CHAPTER TWENTY

The scream nearly curled his hair.

Gandy leaped to her feet and knocked her chair backward so that it rolled across the office’s sloping wooden floor and slammed into the metal file cabinet. This sent up a racket as the mug rack on top tipped over and the cups went rolling. “Is somebody being scalped out there?” she said, as she hurried to retrieve the errant mugs.

“I don’t know, but I plan to find out.” Alex strode out of the church and paused on the top step to stare at what was unfolding before him.

Will Packard had arrived in the church parking lot with his bicycle and an old red wagon that had seen better days and probably a dozen children before Will. In the wagon was a wire cage, with a printed cardboard sign hanging off the door that said Rose. But the wire door on the pen was open, and the person who opened it—Bucky Chadwick—still had his hand on the wire. Rose, meanwhile, was meandering off at a surprising pace, her wide, squat body waddling from side to side as she moved.

“You get away from her, Bucky!” Will’s voice was hoarse from screaming.

“Skunks should be dead, all of them,” Bucky retorted in a flat voice as he raised the shotgun he was carrying to his shoulder and took aim. “I haven’t got any time for skunks.”

“Drop it. Right now. No guns on church property.” Alex wondered for a moment if that commanding voice was actually his. Of course, he’d never before been quite this furious with someone.

From the corner of his eye he watched Will scramble to catch up with his skunk. “I could call the police if I thought that you were trying to kill someone’s pet.”

“It’s only a dumb skunk,” Bucky growled. His face flushed an ugly red that did nothing for his complexion. “Dragging that thing around in a cage like it was a prize rabbit from the fair, that’s just plain stupid.”

“And what would you call trying to shoot someone’s pet, even if it is a skunk?”

“I was just kidding. I wanted to give the little twerp a scare.”

If there was one thing Alex hated, it was bullies who hid behind the line “just kidding” when they got caught. “That’s not kidding, that’s cruel.”

Bucky scowled and thrust a bill into Alex’s hand. “I didn’t follow him out here to do it, if that’s what you mean. Red told me to drive out here and deliver the water softener salt you ordered. I always carry my gun, so I thought I’d do the world a favor and get rid of that rodent. I never thought a guy like you would try to protect a nasty critter like that. Those Packards are crazy, you know.”

So he hadn’t been kidding at all. He would have shot Will’s pet, given half a chance.

Bucky slunk to his pickup and unloaded the forty-pound bags from the pickup bed, his sullen expression never changing. When he was done, he got into the pickup and drove off without an apology to either Alex or Will, who’d corralled Rose and was hugging her tightly to his chest. He stuck as closely as possible to Alex until Bucky was out of sight.

“He’d have killed Rosie if you hadn’t come along,” Will said bitterly. “Shot her dead. Bucky is the meanest dude in five counties, I’ll bet.”

“You didn’t try to set up a humane society at his place, did you?”

Will looked shocked. “Of course not! That’s where I get a lot of my rescue animals. Bucky is always picking on something.”

“I recommend that in the future you leave Rose at home—for her own safety.”

The boy’s thin shoulders drooped disconsolately. “But she’s my best friend!”

That struck Alex as terribly, terribly sad. “Will, have you or any of your family been to Sunday school?”

“Nah. My dad says that’s for sissies and nerds.” Will stroked the skunk gently before placing her back in her cage.

“He does, does he?” Alex made a mental note to visit with Will’s parents before Sunday school started again in the fall.

“Gotta go,” Will said suddenly. He darted to his bike and got on.

“Where?”

“I just thought of a great place for my hoomain society. Me and Rose are going to check it out.” And before Alex could give him the third degree, Will pushed off, pedaling as hard as he could. The wagon and its load swayed and bounced behind him.

Alex pinched the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger and sighed. Who would be the next to call and complain about a hoomain society in one of their outbuildings?

“It’s a good thing that boy has you to protect him,” Gandy said. She’d come up beside him so quietly that Alex had not realized she was there. “That Bucky is a mean one, through and through.”

“You talk as if Will doesn’t have another soul in the world to turn to.”

“That’s a pretty accurate statement if you ask me. His mama is timid, his daddy is rough and it’s hard to make oneself heard in a rowdy group of siblings like his.”

Alex expelled a long sigh. “There’s need everywhere, isn’t there?”

“Yup. And it’s been building up since we haven’t had a preacher for so long. You walked right into a backlog of need.” Gandy might not be eloquent but she certainly knew how to get a point across.

She scowled. “And speaking of need, I called over to All Saints and invited them to our fund-raiser.”

“Excellent! Do you think anyone will come?” Alex couldn’t keep the hope from his voice.

“Who knows? If word gets to Alf Nyborg and he says he isn’t attending, it might be pretty sparse. But if Alf does attend, we can expect a houseful.”

“How will the cooks prepare for that?”

“I’m not sure how they do it, but they make a lot of food and know how to spread it a long way. It’s not like the loaves and fishes, of course, but meatballs do seem to come out of thin air sometimes.”

“There’s a vision,” Alex said with a chuckle, “meatballs flying through the air like badminton birdies.”

“By the way, Nancy Jenkins just called. She and her husband are going to be away on Sunday, so she asked if you could come for coffee today.”

Alex glanced at his watch. “I don’t know if I should be off drinking coffee when there’s church work to be done.”

“Reverend Alex, around here, drinking coffee is church work.”

Alex was getting more adept at driving in the country. At first he’d thought he’d never catch on.

No one used real directions around here. He was hoping for something simple, like “Take the Twenty-Eighth Street exit and follow it to Twenty-Third Avenue. Travel on Twenty-Third until you come to a four-way stop. Turn right onto Harrison Lane.” Here, everyone used landmarks that had been heretofore invisible to Alex.

Gandy insisted on giving him directions to the Jenkins’ home. “Go about two miles, maybe three, as if you were going away from Grassy Valley. Go past the shelterbelt that will be on your right side. It’s all pine trees, you can’t miss it. Then the farm is on the first road to your right after that…or is it the second? Anyway, it’s marked with a huge stone that has HUBBARD engraved on it. If you go too far, you’ll run into a dead end. There are two separate drives into the yard. You can use either road into the yard since it’s summer, but you can only use the one on the left during the winter.”

If people gave directions like that in Chicago, everyone would be lost.

When he’d inquired about the two roads leading to the Jenkins’ home, he’d received another mysterious explanation.

“The summer road is quicker because it follows the tree line and so it’s shorter. The problem is that in the winter, the trees catch too much snow for the road to be useable. That makes it only a summer road. The winter road is the one they plow and keep open in the winter, but of course you could figure that out for yourself.”

Not likely, Alex thought. He was learning to “speak Hilltop,” but he wasn’t very adept at the language yet.

The Hubbard house, Alex realized, was even more spectacular up close than from a distance. It was a grand three-story structure with a wide porch that ran around three sides of the house. Ionic columns separated the first-floor porch from the second. Large windows overlooked a sloping horse pasture. To reach the front entry, Alex mounted six steps. The double doors that greeted him were made of mahogany and intricately carved.

Nancy Jenkins threw open the door and welcomed him inside. “I’m so glad you could come today. Ben and I feel terrible about missing the fund-raiser. I made a plate of sandwiches and a cake. I hope you can join us for lunch.”

“Why, yes, thank you. I’d like that.” Alex was so engrossed with studying the intricate wood carvings that graced the open staircase and the massive ceiling moldings that he could barely get the words out of his mouth. There were old, elegant rugs on the maple flooring, and much of the furniture appeared to be of the same vintage of the house. “What a lovely home you have.”

“Hmm…I suppose it is,” Nancy agreed. “If you like this sort of thing.”

“And your great-great-grandfather built it?”

“Yes. Would you like to take a tour before we sit down to eat?”

“It would be wonderful…if you don’t mind, that is. I don’t believe I’ve ever been in a house quite this grand before—at least not one that hasn’t been turned into a museum.”

“That’s what this place is,” Nancy said, sweeping her hand around, “an old museum. It creaks and clanks in the night, and the rooms are drafty. You can’t imagine how difficult this is to heat. I’ve forgotten how pretty it is because of all the upkeep and high fuel bills.”

He followed her through the hall to peer in at several bedrooms, each uniquely decorated around a theme quilt on each bed.

“This is amazing. You have an eye for decorating.”

“Thank you. I enjoy it. I had a wonderful time when we first moved here, making quilts and choosing accessories. But now we practically live in the kitchen area for most of the winter so we don’t have to heat the whole house.” She paused thoughtfully. “I wish it were fun again, but it’s not.”

He followed her to a closed door. She paused. “My ancestors loved parties,” she said. “The bigger the better. Everyone in Hilltop wanted to come to my grandmother’s shindigs, which were usually held in the ballroom.”

“Ballroom?” Alex asked. Surely he hadn’t heard her correctly.

“Yes. Up here, where most people have attics. We have a ballroom. It was built for my great-grandmother who also loved to give parties. Come upstairs and you’ll see what I mean.”

They ascended the steps, and when Nancy moved aside at the top, Alex gasped. It was a ballroom. And not just any ballroom either. The ceiling was arched and painted a soft blue, with puffy white clouds through which sunlight seemed to shoot. An occasional bluebird dotted the sky and hummingbirds hovered overhead. Even on a cold winter’s night, it would be like standing in the sun on a summer day up here. The floor underneath their feet was parquet and Alex could imagine what it might look like if it were polished to a high gleam. In its heyday, this must have been a wondrous place indeed.

“I’ve never seen anything quite like this in a private home,” Alex admitted. “It’s fantastic.”

“Yes, I suppose it is,” Nancy sighed. She sounded torn, as if she believed his statement to be true yet somehow resented it.

“What’s wrong?” The words slipped out of his mouth a little too abruptly. “You don’t have to answer that, I mean…”

“I don’t mind. Let’s talk about it over lunch.”

He followed her downstairs, rather sorry to leave the fantasy world on the top floor of the house. When they entered the kitchen Ben Jenkins was waiting there. He was quick to offer Alex a cup of coffee.

“We heard about the fire,” Nancy said. “It’s a miracle that the church didn’t burn. Ben said that Alf Nyborg took it pretty hard.”

“His wife says he’s doing better,” Alex commented. He and Betty had talked on the telephone a number of times since the incident. He didn’t, however, have time to dwell on Alf as Nancy led him into the kitchen.

The kitchen of the old house was big and sunny. There were cupboards everywhere, and they sat at a large wood table in the middle of the room, which Nancy loaded with food while her husband poured pink lemonade into tall, chilled glasses. After Alex said grace, they dug into the food and didn’t speak for some moments.

“Delicious!” Alex said. “Even a sandwich out here tastes like ambrosia. I’ve never met so many good cooks in one place.”

Nancy laughed. “I couldn’t help but learn. The two things all the Hubbard women did well were food and parties.” Her eyes held a faraway expression. “But it’s different now.”

“How so?”

“There’s no extra cash for parties anymore, especially not the kind my family used to give.” Her expression hardened. “This house eats up our money. It will be good when it’s gone and we are living in something that isn’t impossible to heat.”

Alex recalled Mattie’s dramatic announcement of the other day. “What exactly do you mean gone?”

Ben and Nancy exchanged a look.

“We’ve decided to raze this house and build something smaller. We might take it down ourselves. If we moved out I’m not sure I could bear to see it slowly crumbling before my eyes.” A cloud of melancholy seemed to overcome her.

“Surely there’s another way.”

Nancy rubbed her stomach. “We’ve tried to think of one, but considering the circumstances…”

Alex raised his eyebrows.

“You’re the very first to know, Pastor. Ben and I are going to have twins.”

“Congratulations!”

“So you see we’re pretty desperate to do something as soon as possible. The heating bills for this house nearly broke us last winter and now, with two babies…”

“I wish I could suggest another way.”

“If you can think of one, let us know,” Ben responded. “This is breaking Nancy’s heart, but we can’t go through another winter heating this place. It has so many leaks that we heat more of the outside of the house than in. I really wish there were some other way.”

Another way…another way…The litany rang through Alex’s head as he drove back to the church. Who was he to cruise into this place and start telling people what to do? This was his time to listen and learn, wasn’t it?

Or was it? The light-bulb moment occurred as he pulled into the parking lot.

He hurried inside, glad Gandy had gone home for lunch. If he was going to stick his nose into someone else’s business, he preferred to do it alone.

It took him only a moment to find his cousin Dan’s phone number. He dialed quickly and then waited impatiently for someone to pick up on the other end of the line.

“Armstrong, Lerner and Cooper Architects, may I help you?”

“May I speak to Dan Armstrong?” Alex tapped the toe of his shoe on the floor.

“Who may I say is calling?”

“His cousin Alex.”

“Certainly.” Her tone became obsequious. “I’ll put you right through.”

“Yo, Cousin Alex! What’s up?” Dan’s cheerful voice greeted him. “How’s living in Timbuktu working out?”

“It’s not quite as remote as you might think it is. And it’s lovely here. I had no idea what I was getting into, but so far I’m glad I’m here.”

“Good, good. Then why the call? Are you going to build yourself a parsonage?”

“I have a very good one, thank you.” And he told Dan about the old Hubbard house and Nancy Jenkins’ grief about having to move out. “Your firm does a lot of home restoration, what would you recommend?”

“Without seeing it with my own eyes, it’s hard to say, but usually there are some basic things that can seal up a building like that without destroying the integrity of the house or breaking the bank.”

“Like what?”

Dan rattled off a list of suggestions.

“That still sounds expensive.”

“Too bad the house couldn’t be turned into a money-maker. It would pay for itself in no time. We’ve restored several old homes that were then turned into B and Bs. It’s a perfect combination, really. The work can be paid for and written off as a business expense.”

“I can’t pay you for this so I can’t make you do it, but if you’d be willing to write a letter telling this young couple what you’ve told me, I’ll pass it on to them. Whatever advice you can give would be helpful, and I know they can’t afford an architect. It will give them something to think about, at least.”

“Consider it done. In fact, I’ll overnight one to them directly.”

“You don’t have to do it that quickly. I am, after all, meddling in someone else’s affairs, and I haven’t yet got a plan as to how to present this.”

“Don’t waste time. If they decide to tear down the house, all is lost. If the house is the gem you say it is, you don’t want it disappearing from the landscape.”

Suddenly Alex was infused with a sense of urgency. “Thanks, Dan. You don’t know how much I appreciate this.”