With a little more pressing, Mrs. Marshall agreed that they should call Mr. Madsen, and the elderly attorney seemed happy enough to be of service. “When you’re my age,” he said, “you don’t sleep all that much anyway.”

By the time they dropped Clare off in front of the historical society to retrieve her car, she was pretty well dried off. She sat behind the wheel for several minutes. Debating: Rectory? Or the hospital? She didn’t surprise herself when she went for the hospital. If Russ had been released, she’d be on her way without much time lost. If he was still there, and awake, they could talk. She could picture herself, sitting on the edge of his bed. Maybe holding his hand. And they would talk.

Her clericals did the trick again, getting her past admissions after hours. Although the security guard in charge did look strangely at her. Walking past the dark plate-glass window of the gift shop, she saw why. In addition to the reek and the damp wrinkles, her black blouse and pants were streaked with dried mud, and her hair was-well, better not to think of it. Russ didn’t care.

She took the elevator up to the third floor. “I’m here to see Russ Van Alstyne,” she said to the charge nurse. “Downstairs, they told me he had been admitted?”

“That’s right.” The nurse, a twenty-something man with curling hair, flipped open a chart. “He had to have his leg recast. And he had some signs of fluid in his lungs, so he’s being kept overnight for observation. But I’m afraid he’s asleep now.” He looked at her clerical collar. “Are you his…?”

She smiled over her disappointment. “Just let him know that Clare Fergusson stopped by to see him. Thanks.” She pushed away from the nursing station’s counter.

“Excuse me?” A voice hailed from down the hall. “Are you Clare Fergusson?” Clare turned. A pocket goddess-there was no other word for her-was walking toward her. She smiled and waved. “I was just coming out to grab another cup of tea and I heard your name.” She was tiny, curvy, with a tousle of Marilyn Monroe hair and a flawless complexion. She reached for Clare’s hand. “I just had to say thank you.” Up close, she had soft-edged lines around her eyes and overlapping front teeth that made her smile charming instead of perfect. “I’m Linda Van Alstyne.”

Clare moved her hand up and down, propped a smile on her face, said something.

“Mother Van Alstyne told me you were the one who got Russ out of the woods and to the hospital when he broke his leg. I’m so grateful. He just goes out and does these crazy things, you know.” She laughed. Musically, of course. “So I’m glad he has friends looking out for him.”

Clare said something else. She thought she might melt into the floor, like the Wicked Witch of the West. She was the Wicked Witch. She deserved melting.

“Were you visiting someone from your church?”

Clare’s mouth worked.

“Well, it’s great to finally meet you. I’ll tell Russ you said hi, okay?” She gave Clare’s hand a final squeeze and glided back up the hall to the kitchenette like the woman in the Roethke poem. Describing circles as she moved.

Clare felt her way to the elevator. Sometime later, she found herself in the chapel room. She sat for a long time in the half-light, staring at the nondenominational wall hanging at the front of the room. Just sitting. Then she thought. Then she prayed. After a while, she rose from her seat and went into the family lounge next door, which had vending machines, a coffeemaker, long sofas-and a writing desk, stocked with hospital stationery. A sixtyish couple slept on one of the sofas, he stretched out with his head in her lap, she sitting, her head tipped, snoring. Clare pulled the desk chair out as quietly as possible. She sat, head bowed, over the tablet of writing paper. Then she wrote. It wasn’t a long letter. It fit on a single sheet of paper. When she was done, she folded the sheet into an envelope and printed Russ’s name on it.

She took the elevator back up to the third floor. The charge nurse tilted back in his chair and scruffed his curls when he saw her. “Didn’t expect you back.”

She slid the letter across the counter. “Could you see that Mr. Van Alstyne gets this? When he’s awake?”

“Okay.”

She hesitated. “It’s for him. Nobody else.”

He searched her face. “I understand.”

She turned her back on the ward and its inhabitants, took the elevator down, and left the hospital without looking behind her. But in her car, she thought about it. The dark space and the rising water and his hands tangling in her hair. Then she shifted into gear and drove home.

Chapter 42

April 22, the Great Vigil of Easter

He was sitting in the dark in the rearmost pew of St. Alban’s Church holding a candle and he didn’t know why.

No, that was a lie. He had done what she asked him to in that damn letter. He had stayed away and he hadn’t called her. He had shown up at the Kreemy Kakes Diner and sat alone for the past two Wednesdays, impatient and pissed off, wondering when she was going to snap out of it and call him.

At some point between Wednesday lunch and this Saturday evening, he had realized she wasn’t. Which should have been hunky-dory with him, except that he had found himself crammed into a corner of his office, the edge of his hand in his mouth, trying not to let Harlene hear him. Crying, for Chrissakes, like a baby.

He just wanted to talk with her. If she was going to cut him off, he wanted to hear it from her, not from some piece of paper. She had asked him not to contact her. Fine. She hadn’t written anything about not showing up in church. He had seen the service listed in the paper. How could he have guessed the church was going to be full at ten o’clock on Saturday night?

There was a rustling, and everyone went quiet, and then Clare was at the door, surrounded by a bunch of other people, all of them in white robes. A skinny, balding guy was holding a candle nearly as big as he was. Clare was cupping some sort of bowl, and he was startled when something inside it flashed into flame. It was the only light in the building, and it made her look like a priestess from a time before anybody had even dreamed of Christianity.

“Dear friends in Christ,” Clare said, in a voice that rang over the stone and carried to every corner. “On this most holy night, in which our Lord Jesus passed over from death to life…” She went on with the invocation and then invited everyone to pray. He ducked his head. Everyone else seemed to know the words. Then the skinny guy backed away and brought the tip of the huge candle down to the bowl, lighting it. The white-robed people, all of whom had plain white tapers stuck in cardboard disks just like his, lit their candles from the big one. Then they touched candles with the folks sitting nearby, and next thing he knew, the guy sitting next to Russ was lighting his candle and gesturing for him to pass it on. The fire flowed forward, a wave of tiny lights surging to the front of the church until the whole space was illuminated.

Pretty impressive. He turned to look at the fire that had started it all and caught Clare just as she glanced toward his pew. Her eyes widened, but then she and the others were all marching up the aisle and there was a lot of fiddling with the big candle and the skinny guy singing about rejoicing. He went on and on about the candle and the light and the night being a Passover.

Then Clare said, “Let us hear the record of God’s saving deeds in history,” and the congregation got to sit down. After that, there was an endless string of Bible readings, the choir singing a psalm, and a prayer, one right after another. Russ felt like a kid again, trapped in the Methodist church with his mom pinching him whenever he squirmed. He amused himself by tipping his candle from one side to the next, laying out the melted wax in patterns, until Clare walked to the pulpit and began her sermon.