Helen looked at me, her gaze direct, steady and sharp in the autumn sunlight.

“Margaret didn’t spend her last days fighting court injunctions from a hospital bed so you could sneak out the back door, Pastor,” Helen said.

“No,” I said.

“She didn’t.”

“She saved your calling forty-five years ago, Pastor,” Helen said.

“Now it’s your turn to see it through.”

She tapped her pen twice on her clipboard, turned, and walked back to her car without saying anything more.

Wade put his leather briefcase on the hood of the LeSabre and opened it to show three tidy stacks of printed bank records.