Clare rolled her eyes. “If having lunch once a week in a public diner is going to start stories, I can’t imagine what I could do to stop them from circulating. Have the man over to my house where no one will see us together?”

Dr. Anne shook her head. “Take it as a friendly FYI.” She laid a gloved hand on Clare’s arm. “There are still some people in this church who aren’t too keen on the idea of a female priest. Don’t give them any ammunition, okay?”

“I’ll try to be a credit to my gender,” Clare said.

Dr. Anne laughed. “Good enough. Hey, where’s that rotten kid of mine? Willem?”

The boy’s voice came from the far side of the church. “Mom! Reverend Clare! Take a look at this!”

Dr. Anne looked questioningly at Clare, then set off toward her son. Clare followed, pulling her chasuble over her head as she walked. Willem was standing near the halfway point of the north wall of the church. As Clare and his mother approached, he pointed to the deeply embrasured window there, a stained-glass depiction of stately angels leading a group of children to the Throne of Glory. It had always been an odd window to Clare’s thinking-it was obviously a recent addition, done in a modern mosaic style favored in the 1970s. And the inscription wasn’t, as one might expect of such a scene, “Suffer the little children to come unto me” or “Unless ye be as little children.” Instead, two of the angels faced the viewer, holding shields with a verse from Lamentations: “But though he cause grief, yet will he have compassion according to the multitude of his mercies. For he doth not afflict willingly, nor grieve the children of men.”