Reverend Sam opened the front door as we climbed the steps to his porch, rain thrumming onto the umbrella Henry held over both our heads. Sam must have seen us coming. I only hoped he could also see the apology on my face. I held Henry’s arm as much to keep him from charging at the man as to maintain my balance on the slick stairs.
Reverend Sam smiled at us and I felt affection for him. He was coming to feel like a father to me. At the very least, a dear friend.
“This must be your husband,” he said.
“Yes. Henry, this is Reverend Samuel Sparks. And Reverend, this is Henry Kraft.”
“Kraft Fine Furniture,” Reverend Sam said, and he held out his hand to Henry, who ignored it.
“I want you to stay away from my wife,” Henry said, closing the umbrella with an angry snap.
“Henry,” I said, my fingers digging into his arm more forcefully than I’d intended. “I approached him. He didn’t—”
“Please come inside, Mr. and Mrs. Kraft,” Reverend Sam said, stepping back to make room for us to pass.
Henry hesitated and I gave a little tug on his arm. Reluctantly, he leaned the umbrella against the house. Then we walked inside and I tried to see the dimly lit living room through his eyes. The mélange of furniture. The ashy scent of the fireplace.
“Let’s go to my office where we can chat.” Reverend Sam began leading us down the hall.
“There’s nothing to chat about,” Henry said, but he followed close on Reverend Sam’s heels with me still clutching his arm. “You have no right interfering in our family’s business,” he said. “It’s not your place to—”
He stopped mid-sentence. Reverend Sam had opened the door to the anteroom and the skeleton looked out at us in all its bony glory. I was torn between laughter and terror, unsure what Henry’s reaction would be.
“What the hell?” he said, his voice much softer than I’d anticipated. “What is wrong with you, old man?”
“Come in, come in.” Reverend Sam ignored the question as he motioned to us to enter.
“It’s all right,” I said, tugging Henry’s arm again. “This is the anteroom. His office is on the other side.”
Henry glanced dubiously at me as we walked past the skeleton and the skulls and the artifacts that had probably been stolen decades earlier from old Indian burial sites. He had nothing to say until we were seated in the inner office. Then, suddenly, he had plenty.
“I don’t want you to talk to my wife again,” he said, once he had gathered his composure. “She’s vulnerable. She’s been through a difficult time these past few months, and—”
“All right, sir,” Reverend Sam said.
“Don’t fill her head with nonsense and don’t tell her she should do things I’ve told her she can’t do.”
The old man nodded. “I understand, sir,” he said. He listened to Henry go on and on about how Reverend Sam had overstepped his bounds and how he was a trickster and how he—Henry—wouldn’t allow him to take advantage of me. Reverend Sam kept nodding and yes-sirring. I hadn’t seen this subservient side of him before and I found it both sad and distressing. I liked the Reverend Sam who seemed to have all the answers, not the colored man who could be cowed by the white furniture magnate.
“You see, Mr. Kraft,” Reverend Sam said, once Henry finally stopped for breath, and I thought I saw a spark of mischief in the old man’s eyes. “It’s hard for me not to help someone when I feel an instant kinship to that person, as I did with your wife,” he said. “Especially when the contacts from the spirit world begin flooding me.”
Henry made a sound of disgust. “That’s enough,” he said, getting to his feet and holding his hand out to me. I took his hand reluctantly and stood up.
“Particularly when her spirit guide, Walter, appeared to me.” Reverend Sam continued without budging from his seat behind the desk.
Henry suddenly let go of my hand as if it burned him. “What?” he asked.
“We discovered your wife has a spirit guide named Walter,” Reverend Sam said calmly. “And Walter was quite insistent that your wife follow her heart and become a nurse at the polio hospital.”
The color had drained from Henry’s face. I’d only seen him that pale once before: the day he came to pick me up at the police station after the accident. He leaned his hands heavily on the reverend’s desk as though holding himself up.
“Henry?” I touched his shoulder, alarmed by the change in him. He looked quite ill.
Henry narrowed his eyes at the man. “Who the hell are you?” he said slowly, enunciating every word. He sounded both suspicious and shaken, and he turned to me. “We’re leaving,” he said, not waiting for an answer as he stood up straight again. He gave me a tug toward the door. “We’ll let ourselves out,” he said, without looking back at Reverend Sam. We walked through the anteroom and into the hallway, where he let go of my hand and marched resolutely ahead of me toward the front door as if he couldn’t wait to get out of that house.
Once on the porch with the door closed behind us, he seemed to gather his strength again.
“That,” he said, pointing toward the house, “was ridiculous. I can’t believe you fell for his nonsense. What a colossal waste of time. You’re not to talk with him again, do you understand?”
Now that I knew he wasn’t about to keel over from a heart attack or worse, I felt annoyed by the way he was talking to me. I wasn’t his child. “I can’t promise that,” I said.
He looked at me as if he couldn’t believe my obstinacy. “Just get in the car,” he said. “I’m taking you home before I go back to the camp.” He plowed down the steps and onto the front walk.
The rain had once again stopped and we were quiet in the car. I stared out the side window, sitting as far from Henry as I could get. I would see Reverend Sam again if I wanted to. I wasn’t Henry’s prisoner. I simply wouldn’t tell him. I never should have told him in the first place.
When we parked in front of the house, I reached for the door handle.
“Wait,” he said, and I turned toward him. “I don’t understand this, Tess,” he said. “I don’t understand why you’d go to Ridgeview, of all places, to talk to an old man who is completely off his rocker.”
“Who is Walter?” I asked. “It obviously meant something to you when he—”
“He just caught me by surprise,” he said, waving away the thought with his two-fingered hand. “Don’t try to throw this back on me. Tell me why you went to see him.”
I didn’t want to get Hattie in trouble. “I heard someone in town talking about him,” I said, “and it made me think about Lucy. I wanted to ask her to forgive me. I know it’s crazy sounding. I know that. I don’t even believe in a … a spirit world. At least I didn’t. But now, after talking to Reverend—”
“He’s a quack, Tess. You were taken in. I’m sorry.”
To my horror, I began to cry. “He knew who Andrew was, Henry,” I said. “He communicated with Andrew. He—”
“Stop it!” He held up a hand to cut me off. “That’s really enough. Do you hear yourself? Do you hear how crazy you sound?”
“He … acknowledged our son,” I said. “He acknowledged that we had a son. That I had a baby. He understands my grief. I lost our child and you don’t even acknowledge that he existed!” I let out a sob. “I’m so lonely, Henry,” I said. “You don’t touch me. You don’t love me. I don’t love you! I don’t want to live this way for the rest of my life. I want you to let me out of this marriage. Please.”
To my surprise, he reached toward me. Pulled me to him. I melted into him, too weak and weepy at that moment to do anything else.
“I’m sorry,” he said after a moment, and I knew that I had gotten through to him. “I’m so sorry, Tess.” He stroked my back. I wept against his shoulder, the scent of his aftershave fighting to come through the sweaty smell of his shirt. My own body shuddered with the end of my tears. It felt good to be held. I sank deeper into his arms.
“It will get better when we’re in our own house,” he said finally, “but I can’t be more to you than I am right now.”
“Why not?” I asked.
“Many marriages survive this way,” he said, not answering my question. “Quite honestly, I think my own parents’ marriage was rather … loveless.”
“Don’t you want more than that?”
His smile was sad. “I want us to be happy together. Or at least, content. I know you want to be a nurse at the hospital, but that’s not in the cards. It’s not worth the battle with my mother, Tess, for either of us. This afternoon, you can use my car to gather donations, all right? Let’s go in the house and have some lunch. Then you can drive me back to the camp. They have a list of people who are donating all sorts of items and they need drivers to pick them up. You can help that way.”
I sighed, not wanting to fight any longer. “All right,” I said, though I wasn’t finished with this argument. Today I’d be an obedient wife and help with the donations. Tomorrow, I’d pick up this battle where we left it off.