The Color Of Light

She thought of Shiloh, who didn’t have the support of anyone, but who by herself was clearly in charge of the clan. Her heart ached for the girl whose burdens were too large to bear.

She considered calling Gretchen, always a no-nonsense sounding board, but Gretchen had three active daughters who would be going to bed about now. Elsbeth and her partner, Joan, had no children, but they did have a busy social life, and it was unlikely they would be home until much later.

Analiese was alone tonight.

She thought about Isaiah, as she had intermittently since that afternoon. He would offer exactly the right words of counsel, but unless he really was the man who had helped her off the ground today, she hadn’t seen or heard from him in such a long time that calling would be inappropriate and awkward.

Still, she could email.

The simplicity appealed to her. Isaiah remained on her contacts list. She could write a quick email, tell him that for a moment today she’d thought she might have seen him in a crowd, and now she wished she really had, because she had an ethical dilemma in her congregation he would enjoy discussing.

She imagined how good it would feel to have him respond, to have him offer to call and talk in person, to laugh with her and say that apparently he had a twin in North Carolina.

Then she imagined how bad it would feel to receive no reply because these days Isaiah considered her a thorn in his side, one he thought he’d already removed.

The air in the house suddenly seemed weighted with regrets, unfulfilled expectations and decisions. She was one of a long line of clergy who had lived here, and tonight, as she had before, she almost felt their presence. Sometimes her male predecessors condemned her, sometimes they praised her. Tonight they seemed to be hovering in the air waiting for her to do anything so they could pounce.

She never really felt she belonged in this house. Tonight it almost felt dangerous to stay.

Her laptop lay on the desk in front of her. She opened it, and as it booted up, she told herself not to over think this.

When her email program was on the screen she began to type in Isaiah’s email address, and the program finished it for her.

All these years, and the computer remembered him, too.

She quickly composed the email she had imagined, finished by telling him she hoped he was well and happily doing the work he loved. Then she ended with All my best, Ana, and hit Send before she could reconsider.

She couldn’t bear to sit and wait for a reply that would probably never come. She closed the computer, turned off all the downstairs lights, and climbed the stairs by the light of stars shining through the stairwell window.

* * *

Isaiah Colburn knew where Analiese lived. She was in the telephone directory, so finding her address hadn’t been hard. He had parked almost a mile away and strolled the picturesque streets of her neighborhood for most of an hour. While he wasn’t delusional enough to pretend he was just taking a walk before bedtime, at the start he had given himself permission to turn back before he reached her house.

Now he stood in front of it.

When he’d arrived a minute ago there had been lights downstairs. But now, one by one, they disappeared until the house was dark.

He wondered if she was alone. He had seen a man fight his way into the crowd after she was attacked at the rally. He had seen the quick hug, seen the man brush her cheek and walk her to the speakers’ platform. He didn’t think she was married. He had read her bio on the Church of the Covenant’s website, and he was fairly certain if a husband existed, or even children, they would have been mentioned. But Analiese was a beautiful, dynamic woman, and he couldn’t imagine she was ever lonely.

He was the one who had taken the vow of chastity, not her.

He considered walking up the sidewalk, knocking on the door, and waiting for her to answer.

He considered just how awkward it would be if a man answered instead.

The walk back to his car was shorter. The night itself was interminable.

chapter seven

AT 7:00 A.M. when Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto in A Major suddenly filled her room, Analiese wasn’t ready to get out of bed. She considered pulling the pillow over her ears, but during her last visit, Gretchen’s oldest daughter and budding clarinetist had downloaded every major work in the clarinet repertoire to Analiese’s new MP3 alarm clock, and the concert could go on for hours. Analiese hadn’t had the heart to tell her beloved niece that if she were ever asked to choose the instrument she liked least, the decision wouldn’t be hard.

At least the concerto gave her another reason to get up, and quickly.

After chopping off a trill midnote she went to the window and stared out at a gray, cheerless morning.

“Boy, I just can’t wait to start this day.” It wasn’t exactly a prayer, more like a “to whom it may concern.” She tried to think of all the reasons why she should be grateful for the hours ahead. Then she shrugged and headed for the bathroom.

After one shower, real prayers and a small bowl of cereal with blueberries, she was ready to go. Saturday Seminar, a three-month series of speakers on the Old Testament, was starting at ten, and she was responsible for the invocation. Then at eleven she had the emergency council meeting. She had left enough time to stop for bagel sandwiches and fresh fruit to take to the Fowlers.

While they ate, she would question them about their plans.

If she was supremely lucky, Man—or more likely Shiloh—would tell her that today they were traveling to a place with better job opportunities and friends who could shelter them until they got on their feet. Analiese would enlist Felipe to help them carry their meager belongings downstairs, and she would slip Shiloh all the money in her wallet to help the family buy gas and continue on their way.

Realistically she knew nothing was going to be that easy.

Just before she left the house she took a moment to check her laptop email, but there was only the usual: loops she belonged to, announcements, and a newsy email from Elsbeth that she would read later. There was nothing from Isaiah. That didn’t surprise her, although it certainly would have turned her day around.

After minimal traffic and a short line at the bagel shop, she knocked on the door of the apartment with a brown paper grocery bag clutched in front of her and waited for someone to answer. She wasn’t surprised when that someone turned out to be Shiloh.

“Breakfast,” Analiese said, holding out the bag.

Shiloh looked as if she’d just stepped out of the shower: hair wet again, feet still bare, clothes wrinkled as if she’d just pulled them from her suitcase.

“My mom’s worse,” she said, with no preliminaries. “I think she’s going to die. And she won’t go to the hospital, no matter what.”

* * *

At seventy-five Dr. Peter Thurman was nearly retired, or so he claimed. A self-proclaimed “country doctor,” he had handled nearly everything in his long career: bringing babies into the world, setting bones, delivering the bad news of terminal cancer. These days he saw only the devoted patients who refused to go elsewhere.

Peter was also a longtime member of the Church of the Covenant, and not always a supporter of the changes Analiese had nudged into place. Worse, when she got to her study phone and pleaded with him to make a house call to the church, he had been preparing for a well-deserved day of golf.

“What have you gotten yourself into?” he demanded.

“Lots of trouble.”

“And I’ll get into a lot more if this woman dies on my watch.”

She pictured him on the other end of the line, white hair buzzed into a military crew cut, blue eyes fierce under bristling eyebrows. She knew he liked her, even if he didn’t like change, and she also knew she could be honest with him.

“She may die without you.”

“You’re like all your kind, Ana. Great at inducing guilt.”

“First class I took in seminary. I think if you tell Mrs. Fowler she needs to go to the hospital and you’ll watch over her there, she’ll do it. But I’ll tell you what I think. I think she’s scared that when anybody in authority sees the way the family’s living, she might lose her kids.”

“Taking children away is nobody’s first response. Even when it ought to be.”

“She won’t believe that.”

“Damn you, woman.”

“When will you be here?”

“Give me fifteen minutes.”

Analiese hung up the phone and stared at her bookshelves. The awards she had won as a journalist sat in a recently dusted row. One seemed to stare back at her now, an Associated Press broadcast news award for a story she had done about crowding at a homeless shelter. She swallowed something too close to tears and took the stairs back up to the apartment. This time she let herself in.

“There’s a doctor on the way,” she told everyone but Belle, whose rattling cough filled the apartment from the bedroom, even with that door closed.

“We can’t pay much,” Man said. “But we’ll give him all we got.”

“He won’t take a cent, but, Man, you have to do whatever he asks you to. Please? If he says she has to go to the hospital, then we have to get her there, even if she doesn’t want to go. Nothing’s going to happen to anybody except that Belle’s going to get better.”

“They threatened to take Dougie and me away from Mama and Daddy,” Shiloh said, earning a glare from her father.

Analiese tilted her head in question.

“Shiloh didn’t want to go to school,” Man said.

“In Atlanta,” Shiloh said. “So we left.”

Analiese nodded. “And you didn’t want to go to school why?”

“I hated it.”

Analiese knew that was the most she would get. But she could imagine the scenario. New girl. Homeless girl at that. Old clothes. Smart mouth. Disaster in the making.

“Got it.” She realized she was biting her lip. “Well, this isn’t Atlanta. We’ll figure this out, but right now your mother has to be taken care of. No ifs, ands or buts. You see that, right?”

Shiloh gave a curt nod.

“Did you eat?”

“I had pie!” Dougie seemed unaware of the tension in the room. Analiese thought he had experienced so much in his short life that he probably thought this was normal.

“How about a bagel and fruit?” She got to her feet. “Man, there’s coffee in the bag. Did you see it?”

The Fowlers were just finishing their meal when somebody knocked. Analiese opened the door for Peter, who was carrying a medical bag.

He glared at her. “I gave up house calls a long time ago.”

“You only say you did. Now you call it visiting.”

“I’ve never been sure why we hired you.”

“Me either.” She stepped aside and introduced him. Soon after her arrival Belle’s coughing had eased, and Man said she’d fallen asleep. Now, however, it began once more.

“Let’s get moving,” Peter said. “Mr. Fowler, would you go in with me, please? And Reverend Ana?”

They left Shiloh and Dougie and went into the bedroom. Belle was sitting up, and she frowned at the invasion. Luckily she was too sick to make a fuss. The introductions were made, and ten minutes later they were back in the living room.

Peter addressed Man as he scribbled something on a piece of paper. “We’ll need a chest X-ray and blood work, and I’ll write the order. These people owe me a couple of favors, so go here and they’ll do it without charging you.” He handed Man the paper. “Once I know what’s up I can prescribe the right meds unless she has to go into the hospital. I don’t think it’s that bad yet, but it will be if you don’t get her on antibiotics right away. I have samples, so you don’t have to worry about paying for those either.” He didn’t wait for a response. “Reverend Ana, may I see you outside?”

Ana walked him to the door and then through it, closing it behind her.

“That woman can’t go anywhere until she’s better unless it’s the hospital. You understand what I’m saying? We send her out into this weather for anything more than lab work and she’ll be at serious risk. If she doesn’t have pneumonia, she’s on the verge, and I’m guessing she has other problems, too, maybe even diabetes, that have to be addressed, and quickly.”

“Would you like to explain that to the executive committee?”

“I’m going to let you do that. You got us into this mess.”

“What should I have done?”

He shook his head. “Don’t ask me for absolution. I give out antibiotics and bad news. I have my specialty. You have yours.”

She thanked him. He harrumphed and left.

She continued to stand there, surrounded by empty space with no purpose other than to collect dust and harbor mice. Then, steeling herself, she went back to tell Man and Shiloh she was going to do everything she could to keep them in this apartment until Belle was well enough to leave it.

* * *

The council executive committee was comprised of five members and Analiese. Normally the church had an associate pastor who was also a member, but since Analiese’s arrival three excellent associates had moved on to become senior pastors in their own churches. The year-long search for a replacement hadn’t yet resulted in a new candidate the search committee could agree on.

The search committee was almost as contentious as the small group sitting together at the table in the council room.

As always Analiese offered a prayer at the opening of the meeting, and as Garrett outlined the situation she examined the familiar faces, wondering who would be her ally.

She thought Garrett would be willing to host the Fowlers if it in no way interfered with the running of the church and the collecting of pledges. She was fairly certain he would need an attorney to weigh in on legalities, but the church was full of them, many who would sympathize with the Fowlers’ plight. She would make certain one of that group was contacted.

Betty McAllister, first vice president, was a septuagenarian active in social causes and known for alienating members who didn’t agree with her. Analiese thought that she would be a staunch ally.

Nora Pizarro, second vice president, was sleek, sixtyish, and conservative down to her bone marrow. The only good solution was tried-and-true, and if the church had never given shelter to a homeless family in its more than hundred-year history, then that would be enough evidence the idea was a bad one.

Their secretary, John Glinton, was newly elected, recently retired from a job in the aerospace industry in Houston, and a mystery.

At twenty-four the last member, their treasurer Carolina Cooper, was by far the youngest: vivacious, entertaining and astute. Unfortunately she was also absent.

“Analiese?” Garrett turned the conversation over to her.

“First, I appreciate you turning out on such short notice,” she began. Quickly she filled in the details that Garrett hadn’t had access to, for the most part her conversation with Peter.

She ended by telling them what Man had done as she was leaving the apartment. “These people are desperate. He tried to give me his wedding ring in payment for what we’ve already given them, a dusty apartment and Thanksgiving leftovers.”

She swallowed a lump that was threatening to form in her throat and composed herself. “These people don’t want to be here. They want to be in their own home, working at jobs to support their family. Man would still be happily earning union wages if his factory hadn’t closed. Belle had a steady part-time job stocking shelves at the local discount store until the stress of their situation destroyed her health.”

“How do you know any of this?” Nora asked. “Is this what they told you?”

“As I was leaving, Shiloh, the daughter, told me about her mother.”

“I assume you don’t believe everything you hear.”

Analiese managed to keep her voice steady and her tone pleasant. “I used to work in television news. So no, we can assume I don’t.”

“What evidence do you have they aren’t lying?”

“For one thing a respected physician from our congregation who knows what a sick woman looks like. My best instincts for another. The facts, which are irrefutable. According to our school system there are more than seven hundred homeless children living in this county with their families. I strongly believe one of those families is now ours to deal with.”

“They wouldn’t be if you had sent them on their way.”

Betty interrupted, “And where would they be, Nora? Cold, friendless, with a sick woman coughing her guts out in a car somewhere? That’s the Christian solution?”

Garrett held up his hand to stop what was clearly escalating into a fight. “Let’s consider the options. Reverend Ana did not send the Fowlers on their way. She did what we hired her to do, which was to use her best judgment, whether we agree with her decision or not. Right now we need to figure out what to do with this family.”

“I suggest we find them a motel and pay for a night. Even two,” Nora added grudgingly.

“I see no point in paying for a motel and limiting our involvement. I think we can keep them in the apartment. What harm will there be?” Betty said.

John spoke for the first time. “What harm might there be? Let’s consider the worst-case scenario and the best. Then let’s vote.”

The meeting continued. Analiese had said her piece and now she sat back and listened. John and Garrett were logical and analytical. Betty was passionate, and Nora was clearly angry.

Thirty minutes later John made a motion. “I motion we allow these people to continue living in the apartment for two weeks while Reverend Ana, who brought this problem to our doorstep, looks for a better situation for them and for us. Of course if they cause any problems, they will have to go immediately.”

Garrett reminded the committee that the next full council meeting was in two weeks, so John’s motion would take them to that point. He called for a vote. Analiese, who was a voting member of the committee, added her voice to the yeas.

Nora was the lone nay. “And what do we do if they’re still here in two weeks?” she demanded.

“We’ll put you in charge of evicting them,” Betty said.

Garrett held up his hand again. “Let’s not even think about that, okay? Not yet. The council will want to know what happened here, and I’m hoping we can present a united front.”

“You don’t always get what you hope for,” Nora said, getting gracefully to her feet. She was the first to leave.

Analiese stood, too. “Thank you for a good discussion and a good solution.”

After the others left Garrett remained. He was a tall man, and although she was five foot seven, she had to look up at him when he spoke. “I think it’s imperative you find another place for these people, Ana. It won’t go this well if we have to vote again. John was sitting on the fence, and the full council is less adaptable than we are.”

“And you?”

He shrugged.

She had guessed as much. “I can’t make promises. Resources in Buncombe County, like everywhere, are stretched too thin.”

“I know how busy you are, but you’re going to have to work hard at this. Find somebody to help you.”

After he left she straightened the chairs around the table and wondered if a male minister would have noticed that the chairs were in disarray. For that matter would her male colleagues have stood up to the committee and insisted that they not set a time limit on charity?

The best question: Would her male colleagues—or her female ones—have gotten into this situation in the first place?

Of course she could never know where anybody else would have stood today. But despite everything else, she did feel that a man who had died on a cross thousands of years before had been standing right beside her.

chapter eight

SHILOH HAD NEVER met a lady minister, and she was sure she would remember if she had met one who looked like Reverend Ana. Today she was wearing a dark skirt with a bright green shirt hanging loose over it and a pretty circular flowered scarf looped around her neck. Shiloh never worried much about what she would look like when she was an adult—there were too many other things to worry about—but for just a moment, as she opened the door to Analiese, she was sorry she was never going to look like that.

“Are your parents here?” Analiese asked.

“Daddy took Mama to get those tests about an hour ago.” She lifted her chin defiantly. “But we’re all packed, and we’ll leave just as soon as she gets her medicine. I’m sorry if we stayed too long.”

“Not long enough. I just met with the committee in charge of these things, and we’d like you to stay another two weeks while we help you find a more permanent place.”

Even if she did pray for it each night Shiloh knew better than to believe anything good would ever happen to the Fowlers. But for a moment she felt just a sliver of something like hope.

“Why?” From experience, she knew this was the question most suited for putting hope back in its place.

“Because this is a church, and even if we don’t always remember why we exist, we did remember today.”

Shiloh was puzzled and her expression must have showed it, because Analiese smiled. “In other words because we can help and we want to.”

“Why? What will you get?”

The smile softened. “Sometimes people do things just because they’re right. Your family’s having a hard time. The church is able to help.”

“Most of the time people do things because they get something out of it.”

“Like feeling good about life? Like knowing that they’re making a difference in the world?”

“Like driving to the food bank in a fancy car and doling out dented tuna cans, and then telling you you’re selfish if you ask for more than one. Even if there are plenty.”

“I think with all you’ve been through it must be hard to see how many good people there are, and how many of them are genuinely concerned.”

Shiloh knew better than to argue. Whatever the reason, her family had a roof over their heads for the next two weeks. It might be a mini-miracle, but it was a miracle nonetheless.

“Where’s Dougie?” Analiese asked.

“In the bedroom. I’m making him do his schoolwork.” She realized Analiese was still waiting to be invited in, and she stepped aside and motioned.

“What kind of schoolwork? Do you have textbooks?”

Shiloh had to laugh at that. “Where would we get textbooks? Where would we keep them?”

“What’s he doing then?”

“I make up math puzzles, and I make him keep a journal, and I go over it and correct his grammar and spelling if I need to, and we talk about it.”

“You said you didn’t like school in Atlanta. What about Dougie?”

“He was always in trouble. He can’t sit still.”

Analiese nodded, as if that made sense when, of course, it didn’t.

Shiloh changed the subject. “If we stay, may we use the stove and cook?”

“Absolutely. I didn’t get as far as cleaning the inside of the cabinets. Are there pans?”

Shiloh had checked every corner of the apartment. “A few.”

“May I look?”

“It’s yours, isn’t it?”

Analiese didn’t answer. She crossed the room and peeked inside the cabinets. “I bet you couldn’t even heat the leftovers I brought up last night.”

“It didn’t matter.”

“We’ll get you more, and linens and towels. Dishes. Silverware.”

“We have things in our car we can use.”

“Why don’t you leave them packed for now and we’ll see what I can rustle up today?”

“There’s a washer and dryer.”

“I don’t know if they’re still functional. I’ll ask our sexton if they were working before he left. Then we’ll give them a try, and you’ll be welcome to use them.”

Shiloh tried to imagine two weeks of clean clothes. Really clean. Not gas-station-sink-clean.

Analiese gestured toward the pantry. “Right now I thought maybe we could run over to the grocery store and stock these shelves a bit. We can leave your parents a note and tell them we’ll be back soon.” She hesitated, as if she’d just thought of something and didn’t know how to broach it.