study was a floor lamp, a side table, and two brown and burgundy striped club chairs placed at a conversational angle in front of a fireplace. It was a small room but cozy. This would be my refuge of choice on chilly winter evenings.
I wanted to go upstairs and see the bedrooms, but the woman from the church was due to arrive any minute. Peering out the front window, I saw Clementine’s head visible in the backseat. I ran outside and unlocked the car. “Come on, Clemmie! Hop on out and have a look around. What do you think?”
She climbed out of the car, looked left and right, and then sneezed vigorously.
“I know. Pretty nice, huh? Look at this yard. Plenty of room to play out here.”
She sneezed again and started pacing back and forth across the snowy lawn, tramping down a path. I laughed. She does this every time. Just as Clementine found her spot, I heard the sound of footsteps followed by a yelp of surprise and a crash.
Turning, I spotted a tall, blond woman sprawled on the sidewalk. A splash of red against the white snow startled me, making me think she’d been seriously injured. But when I ran to her side, I saw a broken casserole dish lying on the sidewalk. The red gore was only spilled tomato sauce.
I squatted down next to the woman. “Bet that hurt. Anything broken?”
“No,” she replied and then looked down. “Nothing besides my dish. My pride is a little bruised, though.”
While the woman climbed off the ground, Clementine arrived on the scene, sniffed the ground, and began wolfing down the spilled casserole.
“Clementine!” I scolded. “Stop that!”
“It’s okay. It was supposed to be dinner for our new minister.” The woman shrugged. “Somebody might as well enjoy it.”
“Oh! Then you must be Margaret,” I said with a smile, extending my hand.
She frowned and pressed her lips together. “Margot,” she corrected me and shook my hand. “Margot Matthews.”
I smacked myself on the forehead. “That’s right! Margot. We’ve been expecting you.”
Margot’s eyes went wide. She blinked twice, looked at me, then Clementine, then back to me. “You were? I mean … Yes. You were.”
“Are you all right?” I asked, wondering if she’d hit her head when she fell.
“Oh, yes. I’m fine.” She pressed her lips together again, looking down as she patted Clementine on the head. “I just didn’t realize that Reverend Clarkson had a dog.” She paused, then looked at me with a deliberate smile. “Or a wife.”
I grinned, finally understanding her reaction. “I don’t,” I said with a laugh. “I mean, I’m Reverend Clarkson. Reverend Philippa Clarkson. And this is Clementine,” I said, looking down at Clemmie, who had finished her snack and was sitting on her haunches, licking the last traces of tomato sauce from her muzzle. “She’s big enough to be a horse, but she’s actually an English mastiff. Both of us are unmarried. Well … I’m a widow.”
Margot’s eyes grew even wider. “Philippa Clarkson? Not Philip? You’re our new interim minister?”
“That’s what the contract said. I hope that’s still okay with everyone.”
Margot frowned again, but only for a moment. “Of course,” she said firmly. “Why shouldn’t it be?”
She put out her hand for me to shake again. “It’s nice to meet you, Reverend. Welcome to New Bern. I’m sure you’ll be meeting everyone soon, but with Christmas so close, I’m all that was available in the way of a welcoming committee. But I’m afraid I’m not doing a very good job,” she said, looking down at the broken dish.
“That’s all right. I had a cheeseburger on the road. But I wouldn’t mind a cup of tea about now, and a briefing about the church and town. Do you have time?”
“Of course, Reverend. Happy to.”
“Please, call me Philippa. I know I have to get used to the title eventually, but every time someone says ‘Reverend Clarkson,’ I start looking for my dad.”
“All right, Philippa,” she said with a smile. “I can do that.”
7
Margot
Clementine padded into the kitchen, flopped down next to the stove, and went immediately to sleep, snoring and twitching her feet as she dreamed. Philippa opened cupboards, scavenging for a teapot, tea, and sugar while telling me how excited she was to be in New Bern and how nervous she was about preaching the Christmas services. I thought she was just being modest.
“I’m not,” she assured me, opening a corner cabinet that held canned vegetables and peering into it. “Trust me. My sermons are nothing to write home about.”
“But,” I protested, “your father is—”
With her back still to me, she held up her hand. “Reverend Philip Clarkson, the preacher’s preacher. I know. But there’s no such thing as a preaching gene, and if there was, I wouldn’t have inherited it. My parents adopted me at birth. Spending your whole childhood listening to brilliant sermons is no guarantee either. In seminary, I got a C in preaching—the only C of my entire academic career.
“Here we are!” she exclaimed and pulled two white ceramic mugs out of a lower cabinet. “Who keeps their mugs on the bottom? Do you think it would be all right for me to switch the flour and baking stuff to the lower cupboard?” Without waiting for an answer, she began removing all the mugs from the cabinet.
She was petite, not more than five foot three, with a slim waist and thin wrists. She had a lithe build and moved gracefully even while wearing black, fur-lined ankle boots. Her skin was dark, the color of coffee with a touch of cream. Her hair was blackish brown, a halo of tight corkscrews that stopped halfway between her jaw and shoulders. She wore bright pink nail polish that matched her pink cable knit sweater and charcoal denim leggings that stretched tight over muscular calves.
Before tea, I had helped unpack the car. While carrying in a pair of skis, she told me that she loved sports and the outdoors. She’d met her husband, Tim, through a bike club. Until his illness, they had enjoyed hiking, biking, kayaking, and cross-country skiing. At that moment, wearing those clothes, she looked like anyone you might meet in New Bern, a customer who might come into the shop looking for a few yards of fabric, or maybe a teacher at the elementary school. What would she look like standing in the pulpit with a white neckband visible above a black robe and an embroidered gold clerical stole hanging from her shoulders?
Obviously, Philippa Clarkson wasn’t what I’d expected. But had I known beforehand that he was really a she, I still don’t think I’d have pictured someone who looked, acted, or sounded like this. She was feminine but athletic, humble but decisive, intelligent without being intimidating. Something in her straightforward manner, how she was aware of her strengths even while she acknowledged her weaknesses, told me that this was a woman at peace with herself and with God. Inner light positively streamed from Philippa Clarkson.
I liked her a lot. I hoped everyone else would feel the same. And I hoped that she really was better at preaching than she thought.
“C isn’t so bad. It’s average, right?”
“Yes,” she said, pouring steaming water into mugs and setting one in front of me before sitting down on a kitchen stool, “but when Philip Clarkson is your dad, people expect you to be quite a bit better than average. Did you know that two of my dad’s sermons were on the syllabus of my second-year preaching course at seminary?” She raised her eyebrows to emphasize her point.
“I can see where that could be a little daunting. But I don’t think anyone in New Bern is expecting you to be like your—” I stopped myself, thinking about our meeting and how thrilled the board had been at the prospect of having an offspring of Philip Clarkson in our pulpit. “You’ll