He’d been making calls all morning. Patricia Lumley’s name was one of several on a sheet of notebook paper taped to the refrigerator with phone numbers next to them in case of emergency; he’d known Chuck Lumley since childhood. Chuck wouldn’t know, but his wife might.
But she hadn’t heard anything, though she sensed, immediately, the discord of the moment. Irene Sample’s husband calling, not to talk to Chuck, but to her, on a Monday morning, asking whether Irene was over there for some reason. It didn’t add up.
“Gee, I don’t know,” she said when Peter asked the next question, the obvious one: Did she know where Irene might be, what might have happened, did she know anybody else he might call. “Do you want me to look after Lisa today? Sharon’s not doing anything.”
Sharon was sitting on a pillow on the living room floor, watching game shows on TV. Everyone was ready for winter break to be over. “Tell her to bring Gold Medal Barbie!” she yelled without looking away from the screen.
“Bring her on over,” Patricia Lumley said. “It’s no trouble, really.”
But all the stray signals searching for ground inside Peter’s chest found it now. He’d called the wrong person. There was no right person to call. No matter who he called, it was going to get to this point fairly quickly every time, and then they’d know. There wouldn’t be any way around it. Best to just get it over with.
“She took the car,” he said, his voice catching.
Patricia cupped her hand over the mouthpiece before she raised her voice. “Sharon, get your shoes and coat on!” she said.
Peter was quiet. An unwelcome clarity was settling in.
“We’ll be over in a minute,” Patricia said.
*
In any case it was the Coltons, not Peter and Lisa, who received the letter from Irene: the one that came about two weeks later and began This will be the only time you hear from me. They called right away. They were very worried, and they wanted to be told what to do, but it was clear from the way Harold Colton’s sentences kept trailing off into nothing that he was out of his depth: that he didn’t know what to make of it, out of any of it.
“She says she’s being taken care of,” said Harold on the phone. “What does she mean?” Pressing the earpiece against his temple in Crescent, Peter patrolled the space between question and answer, watching for silence and trying to shore up the gap. Nearby, on the floor, Lisa was playing Drop a Dragon alone. In the one-player version you finish the lines yourself, still trading out crayons to make a colorful dragon.
“Well, I intend to find out,” he said weakly. Irene’s letter hadn’t really left any place for questions about what she meant. She had gone to await the coming of the Most High with His people. The Lord who sees in secret will reward you. She knew they would all meet again.
“Well, I can’t figure how you’re going to find out unless you can ask her directly,” said Harold without a trace of malice: it just seemed to him like something worth bearing in mind.
“I just can’t understand it,” said Peter.
“Well, I can’t either,” said Harold, this being the absolute best he could do, given the circumstances.
“I’ll call tomorrow,” said Peter.
“Yes, please do,” Harold Colton said from the old house in Tama where Irene had once lived as a child.
*
It had taken Michael Christopher six months to groom Irene for departure; there was some question about whether the preacher’s last name was Christopher or Christophersen, but Christopher seemed to be the consensus after calling around to various churches in Council Bluffs and Omaha. The storefront next to the army surplus had been abandoned: there was a vase of sad flowers on a folding table near the lectern when the landlord opened the door for Peter and they both walked in. The folding chairs were still set up in rows. The cross on the wall was gone, though Peter’d never known it was there and the landlord hadn’t taken any note of it; it was an unrecordable absence. “His rent’s current,” said the landlord, keys to the place still in hand. “They might still show up one Sunday.”
But Peter looked around the room: all the life had gone out of it. This landlord was only putting a good face on things, trying not to say what was obvious. It made no difference to him either way: the rent was paid up. But to Peter it meant several things, if services weren’t being held here anymore, if the congregation was truly gone.