Chapter 11 of 11A Frightened Man

Marianne Abbott had until Friday. If the deed in her bag could not be proved genuine before the library board voted, she would lose the position she had only just begun, and with it any chance of finishing what Eleanor Dawes had started. She had been in Harmony Creek a short while, long enough to see that the town's story had been tended like a garden, and long enough to suspect that some of what had been planted there was not true. The frost from the weekend still clung in the shadows between the sycamores, though the morning sun had burned most of it off by the time she and Jamal Washington climbed the steps of Harmony Creek Community Church. Wednesday, and the board would meet Friday.

Jamal tapped his cane against the stone step and paused to catch his breath. "You're quiet this morning."

"I'm counting my arguments." Marianne adjusted the strap of her bag. "There are not many."

"Now, you have to understand," Jamal said, "Ben Wilkins is not a bad man. He's a frightened one. There's a difference."

"Is there?"

"When a man is bad, you can predict him. When he's frightened, he might surprise you in either direction."

The church doors stood open. Inside, the sanctuary was dim and cool, the pews polished to a dull shine. A red plastic coffee can sat on a folding table near the entrance, half full, a stack of paper cups beside it. Somebody had left a plate of snickerdoodles wrapped in plastic.

Wilkins's study was at the end of a short hall. The door was ajar. He was standing at the window when they came in, and he turned without any particular surprise, which told Marianne that he had been watching the walk for them.

"Miss Abbott. Mr. Washington." He motioned to two chairs. "I expected you. Jamal called."

"I did," Jamal said.

"I wish you hadn't."

Marianne sat. She opened her bag and laid the copies across the desk: pages from the ledger, the list of founding families, a photocopy of the deed. Wilkins looked at them without touching them.

"Reverend, I know you've heard what happened at the library on Monday."

"I heard Owen's version."

"I'd like to give you mine."

She walked him through it. The journal miscatalogued as a farm ledger. The names of patients. The deed from 1868 that granted land to a woman named Eliza Sparrow for a community apothecary and did not mention Thaddeus Westwood anywhere.

Wilkins looked at the copy of the deed for a long moment.

"Owen says this is a forgery."

"Owen also says the box it came from was empty. Both things cannot be true."

"He says you're a troublemaker who came here to tear down everything this town has built."

"I came here to do a job. The job is history. I found history."

"History is not always a comfort."

"No," Marianne said. "It isn't."

Jamal leaned forward. "Reverend, you baptized my niece. You buried my brother. You married my daughter in this church, right here, under that window. When I came to you about Eliza, you told me you would pray on it."

"I have prayed."

"I know. I've been waiting for your prayer to finish."

"Jamal—"

"Eliza Sparrow was a midwife. She caught babies in this valley when there was no doctor nearer than the next county over. My grandmother told me that. Her grandmother told her. You have books in this church that might say so. All I am asking is for you to let us look."

Wilkins stood and walked to the window. He looked out at the lawn, at the sycamores, at the long shadows the frost had left.

"Owen Pritchard's name is on the building fund. You know that."

"I know it."

"If I cross him, the roof fund is gone. The food pantry is gone. The youth program—"

"Then pray with your eyes open."

Wilkins turned. "That is not fair."

"No," Jamal said. "It isn't."

Marianne watched Wilkins take in the pages one at a time, watched his thumb move down the column of names as though he were reading a list of his own congregation, and she understood that he already knew some of them. He rested his fingertips on the corner of the deed.

"You are asking me to choose between my congregation and my conscience."

"I'm asking you to consider that they might be the same thing."

He sat down heavily. For a long moment he did not speak while the coffee maker in the hall gurgled and finished, and the wind pressed against the window behind him.

"The church has records from before the war," he said at last. "Marriage ledgers. Baptismal records. They're kept in a cabinet in the vestry."

"Reverend—"

"I am not finished."

He looked up.

"I will open that cabinet for you. Tomorrow morning. Thursday. I will be in the room while you read. Nothing leaves the vestry. Not a page, not a note. And if Owen Pritchard asks me what you found, I will not lie for you."

"We're not asking you to lie," Jamal said.

"I know what you're asking. I'm telling you what I can give."

Marianne gathered the copies and put them back in her bag. She left the deed photocopy on his desk. He did not push it back.

They stepped out into the cold morning. The sycamores threw long shadows across the lawn, and the frost still held in the hollows where the sun had not reached. Jamal stopped at the bottom of the steps and leaned on his cane.

"He'll hold," he said. "I think."

"You said he might surprise us either direction."

"He did."

Marianne looked back at the church. Through the window of the study, she could see Wilkins still at his desk, one hand resting on the papers she had left behind. He had not moved.

She had access now—a cabinet, a vestry, a room full of ledgers with names and dates that had never made it into the official story, and no way yet to know what they would say. It was more than she had when she woke. It was not enough to know whether the man who held the key would still be standing there when she arrived.

"Come on," Jamal said. "You've got a board meeting to prepare for."

"No," she said. "I've got a search to prepare for."