"We're pretty worn out, Kavanagh. This is a stressful thing we're doing, pulling up stakes. I've hardly been out of Mitford in sixteen years. But we'll get there and it will be terrific, wait and see. You'll love it. The freedom of an island . . ."

"The wind in our hair . . ."

"Gulls wheeling above us . . ."

"The smell of salt air . . ."

It was a litany they'd recited antiphonally over the last couple of months. It always seemed to console them.

He pulled her feet into his lap. "How about a nap? We've got a tight schedule ahead."

"Tonight," she said, "Puny helps us clean out all the cabinets. . . . Dooley comes tomorrow evening just before the Watson party, and will have supper with his mother. Then a day of shopping with our threadbare boy and moving him in with Harley, followed by your meeting with the new tenant, and Dooley's steak dinner. Then, of course, there's the grand opening at Lucera on Thursday night after we finish packing the car, and on Friday morning we're off. I don't think," she said, breathless, "that we'll have time to celebrate your birthday."

His birthday! Blast! This year, he would be sixty-six, and just think-in four short years, he would be seventy. And then eighty. And then . . . dead, he supposed. Oh, well.

"Don't be depressed," she scolded. "And for heaven's sake, dearest, relax. You're sitting there like a statue in a park."

"Right," he said, guzzling the lemonade.

He had noted over the last few days that the late June light reached its pinnacle when it fell upon the brass angel. Because of the exterior overhang of the room, the direct light moved no higher than the mantel, where the angel stood firm on its heavy base of green marble.

He had found the angel in the attic at Fernbank, Miss Sadie's rambling house at the top of the hill, now owned by Andrew and Anna Gregory. Only months before she died in her ninetieth year, Sadie Baxter had written a letter about the disposition of her family home and its contents. One thing she asked him to do was take something for his own, anything he liked.

As Cynthia rambled through Fernbank seeking her portion of the legacy, he had found the angel in a box, a box with a faded French postmark. Though the attic was filled with a bountiful assortment of inarguable treasures, he had known as surely as if someone had engraved his name upon it that the angel in a box belonged to him.

The light moved now to the angel, to its outspread wings and supplicating hands. It shone, also, on the vase of pink flowering almond next to the old books, and the small silhouette of his mother, which Cynthia had reframed and hung above the mantel.

As long as he could remember, he'd been afraid to sit still, to listen, to wait. As a priest, he'd been glad of every needy soul to tend to; every potluck supper to sit to; even of every illness to run to-thankful for the fray and haste. He'd been frightened of any tendency to sit and let his mind wander like a goat untethered from a chain, free to crop any grass it pleased.

He was beginning to realize, however, that he was less and less afraid to do what appeared to be nothing.

In the end, he wasn't really afraid of moving to Whitecap, either; he'd given his wife the wrong notion. He had prayed that God would send him wherever He pleased, and when his bishop presented the idea of Whitecap, he knew it wasn't his bishop's bright idea at all, but God's. He had learned years ago to read God's answer to any troubling decision by looking to his heart, his spirit, for an imprimatur of peace. That peace had come; otherwise, he would not go.

He inhaled the freshness of the breeze that stole through the open window, and the fragrance of oak and cherry that pervaded the room like incense.

Then, lulled by the sight of his dozing wife, he put his head back and closed his eyes, and slept.

CHAPTER TWO.

Social Graces Rose Watson set out what most people would call an outrageous assortment of cracked, chipped, and broken china, including mismatched cups and saucers that teetered atop a tower of salad plates anchored on a turkey platter.

After standing back and gazing at the curious pile with some satisfaction, she decided to flank the arrangement with a medley of soup bowls.

The large plastic container of banana pudding sat on the electric range, bristling with two serving spoons jabbed into its yellow center. For napkins, Uncle Billy supplied a roll of paper towels, which he stood on one end next to the pudding.

"Don't set paper on a stove!" Miss Rose snatched the roll and moved it like a pawn on a chessboard to the kitchen table.

"What about spoons?" shouted her husband. He was fairly benumbed with the idea of having a swarm of people descend on their living quarters, though it had been his notion in the first place.

"Pull out the drawer! They can help themselves."

He did as he was told, thinking that his wife sometimes had a good idea, and wasn't half as crazy as most people thought. Mean-spirited, maybe, but that was her disease.

He had tried to read about schizophrenia in the Mitford library, one of the few times he had ever stepped foot in the place. He had looked for the oldest volunteer he could find, thinking she would be the boss, and asked her to lead him to a volume on a disease whose name he could not spell. He had then taken the book to a table and sat and asked the Lord to give him some kind of wisdom about what was so terribly, horribly wrong with his wife, but he couldn't understand anything the book had said, nothing.

"That's good thinkin'!" he shouted.

"You say somethin's stinkin' ?" She turned and looked at him.

"Dadgummit, Rose, I said-"

"It might be your upper lip, Bill Watson." She suddenly burst into laughter.

There it was! The laughter he heard so seldom, had almost forgotten, rushing out like a bird freed from a cage, the laughter of the girl he'd known all those years ago. . . .

He stood, stunned and happy, tears springing to his eyes as suddenly as her laughter had come.

Father Tim found the china assortment fascinating. He could spot several pieces of French Haviland in a pattern his grandmother had owned, and not a few pieces of Sevres.

At least he thought it was Sevres. He picked up a bread-and-butter plate and peered discreetly at the bottom. Meissen. What did he know?

He certainly didn't know what to do about the banana pudding. Everyone except themselves had been asked to bring a covered dish, so there was plenty to choose from. Miss Rose, however, stood like a sentinel by the stove, making sure that all comers had a hefty dose of what had taken her a full afternoon to create.

All those cracks in the china, he thought, all those chips and chinks . . . weren't they a known hideout for germs, a breeding ground? And hadn't he sat by the hospital bed of a woman who had put her feet under Rose Watson's table and barely lived to tell about it?

He could remember the story plainly. "Lord knows, I hadn't hardly got home before my stomach started rumblin' and carryin' on, you never heard such a racket. Well, Preacher, I hate to tell you such a thing, but you've heard it all, anyhow-five minutes later, I was settin' on th' toilet, throwin' up on my shoes."

He had not forgotten the mental image of that good lady throwing up on her shoes. He certainly hadn't forgotten her dark warning never to eat a bite or drink a drop at Rose Watson's house.

"Fill y'r plates and march into th' front room!" Their host's gold tooth gleamed. "Some's already in there, waitin' for th' blessin'."

Cynthia served herself from the pudding bowl as if she hadn't eaten a bite since Rogation Sunday.

"Fall to, darling," she said, happy as a child.

Oh, the everlasting gusto of his spouse! He sighed, peering around for the ham biscuits.

He found that everyone was oddly excited about being in a place as prominent as the town museum. It was a little awkward, however, given that not a single chair could be found, and they all had to mill around with their plates in their hands, setting their tea glasses on windowsills and stair steps.

The jukebox boomed out what he thought was "Chattanooga Shoeshine Boy," and laid a steady rhythm into the bare floorboards.

He and Cynthia made a quick tour of the exhibits, which he'd never, for some reason, taken time to study.

There was a copy of Willard Porter's deed to what had been the Mitford Pharmacy and was now Happy Endings Bookstore. There was also a handwritten list of pharmaceuticals that Willard had invented and patented, including Rose Cough Syrup, named for his then-ten-year-old sister, and their hostess for the evening.

There was the framed certificate declaring the Wurlitzer to be a gift to the town from the owner of the Main Street Grill, where it was unplugged on June 26, 1951. It had been fully restored to mint condition, thanks to the generosity of Mayor Esther Cunningham.

He examined the daguerreotype of Coot Hendrick's great-great-grandfather sitting in a straight-back chair with a rifle across his knees.

It had been Coot's bearded ancestor, Hezikiah, who settled Mitford, riding horseback up the mountain along an Indian trading path, with his new English bride, Mary Jane, clinging on behind. According to legend, his wife was so homesick that Mr. Hendrick had the generosity of spirit to give the town her maiden name of Mitford, instead of Hendricksville or Hendricksburg, which a man might have preferred to call a place settled by dint of his own hard labors.

"'At's my great-great-granpaw," said Coot Hendrick, coming alongside the preacher and his wife. He'd been waiting to catch someone looking at that picture. For years, it had knocked around in a drawer at his mama's house, and he'd hardly paid any attention to it at all. Then somebody wanted it for the town museum and it had taken on a whole new luster.

"He looks fearless!" said Cynthia.

"Had twelve young 'uns!" Coot grinned from ear to ear, which was not a pretty sight, given his dental condition. "Stubs!" Mule Skinner had said, marveling at how he'd seen people's teeth fall out, but never wear down in such a way.

"Six lived, six died, all buried over yonder on Miz Mallory's ridge. Her house sets right next to where him and my great-great-granmaw built their little cabin."

"Well!" said Father Tim.

"Hit was a fine place to sight Yankees from," said Coot.

"I'll bet so."

"There probably weren't many Yankees prowling around up here," said Cynthia, who'd read that, barely a hundred and fifty years ago, an Anglican bishop had called the area "wild and uninhabitable."

"You'd be surprised," said Coot, tucking his thumbs in the straps of his overalls. "They say my great-great-granpaw shot five and give ever' one of 'em a solemn burial."

"I didn't know there were any battles fought around Mitford," said Cynthia, who appeared deeply interested in this new wrinkle of local history.

"They won't. Th' Yankees was runaways from their regiment."

Spying Esther and Gene Bolick making a beeline in their direction, they excused themselves and met the Bolicks halfway.

"We just hate this!" said Esther. Overcome, she grabbed his hand and kissed it, then, mortified at such behavior, dropped it like a hot potato. "Gene and I have run th' gambit of emotions, and we still just hate to see y'all go!"

"We hate to go," he said simply.

"I baked you a two-layer orange marmalade and froze it. You can carry it down there in your cooler." There was nothing else she could do to keep her former priest in Mitford where she was certain he belonged-she had prayed, she had lost, she had cried, and in the end, she had baked.

Her husband, Gene, sighed and looked glum.

This, thought Father Tim, is precisely where a going-away party turns into a blasted wake unless somebody puts on a funny hat or slides down the banister, something. . . .

He turned to his wife, who shrugged and smiled and sought greener pastures.

"Gene's not been feelin' too good," said Esther.

"What is it?" asked Father Tim.

"Don't know exactly," Gene said, as Miss Rose strode up. "But I talked to Hoppy and went and got th' shots."

"Got the trots?" shouted Miss Rose. Everyone peered at them.

Gene flushed. "No, ma'am. The shots."

"Bill had the trots last week," she said, frowning. "It could be something going around." Their hostess, who was monitoring everyone's plate to see whether her pudding had gotten its rightful reception, moved on to the next circle of guests.

"We reckon you know how hot it gets down there," said Gene.

"Honey, hot's not th' word for it!" Fancy Skinner appeared in her signature outfit of pink Capri pants, V-neck sweater, and spike-heel shoes. "You will be boiled, steamed, roasted, baked, and fried."

"Not to mention sauteed," said Avis Packard, who owned the grocery store on Main Street, and liked to cook.

Fancy popped her sugarless gum. "Then there's stewed and broiled."

"Please," said Father Tim.

"Barbecued!" contributed Gene, feeling pleased with himself. "You forgot barbecued."

Fancy, who was the owner of Mitford's only unisex salon, hooted with laughter.

"Did you consider maybe goin' to Vermont?" Gene wondered if their former rector had thought through this island business.

"Because if you think your hair's curlin' around your ears now," said Fancy, "wait'll all that humidity hits it, we're talkin' a Shirley Temple-Little Richard combo. That's why I liked to keep your hair flat around your ears when I was doin' it, now it's these chipmunk pooches again." Fancy reached out to forcibly slick his vagrant pooches down with her fingers, but restrained herself.

He looked anxiously around the room for Cynthia, who was laughing with the mayor and Hope Winchester.

Omer Cunningham trotted in from the kitchen with a plate piled to overflowing, wearing his usual piano-key grin. Father Tim vowed he'd never seen so many big white teeth as the mayor's brother-in-law had in his head. It was enough for a regular Debussy concerto.

"Lord, at th' traffic I've run into today!"

"On Main Street?"

"I mean air traffic," said the proud owner of a ragwing taildragger. "I been buzzin' th' gorge. You never seen th' like of deer that's rootin' around in there. Seems like ever'body and his brother was flyin' today."

Father Tim had instant and vivid recall of his times in the ragwing with Omer. Once to Virginia to hear Dooley in a concert, with his stomach lagging some distance behind the plane. Then again when they flew over Edith Mallory's sprawling house on the ridge above Mitford, trying to see what kind of dirty deal was behind the last mayoral race.

"I spotted a Piper Cherokee, a Cessna 182, and a Beechcraft Bonanza."

"Kind of like bird-watching."

"That Bonanza costs half a million smackers. You don't see many of those."

"I'll bet you don't."

"Listen, now," said Omer, ripping the meat off a drumstick with his teeth, "you let me know if I can ever buzz down to where you're at to help you out or anything. My little ragwing is yours any time of th' day or night, you hear?"

"Thank you, Omer, that's mighty thoughtful!"

Omer's chewing seemed unusually efficient. "I've flew over them little islands where you're goin' any number of times. Landed on many a beach. If you stay out of th' bad thunderstorms they have down there, it's as calm an' peaceful as you'd ever want t' see."