When twilight turned the Indiana sky a deep violet, I went in and switched on the green-shaded brass lamp on my rectory desk.

The leather pastoral Bible lay on the oak desktop where it had sat through twenty-three years of Sunday sermons and parish calls.

I took Margaret’s handwritten 1979 letter out of my coat pocket and unfolded the yellowed page under the yellow glow of the lamp.

Her handwriting was clear and firm, unmarked by the long years or by the illness that had stolen her voice at the end.

I flattened the center crease with the side of my hand and read the last line she’d written before leaving Oakridge all those years ago.