The engagement was not made official until the third Sunday in May, when Brent, having patiently waited through the litany of prayer requests, announced that not only had he found a home in Heron’s Nest First Christian Church, but he’d also found a bride in its midst. If gossip were to be believed, nobody was truly surprised, and they erupted into applause—something more frowned upon than not. Brent walked out from behind the pulpit and stood at the top of the aisle—the groom awaiting his bride. At Ma’s subtle insistence, Dorothy Lynn joined him there, looking out into the sea of faces as familiar as her very own. Afterwards, Dorothy Lynn took her place in the front-row family pew where she’d spent nearly every Sunday of her entire life. Ma sat to her left, but the rest of the bench loomed empty, just as it had for years. For a moment, it seemed very little had changed.

Brent took his place in a high-backed chair, like a prince on a throne. Not a king, for the Heron’s Nest congregation would recognize no man other than Jesus as king. As he sat, the church’s eldest deacon and music leader, Rusty Keyes, came to the pulpit.

“Now if you’ll join me in the reading of the psalm.”

This was something Pa had started in his declining health, asking Deacon Keyes to read a psalm to make up for his own inability to preach the entire hour. Near the end, the deacon often bloviated, progressing from mere reading to something more akin to preaching. Since his ascension, Brent sometimes had to stand and clear his throat as a gentle signal that the prince was ready to take the pulpit.

As the room filled with the whispers of turning Bible pages, Dorothy Lynn felt the weight of a gaze. Brent was looking straight at her in a way that would leave any member of the congregation without a doubt of their dark-parlor antics over the past few weeks. Heat rose along the back of her neck, trapped under the weight of her hair coiled and pinned at the nape.

Ma cleared her throat and nudged her daughter’s arm. Dutifully, Dorothy Lynn lifted her Bible to her lap. “Where arewe?”

Ma pointed a silent finger to the top of the page of her own well-worn Bible, and with just one more glance at the prince, Dorothy Lynn quickly turned to hers.

“The Lord is the portion of mine inheritance and of my cup: thou maintainest my lot.” Deacon Keyes half read, half sang the words. “The lines are fallen unto me in pleasant places; yea, I have a goodly heritage.”

This morning the lines of Dorothy Lynn’s lot seemed very clear. They stretched no farther than this pew, the pulpit, and the man in the high-backed chair who was to be her husband. She looked up to see Brent Logan offering yet another opportunity for a passing glance. It might be fine for the pastor to be engaged to the former pastor’s daughter—after so much courting and going to her home for suppers and taking the occasional walk and such—but making lovey eyes during Deacon Keyes’s reading was downright disrespectful.

She lifted her brows, sending a clear warning.

In response, Brent straightened in his chair and drew his spectacles out of his breast pocket, settling them on his face even as he settled into the Scripture.

Pleasant places.

The phrase rattled around in Dorothy Lynn’s head, taking up too much space to allow any commentary to peek in.

Pleasant places. Familiar faces.

She brought her hand to her mouth, ostensibly to stifle some cough or yawn or sneeze, and mouthed the words silently, relishing the warm pop of air against her fingers.

“O church, let our hearts be glad,” Deacon Keyes intoned from the pulpit.

Dorothy Lynn barely had the presence of mind to chime in with a soft amen with the rest of the congregation. She rummaged in her handbag, finally producing a stub of pencil, and found a scrap of paper within the pages of her Bible—a detailed flyer about the previous summer’s Fourth of July celebration. The information on the front was useless, but the back was covered margin to margin with scribbled lines and verses. She found one empty corner and prayed for enough time to record her words before they disappeared from her mind.

My world is full of pleasant places,

Surrounded by familiar faces,

Yet sometimes I yearn for life beyond these lines.

The Lord has given me this cup,

And I’ll trust him to fill it up

With the—

By now the scratching of the pencil was audible. Enough to attract Ma’s attention, anyway. A victim of a sidelong glare, Dorothy Lynn folded the paper in a guilty palm and slipped it into her dress pocket. Deacon Keyes hadn’t noticed; he waved his hands and kept his eyes above the heads of the congregants, delivering his lines with the pomp of a great orator. But Brent openly stared, his head cocked to one side, a curious grin granting her forgiveness for such distraction.

At the end of the hour, after Brent had made his final, thoughtful point and the congregation relinquished the last note of “Jesus Is All the World to Me,” the church was emptied, save for mother and daughter Dunbar, Brent, and the deacon charged with sweeping the floors. Ma had left a pot of ham and beans simmering on the stove and was laying out the rest of the Sunday menu to Brent, whose attention seemed equally divided between Mrs. Dunbar’s daughter and biscuits.

“You all are free to start without me,” Dorothy Lynn said. “I’ll telephone Darlene.”

Ma frowned and checked the watch pinned to her blouse. “Are you sure? It seems early.”

“Maybe I’ll be first in line.” Dorothy Lynn dug around in her handbag and then her pockets, where the folded, unfinished poem called to her. “Or I’ll wait if I have to. But I don’t seem to have a dime.”

“Here.” Before she’d finished speaking, Brent had extended his hand with the shiny, oddly tiny coin resting in the middle of it.

“Thank you.” She allowed his fingers to close around hers briefly in taking it. “I’ll tell my sister you’re paying for the call, so she’ll have to be nice.”

“And tell her to be sure she’s drinking enough milk. Three glasses a day; that’s what I did.” Ma’s voice was raised nearly to a holler to impart this wisdom to her disappearing daughter. The sweeping deacon reprimanded the entire group with a “Hush!” so severe Dorothy Lynn giggled all the way down the church steps.

With so many people already home from their time of worship, the streets of Heron’s Nest were deserted. Not that they were ever bustling. For that matter, it was a stretch to say that Heron’s Nest had streets in any conventional sense. The roads sprawled and curved and intersected one another in ways that made the town more nest-like than not. Some were even paved to better accommodate the automobiles that made their way through town every now and again. But it was obvious to anybody that the town was not the end result of any settlers’ preconceptions. There had once been just a lumber mill. Then came a dry goods store, then a church, then a blacksmith, then a laundry, and on and on with dwellings of various sizes sprinkled in between. The roads were nothing more than formalized paths stretching namelessly from door to door.

Dorothy Lynn walked along such a path, humming a new tune just under her breath. Her shoes were unfashionably brown and sturdy, but they made a pleasant rhythm with her unhurried steps. Already the fresh, crisp air had revived her from the heaviness of conviction, and her mind played with the phrase “pleasant places,” winding it around the images of her hometown. A candy shop with pink awnings covering the window, the younger children’s school with the bright-blue door and tire swings on the trees surrounding it. The narrow, tin-roofed structure that people knew to be a saloon but were too polite to say so.

She ignored the rounded curve of the road and cut through the barber’s yard to arrive at her destination—Jessup’s Countertop Shop. Already there were five people queued up at the locked door. Still, Dorothy Lynn picked up her step and trotted to take her place in line.

While the town of Heron’s Nest had a strict ordinance prohibiting any kind of commercial sales on the Lord’s Day, an unwritten exception was made for Sunday afternoons at Jessup’s. This was not a typical store. No goods lined the shelves, because there were no shelves. It was one long, narrow room with a gleaming oak countertop lining one wall and five narrow booths lining the other. Behindeach booth’s folding door was a single chair and a telephone. This, then, was the heart of the shop. Jessup had been the first man in Heron’s Nest to have a telephone line, and though other aspiring citizens had put in their own since then, most continued to take advantage of Jessup’s original generosity. One phone call, one nickel. Twice that for long distance, which most calls were. After all, why call a person when you could stand on any given porch and holler for their attention? During the week, telephone customers could also purchase a cold Coca-Cola from the icebox in the far corner or a candy bar from one of the baskets along the counter. But on Sundays the icebox remained closed, and piles of Hershey’s chocolate bars remained untouched as honorable citizens waited to give far-flung loved ones their weekly conversation.

Jessup, still dressed in his Sunday suit, smiled through the window of his shop as he opened the door. He was a tall man and thin, with a long, narrow nose that ended in a bulbous lump just above his stubbled lip. Smiling, he greeted each customer with a warm “Afternoon,” while standing a respectable distance from the jar on the countertop.

“Hello, Jessup.” Dorothy Lynn dropped in her dime and settled back against the counter with her elbows up on the varnished wood.

“You gonna call that sister of yours?”

“Yes, sir, if she don’t call me here first. It’s her turn, but you never know.”

“Not that I begrudge the business, but seems to me your pa should have put a telephone out at your own place, bein’ the preacher and all.”

“That’s just it.” Dorothy Lynn leaned forward and lowered her voice to guard her words from the few people gathered behind her. “Bad enough we get people on our doorstep day and night. Can you imagine if anyone could just pick up the phone and call? Pa always said he’d have to wear his waders to get through the gossip, how people are.”

Jessup touched the end of his nose and winked. “Ain’t easy bein’ a keeper of secrets. That machine in there makes spreadin’ stories easy as hot butter on bread. Not that I’m ever listenin’.”

Dorothy Lynn winked too. “Of course not. By the way, I know my brother has the number here, should he ever need to call. You’d tell me if he did?”

“Child, I’d keep the line open and run for you myself.”

“Thanks.”

In a move so sneaky she almost missed it, Jessup slid a Clark Bar across the counter and whispered, “For the walk home.”

She smiled a thanks so as not to call attention to the gift and turned her eyes toward the row of closed louvered doors. Intermittent conversation seeped through, punctuated with laughter and a few incredulous shouts. When a door finally opened, Mrs. Philbin—a middle-aged, pear-shaped woman—came out. No doubt she had spent the last ten minutes speaking with her worthless son who’d just been arrested for running moonshine in Virginia, as she kept her eyes downcast in a failing effort to hide her tears. From the corner of her eye, Dorothy Lynn noticed that Mrs. Philbin got a candy bar too.

Once inside, she pulled the door shut, sat on the narrow bench, and waited for her eyes to adjust to the dim light provided only by the two-foot space between the top of the door and the ceiling. Lifting the earpiece, she tapped the receiver and said, “Long distance, please. St. Louis,” to the familiar voice of Mrs. Tully, one of Heron’s Nest’s three switchboard operators.

“Long distance. St. Louis,” Mrs. Tully repeated. “How are you doin’, Miss Dorothy Lynn?”

“Just fine.” But before she could say more, the line clicked, then hummed, and another woman’s voice came on.

“Number, please?”

“St. Louis, four-two-one-five.”

“Four-two-one-five, connecting.”

Another click, another hum, then a ring, and a young woman’s voice with the inevitable sound of screaming children in the background.

“Darlene!”

What followed was a muffled sound as Roy, Darlene’s slight, eager husband, received his orders to round up the boys and take them to the kitchen before Darlene’s attention fully returned.

“It’s early,” Darlene said against a new background of only slightly fuzzy silence.

“It’s past one.”

“We usually talk at two. We haven’t sat down to dinner here yet.”

Dorothy Lynn held the candy bar to her mouth, gripped the wrapper in her teeth, and tore it open. “I couldn’t wait to tell you.” She spat out the scrap of wrapper. “We announced the engagement this morning.”

“To the handsome young minister? He proposed three weeks ago.” Darlene, as always, seemed up for a scandal.

Dorothy Lynn rolled her eyes as she took the first bite of the crispy, chocolate-covered candy. Were this any day other than a busy Sunday, Mrs. Tully would no doubt be lingering on the line.

“We wanted—I wanted—to be sure, before we made it official. First to each other, then to our families, then the church.”

“And you’re sure?”

“Of course.”

“Of course.” Darlene’s mimicry sounded accusatory. “Why didn’t you spend the afternoon with your beau and let Ma call?” She could tell Darlene was battling between suspicion and concern.

“I wanted to talk to you.”

“Why? It can’t be a problem with the man himself. He’s handsome as anything and tall and well-mannered. Just like Pa in every way.”

Dorothy Lynn had only the blank, dark wall of the telephone booth to stare at, but she could clearly picture her older sister, plump in her third pregnancy, sitting at the ornate telephone table nestled in the nook under her stairs. Right then, she knew, both sisters were leaning in, drawing closer to the flared tube that carried their voices, as if doing so could bring them closer to each other. She took another bite of the Clark Bar and spoke through her chewing.

“Getting married to him means I’m never going to leave this town.”

“Where were you planning to go?”

“I don’t know. Nowhere, I guess. I just thought . . . You got to move up to St. Louis, and who knows where Donny is. He’s probably been all over the world by now. And me? I get to move into that old, run-down parsonage behind the church.”

“Donny’s seeing the world because his britches are too big to come home. And I’m in St. Louis because my husband is here. That’s my place. I had no idea you were struck with such wanderlust.”

“I’m not.” For reassurance, Dorothy Lynn sat up straight and gave her head a vigorous shake. “I’m sure it’s nothing more than my first case of pre-wedding jitters.”

Just then the comfortable, low buzz on the line played host to a faint click, and Dorothy Lynn knew the line had been opened to a third ear.

“Enough about all this,” she effused. “Ma told me to ask if you’re drinking enough milk.”

“Tell her I’m becoming a cow myself.”

“And the boys? They still growin’?”

“RJ can climb up to the cookie jar all by himself, and Darren has peeled the wallpaper off one half of the playroom.”

“And to think, there’s one more on the way. And Roy? How’s business?”

“Couldn’t be better. He’s thinkin’ he’ll be hiring another salesman. Hey, maybe if that other situation doesn’t come through, you can move up here and sell cars.”

They said their good-byes, and Dorothy Lynn returned the earpiece to its cradle. The last bit of the Clark Bar was more than an average bite, but she stuffed it all in and crumpled the wrapper in her hand. A local farmer in his Sunday overalls shuffled past her, eyes down, and closed the louvered door. Jessup maintained his place at the counter and tipped an invisible hat as she left, her cheeks full of candy.