ward off the cold and turned up the Top Forty station on her radio. Everything was calm in the afternoon’s watery sunlight, but she couldn’t be far from where Russ had answered a domestic disturbance call last Friday when she had gone on patrol with him.
A girl with a toddler balanced on her hip trudged past Clare, ignoring the unusual sports car, intent on keeping her cigarette ash from blowing into the child’s face. She couldn’t have been more than sixteen, and Clare wondered if it was choice or a lack of them that kept her out of school. This was the sort of young woman and child her proposed program could help, if she could only get the vestry behind her. She blew out her breath in frustration.
A slamming door jerked her back to the here and now. Kristen had arrived. Clare killed the engine and slid out of her car. Kristen walked around the MG, her eyes wide, nodding. “This is your car?” she said.
“Yeah.”
“Wow. Way cool. I didn’t think priests had enough money for this sort of thing.”
Clare laughed. “I don’t. I’ve had it for seven years and if something big goes, I’ll be in deep pockets. I really ought to sell it and get something more practical.”
“Must be lousy in the snow.” Kristen opened the passenger-side door and peered in at the leather interior. “But, oh, man, it sure has some style.”
Clare caressed the curve of the hood. “It sure does, doesn’t it?”
Kristen clicked the lock and slammed the door shut. She pointed to Clare’s side. “You oughtta lock up around here.” She glanced up at the third story windows while Clare complied.
“Are you ready for this, Kristen?” Clare asked, picking her way over the sidewalk snowbank to keep her boots dry.
“No. I feel kinda sick to my stomach, to tell you the truth. But I’m here, so hey. Let’s do it.”
Mrs. McWhorter buzzed them up without comment. The stairs were steep and poorly lit, and Clare wondered if this place could pass a municipal safety inspection. Did Millers Kill have safety inspectors?
The door to 4A swung open at Kristen’s knock.
“Hello, Ma,” she said, her voice forcibly calm. Clare tried to school her shock at the size of the woman who embraced the ramrod-stiff girl.
Brenda McWhorter pulled away from her surviving daughter, her expression a mixture of hurt and frustration. “Aw, Kristen, don’t be like that.” Her eyes flickered to where Clare stood in the hall. “Aw, now don’t tell me you’ve brought a cop with you. Krissie . . .”
“She’s not a cop, Ma, she’s a priest. She’s the one who was there the night they found Katie’s—the night they found Katie. She’s been helping me out. This is Reverend Clare Fergusson.”
Clare stuck out her hand. “Mrs. McWhorter,” she said, rummaging for something to say. “Pleased to meet you” and “Sorry about your husband” seemed grotesquely inappropriate under the circumstances. “I’m so very sorry about your recent losses,” she said. “From everything I’ve heard, Katie was an exceptional girl. She’ll be missed.”
Brenda McWhorter shook hands and led Kristen and Clare into the apartment. They bunched awkwardly in front of a massive maple sideboard. “Well, go ahead, take your coats off,” Mrs. McWhorter said, gesturing toward a row of hooks by the door. “Same place, nothin’s changed since you left.”
Kristen rolled her eyes but obediently gathered up Clare’s bomber jacket and hung it alongside her own bulky coat.
“What interesting pieces you have,” Clare said. “They look like antiques.”
Brenda surveyed her kingdom. “They were my parents’. Came from the big farmhouse we had out toward Cossayaharie. We had to sell it when my dad passed, but I kept some of the furniture.”
Kristen plunked herself into the narrow Victorian settee and crossed her arms. “What are you gonna do now that he’s gone, Ma? Move back out to Aunt Pat’s? Get a job? What?”
Her mother sat, an operation that required her to lower her center of gravity over a well-used, well-sprung chair and then drop in a controlled fall. “Well, honey, I thought I’d stay right here. I know that we’ve had some problems in the past, but I figured now your daddy’s gone you and I can take up again, get to be friends. I got enough money to keep me . . .”
Clare sat on a cane-seated ladder chair, her face composed and pleasant, wondering how another human being could let herself get that large. She shifted in her chair. No, that wasn’t fair. Not everyone grew up in an active family and started off in a career that demanded physical fitness. On the other hand, basic self-respect should get you off the sofa and on your feet—she twitched. She didn’t call alcoholism a lack of self-respect. She shouldn’t see obesity that way, either. If some people didn’t have the discipline to push away from the table after a third helping—her cheeks warmed at her persistent failure of compassion. Dear God, she thought, help me to accept as Christ accepted. Keep my mind on helping, not judging. And remind me to put in a five-mile run this evening.
Kristen was going over her mother’s financial situation, asking to look over the pension and insurance documents, quizzing her on any other benefits. Mrs. McWhorter was at best vague about money matters.
“Ma, you’re going to have to learn to keep a checkbook now. Come on down to the bank tomorrow and I’ll set you up. That way, I can help you balance your account for awhile. You got the information on the CDs and the savings? Can I see it, please?”
Mrs. McWhorter heaved herself up from her chair and waddled down the hall. “Isn’t she smart?” she tossed back to Clare.
Clare turned to Kristen, still sitting back with her arms crossed defensively over her chest. “You are smart about finances,” she said.
“Everybody’s good about something, they say. I like it. I like numbers.”
“So consistent, aren’t they? So easy to control.” Kristen shot her a look. Clare went on. “It can be a lot easier to throw yourself into your work than to face personal problems, have you noticed that? It’s comfortable and
