“I had a student loan. In college. I paid it off.”

“I mean, a loan requiring collateral. Income flow. A debt-to-asset ratio. A mortgage. A car loan. A business loan.”

“Um.” She had gone from her parents’ house to school and then straight into the army, which for ten years had told her where to go and given her a place to live when she got there. Then it was a group house at seminary, located for her by the housing office, and now the St. Alban’s rectory. Clare realized that not only had she never purchased a house, she had never even chosen her own place to live.

The vestry members, most of whom were old enough to have paid off their mortgages when she was in diapers, were looking at her. “I, um, I’ve always paid cash for my cars,” she said.

McKellan nodded. “We have too much debt in proportion to our income.”

“Which has been falling over the past ten years,” Sterling Sumner pointed out.

“You work for AllBanc,” she said. “Couldn’t you…?”

“AllBanc holds the current mortgage.” McKellan opened his hands. “If we were still doing business the old way, it wouldn’t be a problem. Every officer at the bank knows this church and knows we’re good for the money. But we’re part of a conglomerate now. We can’t make loans based on a handshake and a reputation anymore.”

Clare pulled her shoulder-length hair back and twisted it. From the corner of the room, the Civil War-era grandfather clock ticked away the time. She wondered, for a moment, how much they could get for it at auction.

“Okay,” she said. “We’re going to need a sizable chunk of change to get repairs started while we’re getting a capital campaign off the ground.” She thought about the annual budget they had hashed out last month. She couldn’t imagine squeezing anything else out of that stone. “Suggestions?”

“Get rid of the outreach programs,” Sterling said. “If it’s really important, people will take up the gap by donating their time and money.”