“Mama says it’s a glad-you’re-here-and-welcome gift. The chicken was one of Miz Hyacinth’s half strays anyway. . . . Will you be cooking for Miz Hyacinth now? Doing her laundry and such?”
Miss Grace hesitated. “I don’t know, truly. We haven’t talked through our arrangements yet. Has your mother been doing those things for her?”
“Yes, ma’am. She has.” Celia knew it wasn’t her place to say and her mother would likely twist her ear if she knew, but it was too important to the welfare of the Percy family not to speak up. “I believe she’d like as not to continue.”
“I feel certain A—certain Hyacinth would like that as well, and I know I surely would. There’s a great deal I need to learn.”
“Don’t you know how to cook?”
The woman smiled. “I know how to cook some things, but I’m sure your mother is more accomplished in that arena.”
Arena. Celia simply thrilled to the sound of new words. “Are you a teacher, like Miz Hyacinth?”
“No, no, I’m not so accomplished as that, either. But I do love to read. I sensed last night that you do, too.”
“Yes, ma’am. More than anything. Least I did before the school closed its library—collecting all the books before the school year ends and all. Well, I like reading at least as much as private investigating.”
“Private investigating?”
“You know, detective work. I listen to Dick Tracy on the radio whenever I come by here or if I can get Ida Mae to tune in down to the store. I’m getting very good at deductions.”
“I see.”
“For instance, Miz Hyacinth made it clear from the set of her mouth that I’m not to ask too many questions about you, like, are you married and where’d you come from and why’d you come in the dead of night and exactly how are you kin to Miz Hyacinth and why don’t you have a flower name?”
Miss Grace nearly dropped the teapot lid. “Well, there’s not much mystery about me, but I believe Hyacinth is encouraging good manners. Asking too many personal questions isn’t polite.”
“Hmm. Reckon that could be. Mama says I’m not much accomplished in that arena.”
Miss Grace smiled as she set the pot and cups and saucers on a tray, but Celia noticed that her fingers trembled and that a finger on her left hand bore the slightest indentation from a ring gone missing. It was one more thing to note in her investigation.
•••
The Reverend Jesse Willard prized the hours spent in Miz Hyacinth’s company, and today he’d brought a gift he knew she’d treasure. It was all he could do to sit patiently through the tea that the lovely Grace served—a woman he was certain would be even more lovely if only she’d smile and relieve the furrow between her brows.
By the time Celia and Chester drank their tea and ate half the pumpkin bread Ida Mae had sent with him to welcome Miz Hyacinth’s guest, the fidgets had taken hold of his fingers. He was that eager to share the letter he carried in his pocket. “Ida Mae sent me up with mail for you.”
Miz Hyacinth brightened. “A letter? From over the pond?”
“From over the pond, indeed!” he crowed. “Miz Biddy.”
“Biddy Chambers, my old friend in England,” Miz Hyacinth explained to Grace. “We met the year I went with your mama—she was fifteen then and just blossoming—and a cousin to New York City—October 1908, the beginning of a beautiful tour to see the fall colors and traipse the steps of New England’s literary greats. Oh, how your mama loved New England! Biddy was working as a stenographer in the city. I met her in a café over tea and we girls hit it off right away.
“Of course, she was already in love with her Oswald and headed back to England the next month, but we became fast friends. I’d hoped your mama and I could join her in England after Papa died. But by then, everything in Biddy’s life and mine had changed.” Hyacinth’s voice trailed off a bit, but Jesse determined to keep the mood light and the memories happy this day.
“Grace, do you know Chambers’s writing?” Jesse hoped the letters of Biddy and the writings of Oswald would be a love they’d all share.
“No, I’m sorry; I don’t.” But she didn’t sound sorry, just distant.
“We must rectify that, my dear,” Miz Hyacinth insisted. “You’ll love his book and Biddy through it just as we do.”
“That was so long ago—1908. How is it you know them, Reverend Willard?”
Hyacinth laughed—the recovered sound of bells lovely as ever, Jesse thought. “You’d best explain, Reverend. While I can’t see you now, I don’t believe you’ve aged quite so much as that these past two years.”
“I met Oswald Chambers through his writings, while in seminary. A professor guided me to them through previously published papers and the devotional that Mrs. Chambers compiled after her husband’s death.”
“My Utmost for His Highest—writings that came to the world because of Biddy’s indefatigable shorthand, I might add,” Hyacinth inserted proudly, on behalf of her friend. “If not for her faithful recordings and transcription, they would never have seen the light of day.”
“The world—all of us—would be poorer without them,” Jesse affirmed. “Which brings me to Biddy’s letter and today’s reading. She has quite a bit of war news in this one, I’m afraid. Are you ready, my friend? Which first?”
Hyacinth settled back into her chair. “The reading; then I’ll savor whatever Biddy writes for the rest of the day.”
Jesse pulled a well-worn book from Hyacinth’s nearest bookcase and thumbed to the bookmark. “We don’t follow the days, just keep reading each time I’m able to come visit. Today’s reading is from May 6.
“‘Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free.’ Galatians 5:1.
“A spiritually minded man will never come to you with the demand—‘Believe this and that’; but with the demand that you square your life with the standards of Jesus. We are not asked to believe the Bible, but to believe the One Whom the Bible reveals. . . .”
Those words meant the world to Jesse. He could not count the times in life that thought gave him peace, the days it drove him and his questions to Jesus. He wondered if Miz Hyacinth and Grace felt the joy and relief he did in that reminder, if it set their hearts free and their faith firm. He hoped so.
Chapter Six
I’D ONLY SAT TO BE POLITE. But now I was riveted to the reading. I’d been raised in a church that virtually demanded we see as the leaders saw, claiming we were unable to understand the Bible for ourselves. Gerald, my father, and the elders said we were to follow their teachings because they possessed the mind of Christ. Oswald Chambers’s words would be heresy to them. I pulled my mind back to Reverend Willard’s reading.
“Always keep your life measured by the standards of Jesus. Bow your neck to His yoke alone, and to no other yoke whatever; and be careful to see that you never bind a yoke on others that is not placed by Jesus Christ. It takes God a long time to get us out of the way of thinking that unless everyone sees as we do, they must be wrong. That is never God’s view. There is only one liberty, the liberty of Jesus at work in our conscience enabling us to do what is right.