Alexander
I knocked on the door to Pastor Lind’s office. “It’s Barnes, Pastor Lind. May I have a moment?”
“Come in, come in.”
Taking a deep breath, I entered, then closed the door behind me. Lind sat behind his desk. He was a small, round man with thick white hair that sprouted from his head in unruly clumps. He had a handlebar mustache and thick eyebrows and wore a pair of round wire-framed glasses that perched on the end of his nose. The office smelled of coffee from the cup next to a notebook containing his handwritten sermon. He claimed it made him a better orator if he consumed a cup right before services began.
“Lord Barnes, to what do I owe this pleasure?” His hazel eyes gazed at me from over his glasses. I always had the urge to push those flimsy glasses up to where they belonged. They agitated me, perched like that on the bulbous part of his nose.
“I’m afraid I have bad news,” I said.
He tutted as he leaned forward over the desk. His thick brows came together to form a long white caterpillar. “What’s happened?”
Simon Lind and his wife, Pamela, were in their fifties and had spent most of their lives building churches in small towns like Emerson Pass. Lind had wanderlust. Pamela had told me he could never be happy in one place. Once the church was built and the flock firmly settled in the pews every Sunday, he grew restless. When they’d come through here to visit, looking for a new place to build a church, I’d made him a deal. I’d help them build a church and rectory and pay him a decent salary even during years when donations were scarce, but he needed to commit to staying. His wife, worn out from the years of moving, had convinced him to take my offer. Five years later, it was as if they’d always been here. She’d made the rectory across from the church into a pretty home, with flowers and a vegetable garden during warm months. Pam Lind had such a green thumb she kept half the town in tomatoes and beans during July and August. She’d told me once that her inability to have a child had fueled her need to grow living things. “Cucumbers and tomatoes are no substitute for a child, but they can at least feed other women’s sons and daughters,” she’d said to me once.
Now I turned my hat around and around in my hands. To say the words would make them real, and I suddenly wanted to put that off for as long as possible. “Samuel Cole is dead. Someone shot him last night.”
Lind snatched his glasses from his face and rose to his feet. “Do we know who?”
“No idea. I can’t help but think it has something to do with Rachel.”
Lind walked behind his chair and wrapped his hands around the back as if he might fall. “Has there been recent trouble?”
“Not that I know of.” I told him about my conversation with Samuel regarding his will. “Maybe he was worried about someone trying to harm him. Why else would he have come to me now? He wasn’t a man who thought about his mortality.”
Lind chuckled. “No, he was more concerned with living than what came in the hereafter.” He quickly sobered. “Poor Rachel. How is she?”
“Bloody devastated and terrified.” I apologized for my rough language, but Lind brushed it aside. A preacher on the frontier couldn’t be too particular about his flock’s crusty ways.
“I can imagine she would be,” Lind said. “If this is about race, then we’re going to have to do what we can to protect them.”
I leaned against the wall and rubbed my tired eyes. “She and Susan are all alone out there.” Other than Susan, Samuel had never trusted anyone enough to hire help. “Rachel will have to pay three men to do the work Samuel did alone.” I thumped the back of my head against the wall. “He kept them isolated out there. Samuel didn’t want her or the kids to leave their property and go into town. He’d never admit it to me, but he was afraid for them.” I looked back at Lind, who watched me with sympathetic eyes. “He should’ve been more careful. He should have come to me for help.”
“A man like Samuel doesn’t want his friend harmed because of his own trouble. He most likely was trying to protect you.”
I took my handkerchief and pressed it against my stinging eyes. “It’s hard to imagine him anywhere but traipsing about the woods.”
“I’m sorry,” Lind said. “For you and for Rachel and those kids.”
“I have to figure a way to protect them.”
“Tell me what you need. Pamela and I are here.”
I thanked him, even though I knew deep in my bones that trouble waited around every corner for Rachel now. All she had was me to protect her, and I wasn’t sure how to do that. No amount of money can fix hatred.