He thought it would be cold. It was December after all, and this corner of the church wasn’t heated. But as an engineer, he also knew heat rose, and as one of the highest points of the church, it had collected sufficient heat to feel comfortable if not cozy. The sharp angles of the steeple formed a little cone-shaped room, dusty and dark until he reached for the cord that he knew turned on the single bare light bulb hung from the ceiling. She came up behind him, wide-eyed, turning in a small circle to take in the room. “I used to imagine secret rooms like this,” she revealed in a hushed tone that tickled down his spine. “Chicago apartments are just white-walled boxes. I always wanted a top-of-the-tower secret room like this in my building.”
He found the space unattractive at the moment, but hearing her voice, Mac could remember his own fascination with it when he was younger. He’d been caught up here dozens of times—sometimes getting into trouble, sometimes just being alone when everyone else was in choir practice or church banquets or whatever.
Mary begin rummaging through bins and boxes. “It’s a pretty big star, it shouldn’t be too hard to find.”
In truth, the thing was right behind her, she just hadn’t seen it. “Like that?” Managing a grin, he pointed, and she spun around to see a large silver star shape covered in shiny tin.
“That’s it.” She moved aside a few rolls of what looked like old wallpaper and pulled out the star. While the top was intact, the bottom point was in fact completely snapped off. It looked more like an awkward silver crown than any kind of celestial beacon. “Oh, I suppose this won’t do after all.” She gave a little sigh. “We can build a new one.” She put the leftover star back down and then turned to sit on a wooden box. “It was still fun to discover this place.”
God had pretty much handed Mac his opening. He sat down on a box across from her—although with nowhere near as much grace. The roof’s sharp angles made it difficult for someone of his height to move easily. Had he really been that much shorter in high school? “Yeah,” he concurred, pulling up his knees to rest his elbows on them. “I had a little too much fun up here in high school.”
That brought out a scandalous look from her. “Little Joey MacCarthy stealing kisses in the church steeple?”
For a split second he thought that the perfect lie. He could just say yes, they’d laugh about the recklessness of youth and it’d be over. But it wouldn’t be over. “I got into a bit more trouble than that,” he began. “Mary…um…God’s made it clear to me that there’s something I should tell you.” He shook his head, rolling his eyes. “Man, that sounds so incredibly stupid.”
She looked puzzled, but she didn’t say anything.
“I told you the folks in Middleburg will be all fine with your Bippo Bear thing. And they will, really. Even if twelve more fights break out in malls between now and Christmas.”
She wasn’t getting the connection, but then again why should she until he told her the story? “Believe it or not, I understand why you couldn’t get out of Friday’s party fast enough. I get it about having something you think makes you awful. Having a secret, something you’re sure will brand you as the bad guy. I know yours. God seems to think you need to know mine.”
“‘God seems to think’?” she echoed, “What do you mean?”
“I sat there Friday night and told you that you were unreasonable about the Bippo Bear thing. And I realized—or actually, God hounded it into me—that it’s not fair to tell you that, if I can’t pull that off myself. Truth is, you didn’t bring me up here by accident.” He ran his hands through his hair, feeling unbelievably awkward. A minute ago this felt important and painful, now it just felt ugly and ridiculous. “I’m not making a good start at this, am I?”
“Keep going…I’m confused, but I’ll hang on. Although, I have to say, I didn’t hear God making any commands to get you in the steeple.”
“God doesn’t always do the burning bush thing. Sometimes, like you said, He just lines up events in a way that you know He was working. So, even when it feels dumb…which would be now, by the way…you learn to go with it.” Did he really just say that? His tongue was tangled worse than his brain.
She looked around, shrugged her shoulders and offered a small smile. “So, we’re here in the steeple. Go with it.”
“I’ve lived here my whole life, you know that. And kids do stupid things in high school, even if they grow up to run for mayor.” He picked up an old, dusty candlestick and began fiddling with it. “I, well, I was a high-achiever in the stupid-kid stuff. If a prank happened at Middleburg High, it was a good guess that I was involved. Mostly dumb, harmless things. Toilet papering people’s houses, letting animals out of barns, flying things from flagpoles, the kind of thing Pastor Dave would call ‘shenanigans.’”
“I have heard a story or two,” she offered. “Mostly from your mother.”
“Yeah, well, like most mothers, she only knows the half of it.” He put the candlestick down. “There was one thing I did—one pretty bad thing—that no one knows about. I mean everyone knows it happened, but no one knows I did it. I think it’s part of why I ran for mayor, because I needed to prove that I was better than that stupid kid now.”
She brushed a blond lock off her forehead. “I guess I follow you. You’re saying that telling me to stop feeling guilty about the Bippo Bear song showed you that you’ve never come clean about…whatever it is you did?”
It sounded so logical the way she explained it. It had mostly just bumped around in his conscience until he couldn’t stand it anymore. “Yeah, I suppose that’s a good way to put it.”
“That doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.”
“I know that. Believe me, I’ve talked myself out of this half a dozen times, but God doesn’t seem to think I get to rest until I do this.” He shot her a miserable look. He was used to having the witty remark, the perfect one-liner to gloss over the tense situation, and at the moment he was a babbling fool.
“Does it have to do with this steeple?” she guessed, reaching out and touching one of the dusty beams. She was trying to help, and that only made it worse.
“Actually, it does.” He was mature enough in his faith that he should not be choking on this. He should understand the concept of forgiveness, should be man enough to own up to his own mistakes. But, like her irrational fear of what folks would think of Bippo Bears, sense never did seem to enter the picture on these things. Just start, he told himself. Just tell the story. “They were building the steeple, well, building this new one, back when I was a senior. The old church had a small steeple, and a few years back—before they built the preschool wing and all that stuff that got hurt in the storm that brought Drew here.” He was digressing, avoiding the subject. He grunted, pulling his hands down across his face, frustrated with his own ridiculous weakness when it came to this. “I’d had a huge fight with a teacher. A math teacher that told me I’d never be an engineer if I couldn’t get my Algebra grade up. I knew I wanted to be an engineer then, and it just seemed to me like this guy had it out for me, that he was purposely failing me. You know the way teenagers think, all doom and drama.”
“I remember high school,” she said, encouraging him with her eyes.
“I didn’t exactly have the longest fuse back then, and I stormed out of school. I came here to watch the construction, to prove to myself I could understand all of what they were doing. I tried to get them to let me help, but I was just a kid, and all the construction workers naturally wouldn’t let me lend a hand, which just made me more angry. So I came back that night and climbed up the scaffolding into the steeple. It was May, and pretty warm, so I could sit up in the studs of it and look out over the town because the walls hadn’t gone up yet.”
He’d never told another living soul the next part. It felt like he had to drag the words out from somewhere deep in his gut. “I wanted to show everyone. And I got an idea. A horrible, mean, destructive idea. I’d never done anything like it before then or since. I wouldn’t have even tho
ught myself capable of something like it. But I found a hacksaw lying on the floor, and something came over me.” Mac looked down, preferring not to meet her eyes. “I sawed through the studs, leaving just a bit of the wood, so that the first good wind would topple the steeple over. I didn’t think about the people who could have gotten hurt or the damage that could have been done. I didn’t think at all. It was a streak of mean. Pure mean. You know, I actually remember laughing when I did it. It was the worst thing. I can’t even believe I was that kid. But I was.”
He stopped for a moment, feeling the sensation of the secret leaving him. It was an odd combination—the lightness of release, the press of panic. He felt raw, almost wanting to wince from the feeling of being exposed, even to one person. How could she not be frightened of exposing herself to a whole town? “I hid the saw and snuck away, proud of my ‘senior prank.’ I went home and sat smugly in my bed, thinking I’d shown them all. I had great visions of the steeple smashing down into the church parking lot, sort of like my own private disaster movie playing in my head.”
“What happened then?”
“Well, I was no idiot, and it turns out I may have botched Algebra but I knew my engineering geometry. I’d sawed in all the right places. I think I’d convinced myself that it couldn’t really happen. That I’d just make the builders mad, slow them down, make them do the steeple over. But a storm did come in early the next morning. I’d picked all the right places to weaken, and the steeple came clear down off the roof. Howard had carpooled with the pastor to some weekend church function so his car was in the parking lot overnight. A large part of the steeple landed right on top of his car. The wood had smashed into enough pieces—and I’d sawed at enough odd angles—that no one ever saw the cuts I’d made. The congregation all assumed God had saved them from some horrible accident by showing them a weakness in the steeple before it was finished.”
He stopped, letting the words evaporate into the air. It was out. Mac felt an excruciating tangle of emotions. “No one ever knew it was me. And I’ve never told anyone.” For an awful second, some part of him panicked; a gut instinct of “she knows; she can expose me” that for all its irrationality felt chokingly real. He stole a glance at her, suddenly needing to know what she’d do now. She knows. It was thumping through his head like a pounding pulse. She knows. He knew that all his platitudes back at the farmhouse about how she shouldn’t worry about people knowing were just that—useless phrases that belonged to logical thinking. And fear wasn’t ever about logical thinking. Why doesn’t she say something? The seconds seemed to stretch out endlessly.
“You’ve never told anyone you did this?”
It made him sound like such a moral weakling the way she said it. And that was half of the torment—not only was he owning up to the deed, but his weak inability to come forward. This was the crown jewel of “you should know better.” If this was bad, what would it feel like to tell the whole town?
“You?” she said with the most awful look on her face. “You don’t strike me as the kind. At least not now.”
“Yeah, well, we all grow up, don’t we?” The excuse he’d told himself for years now sounded worse than hollow.
“Don’t you think…” she mentioned as she furrowed her eyebrows, calculating the time that had passed “…twelve years is enough time to let it all blow over? You’re not fool enough to think people will hold this against you—now?” She realized her own words, echoing her fears that people would hold the Bippo Bear fiasco “against her,” and an odd smile turned up one corner of her lips.
She had this enigmatic, Mona Lisa kind of smile. He felt the primal panic in his gut go down a notch or two. Some part of him knew she wouldn’t brand him as a monster, but it was one of those things he had to actually see to believe. “I don’t know,” he responded, exhaling. “I’m dumb enough to run for mayor against Howard Epson.”
Mary hugged her knees. “What do you think Howard will do when he finds out?” She didn’t even have to say, “Because you are going to tell everyone now, aren’t you?”
Mac had the sensation of being bound to her in an odd unspoken way, stuck together by their mutual secrets. Is this what You were after, Lord? Putting us together like this? She frightens me. There, I said it. She makes me feel things I’m not ready for.
“That dumb kid—the frustrated high school boy with the mean streak—are you still him inside?”
“Of course not,” he shot back. Surprised at his harsh tone, he tried to crack a joke. “I’m still dumb and frustrated, but I’ve grown out of my mean streak.” It fell short of humor, and a long awkward silence filled the steeple. The light bulb fizzled as if it only had a few more minutes left in it. “Look,” he spoke up to fill the quiet, “I have no right to tell you what to do or how to feel. But maybe this will help you figure out that your bear thing is pretty small in comparison to some of the secrets people lug around.”
They sat there for a long, raw moment. Then, her whole face changed. He was sure even the light bulb flickered with the flash of her eyes. “So, tell,” she said with something he could only describe as quiet certainty. “I will if you will.”
It was both the best and the worst dare he’d ever had.
Chapter Thirteen
December twentieth. Christmas Eve was four days away. Mary let the glorious tones of Handel’s “Messiah” seep into her spirit as she sat on her couch and watched the flames on the trio of candles she had lit. The aroma of spiced cider filled out the sensory splendor of her Sunday evening.
It was the kind of night she’d have never sought in Chicago. For a woman who’d lived alone since grad school, Mary hadn’t realized how much she’d avoided being alone. She was always filling time with things—arranging events, working late, playing in ensembles or participating in work-related social events. After all, it was much easier to avoid the emptiness with such a full schedule.
You did this, Mary said within her spirit. Communication with God on such a natural, conversational level had been such a surprise to her at first. Prayers were once elaborate verbiage to be recited, now prayer had become the sharing of thoughts and feelings with her Creator. Alone is different for me now. She’d read somewhere about the difference between “aloneness” and “solitude,” thinking it only semantics then. She understood—or was coming to understand—the blessings of solitude. I’d still like a cat, she mused, wondering what God would think of something so close to a joke.
What would Curly think of that? It was an amusing question, but it brought her thoughts to a far more serious topic. What about Mac? A week of solitude wouldn’t untangle her thoughts on the subject of that man and what he’d revealed to her yesterday. She’d had the feeling their lives had collided since the day they met, but she was powerless to say what sense it all made. Some days it made lots of sense and she could see things they held in common. Other days it seemed like they had no business even living on the same planet, much less taking up space in the same building. Why’d he tell me those things? She knew way too much about him now—things no one else knew. Yet.
Is that what You planned? That bargain that jumped out of my mouth after he told me? That didn’t even feel like me. That was some other woman, some braver, stronger woman. Since that moment, Mary felt as if she’d set some terrifying sequence in motion. A part of her could grasp the good that would come out of it, but most of her just couldn’t get past the process that would have to come first. I don’t know how I’m going to do this, Lord. No idea at all. Is this one of those things I just have to trust to You? “Your move, Lord,” she said out loud as she blew out the candles and got ready for bed. “I know I’m stumped.”
Monday was supposed to be her day off, but with the drama only days away, today would have to be a workday. Even so, she’d planned to go in at noon and work clear through the “loading in” of the set into the sanctuary space tonight. Costumes, sets, lighting and the other myriad technical aspects of a small production had to come together in t
he next hour. “Well, Lord,” Mary thought as she pulled her thick hair into a practical braid down her back, “thank goodness it’s not a musical.” She stared at the mirror, amazed at the woman of her reflection casually conversing with God. The Lord Almighty who used to be carefully contained in Sunday services now seeped effortlessly—and wonderfully—into all her days and hours. Does it ever get old? Is it always this wondrous?
Her thoughts were interrupted by a knock on the door. Evidently the sets weren’t going to wait until noon—surely something had gone wrong already, even though her phone hadn’t rung yet. She stood on tiptoe to peer through the peephole, expecting Pastor Dave or Janet or Emily with a list of problems.
Instead, she saw Mac, smiling sheepishly with both hands in his pockets as she opened her door. “Do you have a minute to come to my office? I think we ought to talk.”
Mary had been thinking the same thing. It seemed odd and uncomfortable to leave things where they had. “Sure,” she said, tucking her keys into her pocket as they walked downstairs into the foyer that joined her stairway with the cut-through entrances to both Mac’s office and Dinah’s bakery.
Mac opened the door to his office, and she noticed a bakery box and two cups of coffee on the small conference table in his front window. Mac motioned to a seat and walked over to pull the string on the white bakery box. “I don’t like to think on an empty stomach, so I got us something Dinah called ‘Yuletide Blend’ and a generous supply of gingerbread beings.”
“Beings?”
“Dinah doesn’t do just gingerbread men. Diversity, you know.” He tilted the box toward her. “There’s a whole gingerbread population in there—boys, girls, cats, dogs, horses, cows, you name it.”
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