“I hadn’t forgotten that,” he said dryly, shutting off the water and swinging the kettle onto the stove. “I spoke to Father Lawrence before driving up here. To see how everything went. He said you had called him and told him you were coming back early?”

“Tomorrow morning.”

“You had Wednesday to Wednesday, you know.”

“I know. I just… I did what I came up here to do. Now I think getting back to work will be good for me.”

Aberforth raised his eyebrows, unfurling an expanse of sagging skin. “Do you have concerns about Father Lawrence’s abilities? I’m the one who approved him as your supply priest for the week, you know.”

“Ah. No. No worries. He seemed quite”-geriatric-“nice. When I briefed him. Experienced. Very experienced.”

“He was a good friend of your predecessor.”

The late, lamented Father Hames, who had become St. Alban’s priest around the time Betty Grable was a pin-up girl.

“I believed he and your parishioners would feel quite comfortable together.”

She had thought, after the events of the past night, that her reserves of grief and dread were plumbed out, but she felt a fresh upwelling of fear at his words. “Are you… is the bishop suspending me?”

Father Aberforth looked at her. He had once been a younger and heavier man, and his face fell in deceptively drooping folds, but his black eyes showed that inside he was still all hard lines and angles. “Does that thought distress you?”

“Yes!” She was surprised how much. Over the past four months, she had been praying for some sign that she was in the right place, that God intended her to be a parish priest rather than a social worker or a chaplain or a helicopter pilot-her old, easy calling. God had remained resolutely silent on the matter. Maybe now He was talking to her, in the sick clench of her gut.