He grasped her outstretched hand. “I appreciated the invitation. Torey and John are well suited.”
“She’s marrying for love, not for money, that’s obvious. I hope she’ll be happy on a professor’s salary. They certainly won’t accept any money from us.”
Sam tried to imagine Christine refusing money from her parents if she married him. It was another obstacle they would have to overcome.
Rose wilted a little, or at least some of the discipline left her spine. “Do you miss us as much as we miss you? I find Savior’s Church to be deadly dull these days. I never knew what you were going to say in the pulpit, but I can predict every word Nigel pontificates.” She held up her hand before he could speak. “I’m sorry. That’s rude of me, I know. Talking about one of our ministers behind his back is what brought us to this.”
“I miss you, and Anthony, and a host of other people. But the church and everything that goes with it?” He tried to find the answer in his own heart and failed. One thing was clear, though. “I like where I am. I like what I’m doing. I’m happy there.”
“It’s not just a few years of exile? Siberia for rebellious clergy?”
He laughed. “It feels more like an opportunity.”
“Just remember, any time you’re in Atlanta, you’re expected to come and visit.” She gripped both his hands and kissed his cheek before she moved on.
Christine arrived with both her parents in tow. Sam had caught up with their lives at lunch, and by now was well versed in Nola’s fund-raisers for the local women’s shelter and Hiram’s plans to build a guesthouse on the lower edge of their property so when Sam and Christine married, they would have privacy when they visited.
Unlike Rose, Nola was a woman who fought aging purely on general principles. Christine resembled her a little, having inherited her mother’s red hair, height and love of fashion. But Nola’s beauty was more fragile and not at all due to force of personality. She was a tentative woman who knew what to say in every circumstance, but only because she had studied the possibilities with heartbreaking indecision.
Christine didn’t resemble her father outwardly but was much like him in other ways. Hiram was a short man, built like a punching bag and able to take as much abuse. He’d lost most of his hair but none of his bulldog persistence. On his deathbed, he would be planning some new project and probably wouldn’t notice the Grim Reaper waiting to claim him.
“I bet you haven’t been to a reception this fancy since you left Atlanta.” Hiram took several shrimp from the butler without acknowledging the young man. “Christine says you don’t get into D.C. very often.”
“I’m in a couple of clergy groups in the area, but that’s about as often as I make the trip.”
Nola selected smoked salmon on a cucumber round and gave the butler a tentative nod to dismiss him. “I’ve always liked the capital. I never wanted to live right in the city, you understand. But there are some lovely suburbs.”
“We have a friend here tonight from D.C.,” Hiram said. “I knew him when I was in Congress, and we’ve stayed friendly enough, even if his politics are a bit too far left of center to suit me. I’ll see if I can find him and introduce you. Might be a good contact.”
Sam immediately sensed something new in the air. Expressions didn’t indicate it, nor did body language. It was the studied nonchalance that gave it away.
Hiram left, with Nola in tow. Christine leaned closer. “My feet are killing me!”
He understood why. The shoes she was wearing had spindle-thin heels at least four inches high. “Take off the shoes.”
“I can’t do that. But we could find some place private and you could massage them. For starters.”
The invitation was just for show, and he knew it. “By the time we found a place that private, dinner would be over.”
“Are you having a good time?”
He wondered. He’d expected to feel out of place here, the star pitcher who goes home to his former team only to discover that his skills are either rusty or just plain deficient. Instead, even if he didn’t feel like the hometown hero, he felt comfortable, if somewhat detached. He had not yearned for old times, nor had he struggled over the few clear snubs he’d received.
And he had spent a surprising amount of time wondering how things were going back in Virginia.
“Sam?”
He realized he hadn’t answered Christine’s question. “It’s been good,” he said. And it had been. Good to see that he was happy with his life—at least most of it.
She looked as if she wanted to say more, but the senior Fletchers returned with an older man in an expensive gray suit that exactly matched his hair, and Hiram introduced him. “Sam, this is Pete Deaver. Pete used to be a lobbyist up on Capitol Hill, but now he works behind the scenes on his own time and dollar.”
Sam shook hands and approved of Pete’s firm grip. The man looked vaguely familiar, as if Sam had seen him recently in a different context. “What kind of things interest you, Pete?” Sam asked, trying to remember where.
“I work for a couple of different organizations.” He named one that Sam was familiar with, an environmental group whose stands were often too oriented toward big business to please Sam. Still, he admired everyone who put time and energy into what they considered good causes.
Christine excused herself to see if Torey needed anything. Hiram took Nola’s arm and they drifted away. Sam was left alone with Pete.
“I’ve heard you preach,” Pete said, getting right down to business.
Sam realized this was where he’d seen Pete. In the second row at Community Church. “Yes, I remember. What, three weeks ago?”
“Four. You talked about casting the first stone.”
“I hope I talked about
not
casting it. That’s what I intended.”
Pete had an unremarkable face, but his smile transformed it into something more interesting. His gaze had been shrewd and assessing, but the smile softened calculation into simple interest.
“I’ve known Hiram for years,” Pete said. “He’s quite a salesman.”
Sam was afraid he knew what Hiram had been trying to sell. Or, more accurately, whom. “And knowing Hiram brought you to the Shenandoah Community Church?”
“I’m on the search committee for my church, Capital Chapel, in northwest D.C. We’re not far from Dupont Circle, not far from Georgetown. We date back nearly to the Revolutionary War, and we’ve numbered three presidents among our parishioners. Hiram mentioned you, and I was intrigued.”
Sam had heard of the church. The congregation was not as large as Savior’s, and while once the theology had been challenging, almost radical, its days as a beacon for the community had ended. Nowadays it was still influential, but it was a comfortable church to attend, the right place for a man like Pete, who believed that drilling for oil in Alaska could be accomplished with few important changes in that fragile, irreplaceable ecology.
“I’ve seen your building,” Sam said. “Impressive? Good size congregation?”
“What we lack in size we make up for in prestige. Our members are wealthy and important.”
“I’m sure.”
“And we’re looking at you as a candidate to lead us.”
Sam didn’t know what to say. This was unexpected, but it certainly explained a lot. His earlier conversation with Christine about their wedding. Hiram’s guesthouse. Even Nigel’s surprising lack of animosity. Sam was no longer in disgrace. He had managed to attract interest in his skills, considerable interest from a church he did not have to be ashamed of. He was out of the liturgical doghouse. He was upwardly mobile once again.
Sam realized he had left Pete standing there without a word. “What kind of minister are you looking for?”
“One who doesn’t bore us to death.”
Sam nodded to encourage more information.
“We’re well-educated, and we’re not interested in a Bible thumper. We expect intellectually stimulating sermons on relevant topics. I don’t mean you can’t preach from the Bible, of course, but give us credit for a little common sense. I thought you did that in the sermon I heard. I was impressed.”
Sam smiled a little. “I’m glad you found it meaningful. But there’s a lot more to ministry than those minutes each week in the pulpit. What’s your vision for your church?”
Pete was clearly warming up to this task. “We don’t want to be lectured to. We had that with our last pastor, and he got the boot. We want to be gently led.”
“You don’t want controversy.” It wasn’t a question.
“We have people of many different political and philosophical persuasions in our midst. We don’t want anyone to feel alienated. We want to think, we don’t want to…” He was at a momentary loss for words.
“Feel? You don’t want to come out of the service on a Sunday feeling stirred up?”
“That’s right.” Pete was too smart not to know that Sam was supplying more than the right words. “You have a problem with that, Reverend?”
“Sam. And it’s probably too soon in this relationship to have a problem with anything. I’m gathering information.”
Pete nodded, as if Sam had passed the first test. “The last minister had some very strong ideas about what we should be doing in the community. We’re too diverse to—”
Sam felt a ping of interest. “Diverse? Racially? Economically?”
Pete grimaced. “No.”
“I’m guessing you’re sorry about that?”
“Personally, yes. But not everyone will be. We don’t do much outreach. We do tend to keep to ourselves. And about the only thing we agree on is that we don’t want anyone telling us what we should do about it.”
Sam decided to cut to the chase. “You know my background?”
“Yes, I do. I’ve talked to the pastor here about you. He says you’re a rising star who got knocked off course. I’ll tell you right now, we would not be any more tolerant than these people were of a minister who doesn’t put his commitment to us right out in front.”
“In other words, if I felt led by God to act in a way you disagreed with, I would not be welcome.”
“It’s never that clear-cut, is it?”
Sam shrugged.
“We’re looking for youth, intelligence, drive, charisma. You have them all.”
Sam was gratified to hear that, but not as gratified as once he might have been. On some level he was afraid the words were an indictment, particularly the last two. “What’s the next step?”
“I’ll bring our committee to visit your church some time in the next two months. A surprise visit, most likely. Then we’ll figure out where to go from there. But right now you’re the best candidate by far. You have everything—”
“Except an unfortunate tendency to do what I think is right.”
“Are you less impulsive than you were three years ago?”
Sam thought this was the question of the hour. What was impulse and what was God’s voice? He was not foolish or brash enough to believe he always knew the difference.
“I’m less impulsive,” he admitted. “That is not the same as calculating.”
“We want a man with real values. We just don’t want one who forces them down our throat.” Pete stuck out his hand, and Sam shook it again. Then Pete disappeared into the crowd.
The wedding reception had ended, and the elder Fletchers had gone to bed. Christine and Sam were lounging together on the sofa in the upstairs sitting room. The pickled pine walls with elaborate trim and crown molding were showcases for many of the oil paintings of the nineteenth-century South that Nola collected. Resurrection fern and Spanish moss hung from mighty live oaks; rivers wound lazily through cane fields; horses stretched and preened on bluegrass fields. The southern theme was repeated all around him. Camellias on the floral print sofa, wisteria on the delicate china tea service on a side table. None of it cloying or overdone.
“This is a good life, isn’t it, Sam?” Christine’s words were only slightly slurred. The party had gone on into the wee hours, and the champagne had flowed freely. Wisely, Christine had let Sam drive home.
“It’s a good life,” he agreed. Her head was in his lap, and he stroked her hair back from her forehead, although he couldn’t keep up with the curls that sprang back as soon as he released them.
Despite a remarkably clear view of her cleavage, he was amazed to discover all he really wanted now was to go down the hall to bed. And not with Christine. He’d gotten up before the sun, and it was now well past midnight. The day had been emotionally exhausting, too.
“How did your talk go with Pete Deaver?” She sat up and shook back her hair. Obviously she wanted to see his face as she questioned him.
“You know what he wanted, don’t you?”
“Isn’t it exciting?”
He supposed it should have been. But he knew better than to confess the whole truth, that he was troubled, not excited, by this opportunity.
When he didn’t answer right away, she frowned. “Don’t tell me you told him no.”
“I didn’t tell him anything. I listened.”
“Well, that’s something.” She cuddled up to him, but turned so she could still see him clearly. “Sam, this is a wonderful new chance for you. Don’t you see? Washington’s an exciting city. I loved it when Daddy was in Congress. I always wished we could really live there, have all those monuments right in my backyard. Maybe it’s not Atlanta, but it’s nearly as good.”