Solomon's Grave

“You’re not that old, Dad. You’re only fifty... something.”

“Fifty-eight,” Beverly announced as she delivered the toast, two slices on each plate, and gave one to him and one to her husband. She went back to her small pile of dishes and said, “A little too old to be out all night with his new buddies, that’s for sure.”

Art gave his wife an irritated look. Nathan wasn’t sure what to make of that. His parents rarely argued.

“Forgive a man for wanting to socialize a little.”

Nathan finally sipped his coffee. It was strong, the way he remembered coffee in the Dinneck house. He took a bite of his toast. “Did you join the Shriners or something?”

Art shrugged. “No. Well, not really. It’s a group kind of like that, but less religious.”

Nathan tried to ignore the edge in his father’s voice when he said the word. As long as he could remember, the church was a cornerstone of the family. His father—and Nathan, too, when he was old enough—worked every spring and fall at the church fair. Art served as an usher when needed, and rarely missed Wednesday night Bible studies.

“What changed?”

Art raised an eyebrow over his mug. “Changed? How so?”

“What’s wrong with going to church?” He tried not to sound defensive, but he truly wanted to know. Apparently, so did his mother, for she turned around and waited for his answer.

“Well, I guess,” he sighed, gaze darting back and forth across the table—an Art Dinneck habit as he tried to think of just the right words to say. “To be honest, I don’t know. It occurred to me at some point earlier this year that sometimes you have to step away from something, get some air, in order to know if you truly belong. Truly, well, believe. Besides,” he added, his smile weak, almost nervous, “you know how I hate to be predictable.”

Nathan didn’t know that. Until now, his parents had been the most predictable people he knew. Creatures of habit. It was a trait he recognized in himself, some genetic aversion to change passed on through the Dinneck bloodline. He looked to his mother for a reaction. Her expression had softened to one of worry. It came to her easily, as if it had taken prominence on her face lately.

Something was wrong. Maybe his father was drinking. This idea would not have occurred to him so quickly years ago, but in his short tenure in Orlando, he’d seen it happen more than once. All too common, as his Florida pastor Ron Burke would say. His father did look thinner, but not unhealthy. His eyes weren’t bloodshot or webbed as an alcoholic’s sometimes were.

“Sorry,” Nathan said finally, and forced a smile. “Professional curiosity. I assume you’ll come this weekend, though? Reverend Hayden wants to wait until Sunday before formally introducing me to everyone.”

Art didn’t reply right away. His expression tensed, almost looked like confusion. Beverly stepped forward and put a hand on the back of Nathan’s chair.

“We are absolutely going to be there. Tell me, does the mother of the pastor get a special seat with a brass name tag?”

Nathan reached up and took her hand. It was soft, and wet from the dishes. “I’ll work on it, Mom.” Looking back to his father he added, “Well?”

Art finally smiled. “Wouldn’t miss it.” His smile never quite reached his eyes. Nathan had a feeling that this Sunday would be the only time Art Dinneck would attend, regardless of who was presiding. He wanted to ask more, but it was almost time to leave and he wanted the visit to end on a friendlier note.

They finished their coffee and toast, speaking of people in town. Some Nathan remembered, others not. It didn’t take long for his mother to mention—a hopeful note in her voice—that Elizabeth O’Brien was still living in town. She was an RN now, working at Rosenberg’s. Perhaps he might run into her there?

Rosenberg Senior Care was a low-ceilinged white complex, an old, but well-run (according to Reverend Hayden’s quick reference to it during dinner the night before), nursing and elderly care facility. Nathan’s stomach tightened with the certainty that he and Elizabeth would run into each other. He and Hayden had made the rounds there yesterday, Tuesdays being the scheduled day of their pastoral visits. He hadn’t seen her. Of course, there was always his return visit next week. The thought sent conflicting emotions through him—apprehension, and not a small amount of relief. He kept his expression neutral as his mother spoke. Any idea of rekindling that relationship had to be squelched. He needed to focus on his new job, and Elizabeth’s parting words before he left for his final year of seminary—over five and a half years ago, he realized with a shock—still reverberated in his mind.

He and Elizabeth had been friends in school as long as each could remember. She was an only child, like himself, and they found a kinship in that. As they grew older, their relationship shifted slowly, comfortably, to something more. In many ways they were symbiotic. Nathan was never one for spontaneity. He preferred to plan things out, research the best movie or place to visit before stepping out the door. Elizabeth, on the other hand, enjoyed walking into the Showcase Cinemas and buying a ticket for a film she knew nothing about, on the lookout for something new to jump out at me, as she liked to put it.

He often recalled one particular Saturday during their senior year of high school. Elizabeth drove them in her ten-year old Subaru to the annual Woodstock Fair in Connecticut. She noticed a small sign at the side of the highway, Quilt Museum, Next Exit, and turned off the highway. Much to Nathan’s initial chagrin, they spent the next hour searching the back roads for the museum. It turned out to be an oversized barn in the back of an elderly woman’s yard. The woman was small but full of an excited energy. She gave them a tour of the barn, lighted by a single bare bulb and whatever sunlight streamed through the wide barn door. Nathan and Elizabeth learned the history of every quilt that hung from the walls and beams. The museum was started, the old woman explained, as a way of breaking the routine of her solitude after her husband died, and of sharing her work —all of the quilts were her own—with as many people as possible before she was gone from this world. Eventually, they said their goodbyes and continued on toward Woodstock. But the fair’s crowds and noise couldn’t compete with the simple quiet of that barn. Without Elizabeth’s impulsiveness, Nathan would never have known that lonely women existed, or shared her life for those couple of hours. Nor would he have experienced so many other memories of his teenage years.

With Elizabeth. Always with her.

There was only one aspect of their lives they did not share, try as he might to do so. Elizabeth was not a practicing Christian, though her family belonged to Saint Malachy’s. They’d attended mass, though irregularly, until two weeks before her thirteenth birthday when her father died in a car accident on the way home from work. After the funeral, she and her mother stopped going to church, except for an occasional Christmas or Easter service. Nathan never wanted to push, wanted to live his life in his faith and hope to draw her to the Lord with whatever light he could offer. Casual invitations to attend services at Hillcrest Baptist were always declined.

Six months before that fateful evening prior to his return to the university, her mother had died of a cerebral aneurysm, ten years to the month after her father’s death. Nathan noticed a growing distance in Elizabeth’s voice during the funeral, when talking on the phone from school and in person during that final summer.

As he packed his bags, Elizabeth watching quietly from his desk chair, Nathan had felt a sudden urgency to ask her to attend services with him the next day, before he left for school. She’d become cold, and with too much conviction for Nathan to write off as merely an angry outburst said, “There is no God. There never has been, never will be. Don’t be so naive, Nate.”

He’d been stunned into silence. He finished packing, trying to think of how to respond. No words came. Even now, whether it was her avid declaration of the nonexistence of God, or the fact that she had called him naive, that had hit him the hardest, he didn’t know. Perhaps both. The night had ended early, both knowing a hurt had been done but neither knowing what to do about it. Something had fallen between them, an expanse too vast to be bridged. Though he never stopped praying for her, after a couple of unreturned phone calls from his dormitory, he simply stopped calling.

He tried dating on and off with schoolmates, but nothing ever came of it. The link, the comfortable connection he’d always felt with Elizabeth, wasn’t there. Without her influence, his life became a map clearly laid out and always predictable. He threw himself into the final preparations for his Masters of Divinity, and his life of ministry. Tried to let time be the salve which would keep the hurt and memories at bay. Moving to Florida was a shock in itself, a turn in the road that made him begin to think he would be OK. A chance to make his own path, his own changes.

Now, suddenly, he was back home to stay. It didn’t feel like a step backwards. It had been his choice to