"Your church?"

"My grandfather's church, my father's church, and my church. Yes."

"Being born into this church body confers no special distinctions or ownership. You've hurt a great many people here, Jeffrey."

"There is such a thing as forgiveness, Father."

"Are you asking forgiveness from the people of St. John's?"

Jeffrey crossed his legs and moved his left foot rapidly back and forth. "If that's what it takes."

"Then you're admitting you sinned?"

"No. I'm admitting I made a mistake."

Father Tim looked carefully at the man before him. "There's a bottom line to asking forgiveness. And it's something I don't see or sense in you in the least."

"A bottom line?"

"Repentance. Forgiveness isn't some cheap thing to be gotten on a whim. It's purchased with a deep desire to please God. It's about renouncing. . . ."

"I have renounced. We aren't living together anymore."

"You're speaking of the flesh; I'm speaking of the heart."

Jeffrey Tolson's face blanched. "As choirmaster here for fourteen years, I've heard a good deal of Scripture. You aren't the only one equipped with the so-called truth. I seem to recall that St. Paul said, 'Forgive one another as God in Christ forgave you.' "

"Do you believe Christ is the divine Son of God?"

Jeffrey Tolson shrugged. "I suppose so. Not necessarily."

"We're told that everyone who believes in and relies on Him receives forgiveness of sins through His name. It's not really about asking me or the vestry or anyone at St. John's; it's about hammering it out with Him."

Jeffrey drummed the desktop with the fingers of his right hand.

"To repent means to turn, to turn from whatever binds or enslaves you. What, for example, do you intend to do about your family?

"Janette has the house and the car, she has a successful sewing business, and as soon I get work on the island, I'll see that she gets a check every week."

"As soon as you get work?"

"You're not from Whitecap, so it probably never occurred to you that getting work on the island is either difficult or impossible."

He heard the sneer in his visitor's voice, and made every effort to keep his own voice even as he spoke. "You could go across to work, like half the population here."

"I'd prefer to work on the island. Commuting is expensive and inconvenient."

"Let's see if I have this right, Jeffrey. You abandoned your wife and children to enter into an adulterous relationship with a married woman, left the island for several months during which your contribution to your family was a grand total of one hundred dollars; you grieved everyone in the church and your choir in particular, and now you state that you don't necessarily believe Christ to be the Son of God, yet you wish His forgiveness."

Jeffrey Tolson opened his mouth to speak, but Father Tim raised his hand. "In addition, you wish to wait 'til you find work that's convenient, while your wife, currently hospitalized and without income, soldiers on with the fallout as you trot back to God's house, whistling Dixie." He was livid. "When you can return to this place with a humble spirit, confessing your sins and longing for His gift of forgiveness, you'll find a willing heart to hear you." He stood from his desk, shaken.

Jeffrey Tolson stood also, his face white with anger. "I'll come for my son tonight. Have his things ready."

"You'll come for your son? I don't think so. Jonathan was given into our care by Janette. It is Janette who directs his coming and going, and that, you may rest assured, will hold up in a court of law." While he didn't know for certain that it would, it certainly seemed that it should.

He thought he might be punched out on the spot, but didn't care; he felt reckless, invincible.

"You can't stop me from attending St. John's."

"You're absolutely correct, I cannot. But I don't advise it."

Jeffrey Tolson uttered an oath. "Father Morgan, unlike yourself, was a peacemaker. You're no Father Morgan."

"Thanks be to God!" he said, holding his office door open.

"Father, before you take your days off, wouldn't you like to put in your order for a new sport coat?"

He looked at Jean Ballenger's newly trimmed bangs, which were curling upward like the lashes of a film star. "A new sport coat?"

"For Janette, to help her get started back in business when she comes home. I'm going to order a paisley shirtwaist; Marion's ordering a red dress, she says she wears too much navy; and we thought you might like to order a sport coat."

"Well . . ."

"Something blue would be good on you."

He had three blue sport coats, but he didn't say anything.

"Penny Duncan is ordering a wrap skirt, even though she doesn't have gobs of money to throw around and sews like a dream herself! Don't you think that's sacrificial?"

"I do."

"And Cynthia could order a suit in linen or pique, maybe something with a nice peplum, I think she'd look stunning in a peplum."

"How much is a sport coat?"

"I don't have any idea."

"Why don't you get back to me on that?"

"Oh, I will!" she said, making a note on her pad. "I just think it would be the Christian thing to do, don't you?"

He grinned at the earnest Jean Ballenger trotting down the hall to solicit orders from the Busy Fingers group, which was currently living up to their name, big-time.

It was rather a nice thought, actually, that he'd soon be looking into the nave and seeing his entire congregation turned out in new duds, whether they needed them or not.

The encounter with Jeffrey Tolson had shaken him badly. He sat in the study at Dove Cottage with his head in his hand for longer than his wife liked.

"Timothy, dear, what is it?" she demanded on a third inquiry.

"Ahhh," he said, lacking the energy to tell the sordid thing. Besides, did this mean Jeffrey Tolson might be hanging about to forcibly take Jonathan while Cynthia and the boy were alone? He despised even thinking this.

He was just getting into bed when he heard the knock.

What time was it, anyway? He peered at the clock on the night-stand. Past ten.

Through the glass panels in the front door, he saw what appeared to be a flashlight bobbing on the porch. He switched on the porch light and threw open the door.

It was someone in uniform, and someone plenty big, to boot.

"Would you identify yourself, sir?"

"Tim Kavanagh. Why do you ask?"

"I have a civil paper to serve you. You're being sued."

"I beg your pardon?"

"Are you the Reverend Timothy A. Kavanagh?"

"I am, yes." His heart was hammering.

"I'm Bill Deal, th' sheriff of this county." Bill Deal pocketed his flashlight and brought out his wallet to display a badge. "I hate to do this to you, I believe you fish with Cap'n Willie."

Speechless, he opened the screen door, took an envelope from the man, and gazed at it, dumbfounded. The sheriff cleared his throat and stepped to the edge of the porch, looking at the sky.

"Prob'ly goin' to get us some rain before long. Well, you take it easy, Reverend." The sheriff lumbered down the steps, walked to the front gate, and got in the car.

He stood there in the chill October air as if mesmerized.

Cynthia called from the hallway. "Timothy, what's going on?"

"I have no idea, I don't know."

Nor did he want to know.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN.

Dorchester Island It wasn't that he couldn't understand the general intent of the papers he'd been served-he could. It was that he wasn't able to make it all come together in any sensible order; each time he read them, it was as if his mind split like an atom. He knew only one thing for certain-he was deeply alarmed.

He went to the study and took his quote book from the shelf, the quote book he'd made entries in for fifteen years. He wanted something St. Francis de Sales had said; he'd copied it into the book just the other day. . . .

Do not look forward to what may happen tomorrow; the same everlasting Father who cares for you today will take care of you tomorrow and every day. Either He will shield you from suffering, or He will give you unfailing strength to bear it. Be at peace, then, put aside all anxious thoughts and imaginations, and say continually: "The Lord is my strength and my shield; my heart has trusted in Him and I am helped. He is not only with me but in me and I in Him."

It was after eleven o'clock when he dressed and drove to St. John's, went down the cement steps by the light of the moon, and faxed the papers to his cousin's home in New Jersey. The fax machine was located in Walter's study where he'd be sure to find the papers the following morning, before he left for his law office in Manhattan.

Father Tim scribbled a cover sheet with St. John's phone number and a brief message: Please call me the moment you look this over. I'll be at the church office by six a.m.

He didn't want to have the conversation with his attorney cousin at home, where his wife was already in a state of trepidation over this ghastly turn of events.

He left Dove Cottage at five forty-five, bundled into a sweater and jacket.

"Layspeak, Walter, layspeak."

He sat at his desk in the chill basement office, drinking a tepid cup of coffee from home and scribbling on a legal pad. "Start at the beginning. I'm writing everything down." Put aside all anxious thoughts and imaginations. . . .

"Helene Pringle is suing you, as trustee, for one-third of the escrow funds of Hope House."

"Right." His voice sounded like the croaking of a frog, and he realized he was again holding his head in his hand.

"She claims to be the illegitimate daughter of Josiah Baxter. . . ."

Miss Sadie's father. This claim seemed so bizarre and extraordinary, his mind couldn't contain it; the whole notion kept flying out of his head, even as he tried to poke it back in.

"But why now, after all these years . . . ?"

"I've no idea. Apparently they're basing the suit on Baxter's holographic will, in which he decreed that a third of his estate would go to Helene Pringle's mother, Francoise, upon his death. When did Baxter die, anyway?"

He'd tried to work this out in his mind last night. The date was on the urn in the columbarium at Lord's Chapel. He'd seen it numerous times, but couldn't remember exactly. "Sometime in the late forties."

"How old was he at the time of death?"

"Miss Sadie told me once . . . in his seventies, I think. In fact, I believe she said he died soon after an extended trip to France." He knew Miss Sadie's mother had died in 1942, so Josiah Baxter must have been a widower when . . .

"Of course, the domestic statute of limitations has run out by several decades," said Walter.

"Then they don't really have a case?"

"Unfortunately, the suit is based on French law, involving an obscure treaty between France and the U.S., which was adopted at the end of World War II. I don't know much about it, probably something that spun off the problem of occupation troops and paternity issues."

He thought the whole thing a veritable hash of mystery and confusion.

"Looks like Pringle's attorney is French-Louis d'Anjou of d'Anjou and Pichot-and both Pringle and her mother are French citizens. Let me look into it; I know almost nothing about French law. You've got thirty days to file a written response to the allegations."

He shook his head as if to wake himself from a bad dream.

"I'll call her attorney and see what's what, and get back to you in a couple of days-right now, I'm in court on a big one."

"Anything," he said. "Anything you can do . . ."

He hung up, as winded as if he'd run a mile on the beach.

Ava Goodnight was coming day after tomorrow, the day of the Dorchester trip. He'd have breakfast at Mona's, let Roanoke give him a trim around seven-thirty, tend to a couple of things at St. John's, then go back to Ernie's no later than nine-thirty to meet Ava and her sister. So . . . if he and Cynthia and Jonathan left shortly before eleven, they'd arrive at Ella's around noon. They'd visit with Ella, then he'd administer the sacraments to Captain Larkin and they'd head home. Considering all they had to do before Mitford, he'd suggest they tromp through the graveyard another day; heaven knows, the dead weren't going anywhere.