These High, Green Hills (14 page)

“They did.”

“I hear she wouldn’t be program chairman, either.”

“You heard right.”

“My, my,” said Emma, twisting her mouth in that way he so thoroughly disliked.

He stopped by Mitford Blossoms only a hair before closing time and bought three roses of good breeding, along with several stems of freesia. Jena Ivey wrapped the bouquet in crackling green florist paper and tied it with satin ribbon—an extra business expense she willingly assumed for the fine presentation it made.

“Special occasion, Father?” Jena liked to know what was up with her customers, and would look a man straight in the eye until she got the answer.

He said it all together, as one word, “Marriedthreemonths.”

On the back stoop of the rectory, he straightened his collar, held the bouquet behind his back, and marched into the kitchen.

“Cynthia!”

Barnabas came bounding down the stairs, sailed toward him, airborne, and gave his face a fine licking before he could summon a scripture. “You got me that time,” he said, wiping up the damage with his coat sleeve. The excited barking of his good dog filled the rectory like the bass of the Lord’s Chapel organ filled the nave.

It was a wonderful thing, to be greeted as if you were the very Pope, but where was the woman who had moved in with him and shared his bed and left hilarious notes in his sock drawer?

“Cynthia!”

Maybe she was late coming home from work, from the little yellow house next door.

He ran some water in a vase and put the roses and freesia in it. The barest whiff of scent came to him.

He stood in the middle of the kitchen floor, holding the vase, and listened for her footsteps on the back stoop. Barnabas sat at his feet, staring up at him.

“Come, then, old fellow, we’ll go for a walk.” Barnabas danced on his hind legs, barking.

Cynthia would be home by the time they got back from the monument, and he’d take her to dinner in Wesley. Why not? He had done it once before, and she seemed to enjoy it immensely. He set the roses in the center of the kitchen table, wrote a hasty note on the back of the electric bill, and propped it by the vase.

Gone to the monument. Back in a trice. Taking you to dinner.

Love, Timothy

He loved the soft shine of the street lamps in their first hour of winter dark. And now, Christmas lights added to the glow. Up and down Main Street the tiny lights burned, looping around every street lamp with its necklace of fresh balsam and holly.

If he never left Mitford at all, it would suit him. He had been happier here than in any parish of his career. To tell the truth, there wasn’t even a close second, except, perhaps, for the little mission of fifty souls where he had served at the age of twenty-seven. They had taken him under their wing and loved him, but refused to protect him from sorrow and hardship. Indeed, there had been plenty of both, and that little Arkansas handful had made a man and a priest of him, all at once.

He looked up to see clouds racing across the moon, as Barnabas lifted his leg on a fire hydrant.

A line came to him, written by a fellow named Burns, who put out the newspaper in a neighboring village.

At barely six o‘clock, Mitford was already tuckered out and tucked in, poking up the fires that sent wafts of scented smoke on the December wind. He drew the muffler close around his neck.

“Father!”

It was Bill Sprouse, the new preacher at First Baptist, bounding along behind something that looked like a tumbleweed on a leash. Barnabas growled.

“Good evening, Reverend!” He was glad to see the jolly face of the man who was working wonders at First Baptist and was liked by the entire community. Last summer, he and Bill and two other Mitford clergymen had pushed peanuts down Main Street with their noses to raise funds for the town museum. If nothing else had come of that miserable experience, it had bonded the local clergy for all time.

“That’s Sparky,” said Bill Sprouse, with evident pride.

The two dogs sniffed each other.

“What breed?”

“Beats me. We think it was a rag mop that mated with a feather duster. He was left on our doorstep in a cracker box twelve years ago. Rachel and I are foolish about the little so-and-so.”

“I know the feeling.”

“How’s the computer coming? Learned your way around a menu yet?”

“A menu?”

Bill Sprouse laughed. “Do you have Windows? CD-ROM?”

He didn’t even pretend to know what Bill was talking about. “It hasn’t been installed yet. Right after Christmas, they say. My secretary has threatened to quit.”

“I lost two secretaries in the start-up at my old church. To get a computer system going in a church office takes youth, stamina, and the faith of an early martyr.” Bill Sprouse grinned knowingly.

“Aha.”

“I guess I’d liken it to having all your wisdom teeth pulled, with no gas to knock you out.” The two dogs continued in a circle, sniffing. “No, wait, that’s too mild. It’s more like ... ”

The rector stepped back, ready to turn and run.

“ ... having a frontal lobotomy. Yes! That’s it!”

“Bill, good seeing you. My best to Rachel. So long, Sparky.”

As he hurried toward the monument, did he hear Bill Sprouse guffawing, or was it the wind? He bitterly resented the thought of wrecking the peace of his workplace—not to mention the infernal aggravation of reworking the budget to accommodate the cost of the system.

He saw the squad car coming, but noted that the passenger in the front seat didn’t see him. J.C. was too busy laughing. J.C. laughing? He turned his head to get another look, but the car disappeared around the corner.

He quickened his steps toward home.

Cynthia would be waiting.

But Cynthia wasn’t waiting.

He shouted through the rectory, finding it empty as a tomb. Then he dialed the house next door. No answer.

Still in his coat and muffler, he popped through the hedge, noting with dread that the only light shining against the darkness was the one over the back stoop.

“Cynthia!”

He walked into the dark kitchen, turning on a light, and raced to her small studio. He was alarmed at what he might ...

But she was not there, which gave him an ironic mixture of dread and relief.

“Cynthia!” He turned on the hall light and bounded up the stairs and into her bedroom. What was that on the bed ...

But it was only a pile of clothes she had stacked there for the Bane and Blessing sale.

He went in the bathroom and drew back the shower curtain.

Would she have driven to The Local for groceries? But they shopped only yesterday. Had she gone out to the FedEx drop on the highway to Wesley? But why wouldn’t she have told him or left a note? She had never before caused him to wonder at her whereabouts.

He looked at his watch. Six-thirty. She was always home by five-fifteen, sometimes earlier. He must not panic, no indeed. His wife was a grown woman, fully capable of taking care of herself and having plenty of common sense into the bargain.

He found he was pacing the bedroom floor.

Should he call Rodney Underwood? That was a dark thought. Rodney would have his force swarming over the town and fanning out into the woods, not to mention taking fingerprints in both houses and talking over a radio crackling with static. He hated even thinking of it.

Violet! He realized there was no Violet trooping along at his heels, trying to scratch him on the ankle.

He could just feel it—Violet was definitely not in the house, or she would have made herself present at once.

He went back to the kitchen and looked under the shelves in the pantry. The cat carrier was gone.

The serenity of the little house was maddening—it revealed absolutely nothing. Everything was the same, yet everything was disturbingly different.

He went to the sink and leaned against it and prayed.

“Look here, Father, this is serious business. Protect Cynthia wherever she is, bring an end to the fear I’m feeling, and give me wisdom. Show me precisely what to do, through Christ our Lord, Amen.” Direct and specific. Plain and simple. Any tendency he had to pray like a Philistine fled before such confused anxiety as this.

Her car was, of course, gone from the garage.

He sat on the study sofa at the rectory, where he had often sat to figure things out. But he could not figure this. It was past seven o‘clock and his wife was two hours late arriving home on a cold, dark, and windy night in December.

He would call his cousin, Walter, in New Jersey. But what would he say? Katherine would get on the phone and insist he call the police at once.

Well, then, he would call Marge Owen, his friend ever since coming to Mitford, and the wife of the finest senior warden he’d ever had. She would know what to do.

But he couldn’t make the call. He went out to the back stoop of the rectory and waited for Cynthia’s car lights to come down the driveway on the other side of the hedge.

The wind was blustering, now, lashing the trees in Baxter Park.

He couldn’t bear the torment any longer, and he wouldn’t consider the consequences. At eight o‘clock, he went to his kitchen phone and called Rodney Underwood at home.

“Hello, Rodney?” His voice sounded like the croaking of a frog. “Tim Kavanagh here.”

Did he hear something outside? “Excuse me a moment ... ”

He raced to the stoop and saw her car, parked in the driveway next door with its lights on. “Hello, dearest!” she called through the hedge.

He sprinted back to the phone.

“Rodney! About that talk we had yesterday. Just wanted you to know I’m working on it, consider it done. Goodbye!”

He couldn’t hold her close enough.

“Timothy, you’re smashing
by doze
,” she said, coming up for air.