoring peacefully. Yet, the visit had been nothing more than a BandAid on a gaping wound. He had always wrestled with the frustrating smallness of the things he was able to do. "Let God take care of the big stuff," a seminary friend once said. "It's our job to fill in the cracks. Kind of like caulking."
As they shopped for vegetables at The Local, Miss Pattie's singsong voice came to him: "...and pass it to your wife."
When Cynthia glanced up from the artichokes, his face grew suddenly warm, and he could scarcely look her in the eye.
She had made a superb dinner in his own kitchen. Dooley had eaten like a horse and, after washing the dishes at lightning speed, had gone to spend the night with Tommy.
Now they sat together on the sofa, holding hands and listening to one of her Mozart CDs on his player. Tonight was certainly not a night for the tango. Or was it the rhumba?
The smallest of fires crackled on the grate, and he thought how this very thing was what he had wanted all his life. In some unspoken place in himself, in a place he had never regarded or chosen to recognize, had been the longing to sit with someone in this inexplicable peace. He felt oddly complete, as if the final piece of a jigsaw puzzle had been slipped into place.
"How was it for you in New York?" she asked, putting her head on his shoulder. "Were you frightened?"
"Frightened? I was frightened of going, but once I got there, I was...almost happy, I think. Flying seems to be the worst of it, the taking off and the landing. But in the end, old fears passed away, and there was the good fellow in the taxi and Miss Addison and Walter. Miss Addison felt woefully sorry for me. She said that very thing had happened to her in Vienna."
"Really? Tell me."
"She went there as a surprise to meet her husband while he was on a business trip, and all the while he was flying to her in Paris."
"Paris to Vienna, New York to Mitford, it's all the same," she murmured against his cheek. "You're my hero."
He had been a lot of things but never ever a hero. He cleared his throat. "I don't think I'd like to do it again." He thought he should say that, just for the record.
"Did you see Palestrina?"
"The Barnabas of the cat kingdom! Large! She had it in for me. I could tell by the look in her eyes. I would not want to be in a closed room with that cat."
"Oh, Palestrina is all bark and no bite."
They laughed uproariously.
Ah, but it felt good to laugh! Why didn't he laugh more often? He had asked himself that very thing a hundred times. Well, and who would he laugh with? Not Emma! And getting a grin out of Dooley Barlowe was like looking for a needle in a haystack.
He drew her close and said, "I have something for you."
"A new joke from Uncle Billy!"
"I haven't had a joke from Uncle Billy in months."
"Well, then, I can't guess."
"I'll be right back," he said, noting that Barnabas helped himself to the warm place he left on the sofa.
When he came down again to the study, she had curled up with his dog, who was fresh from an afternoon bath. "If Violet Coppersmith could see you now..." he said.
"Cardiac arrest!"
He passed on to the kitchen, where he took a dog biscuit from the cabinet. "All right, old fellow, off with you!" Barnabas leapt from the sofa and dashed after the biscuit that had skidded under a wing chair.
Why did he have to feel winded from the stairs as he handed her the blue velvet pouch? Why did his knees creak like a garden gate when he sat down beside her? In any case, he thought her face lighted up like the bush he strung outside her door at Christmas.
"May I take my time looking inside?" She drew her bare feet under her and leaned against the cushions.
"There's no hurry."
She held the pouch in both hands, happily feeling the contours of what it contained. "It's the moon, I think!"
"Yes! You've hit it on the head. And the stars are in there somewhere, too—I collected them last night after the rain."
Sudden tears sprang to her eyes.
"Cynthia! Blast!"
"I'm sorry!" she said, laughing and crying at once. "I don't mean to do it. It's just that I love your...heart, Timothy."
She reached at last into the pouch and felt the brooch and drew it out.
"It was my mother's," he said. He had intended to say more, had in fact rehearsed a small speech, but it left him.
She held it in her palm and gazed at it, as if stricken, tears streaming down her cheeks. Good grief, he thought, would this never end? She was worse than the man in the attic, who had bawled his head off every time something touched him. Worse than that, weeping was nearly as catching from his neighbor as was laughter—he felt himself choking up.
"Cynthia, stop it this minute!" he said in a voice from, the pulpit.
She looked at him then and laughed and touched his face with her hand and leaned to him, kissing his forehead. "Thank you," she said.
Later, he remembered that his mother had done that very thing— kissed his forehead and thanked him and wept.
They walked to her house, passing single file through the gap in the hedge.
"I'll see you tomorrow, then," he said on the porch stoop. "What time shall we leave for the airport?"
"No later than noon."
"Consider it done," he said, tracing her cheek with his finger.
"Bookends," she whispered, putting her arms around his neck.
"You are the most beautiful thing I've ever seen in my life."
She gazed at him, the joy beating in her. "I'm not going to ask you to marry me."
It took a moment for what she said to sink in. He stood very still, as if moving or breathing would expose him, like a rabbit before a hound in the field.
In the glow of the porch light, he saw her eyes turn that mesmerizing shade of periwinkle. She smiled and said, "You'll have to do the thing yourself, my dearest."
"Aha." He thought she looked exactly as Violet might look when sitting at the edge of a fish pond.
Safely through the hedge, he discovered his circulation seemed to have shut down; he felt he had turned to stone. Marriage!
He carried the brooch upstairs, his mind crowded with thoughts. Why was fear always so close upon the heels of his joy, overtaking it every time?
He laid the brooch on the dresser, thinking of her reluctance to leave it with him to be cleaned and the catch repaired. She had at last relented, saying she would wear it always and especially for her confirmation at Lord's Chapel. He went to bed with the image of Stuart Cullen placing his hands on her head at the altar rail.
Lying there, he prayed for
deliverance from his fear and confusion, ashamed that he could not do what others appeared able to do every day—take a stand and stick by it.
At midnight, he remembered that he still didn't have a title for his Easter sermon.
He had planned to preach "The Glad Surprise," for that, after all, is what the resurrection had been, coming as it did after the horror of the execution, a hasty funeral, and the loss of hope among the disciples.
On the other hand, "All for Love" contained the entire message of Christ's birth, death, and resurrection in a mere three words. That was the gist of it, the condensed version, the bottom line.
The issue of love, he thought, was surrounding him on all sides.
"...and pass it to your wife," he heard Miss Pattie say in his dreams, "...and pass it to your wife."
After the mournful watch of Maundy Thursday, Mitford awoke to falling snow on Good Friday.
"What'd I tell you?" grinned Coot Hendrick, who was doing his part to steam up the windows of the Main Street Grill.
"Man," groaned J.C. Hogan, who despised snow and especially didn't relish a fulfillment of prophecy by someone with stubs for teeth.
Miss Sadie's extensive roof patching was finished, and the work in the ballroom went at a pace.
"Father," she said, ringing up soon after the ground had turned white, "what do you think of this snow?"
"I'm trying not to think of it at all!" he said with feeling.
"Louella bought a straw hat for Easter, but she declares you can't wear straw in the snow."
"Easter is not about weather. Tell Louella to wear her new straw. We'll be looking for it."
Miss Sadie turned from the phone and warbled into the distance, "He says wear it anyway, he'll be looking for it!"
"How's it coming in the ballroom?"
"Oh, Father! You won't believe how much it's costing. I nearly fainted when I heard what it takes just to scrape the window casings. I had to sit down—the room was spinning every which way. But I'm going through with it! Do you think the Lord will look on this as wrong stewardship, spending so much money on a room we probably won't step foot in again?"