The fall seemed to take forever, but once she hit the grass, she rolled to her side and tried to push upright. The man who had attacked her was screaming now, as if he’d been tackled. At the moment she couldn’t worry about him. She was still lying on the ground. The people closest to her tried to make room to help, but the crowd surrounding them was expanding and pushing in from the edges. She was jostled as people tried to clear a space. Somebody’s Doc Martens stomped on her hand.
“Give her some room!”
Analiese looked up and just glimpsed a man hovering protectively over her, arm extended. She grabbed his hand gratefully, and he hauled her to her feet.
Once there she tried to thank him, but the crowd surged around her, packing together so tightly that the moment she dropped his hand he disappeared. Police arrived, and she was jostled still more as people made room. Seconds later she glimpsed her attacker being dragged away, screeching about his rights. The police were speaking calmly and trying to convince him to walk on his own, partly, she was sure, because they were surrounded by advocates for the homeless who were watching carefully.
A man in shorts and a tie-dyed T-shirt asked if she was all right, and she nodded, but he wasn’t the one who had rescued her. That man had been taller and dark-haired.
Somebody took her elbow, and she whirled to find Ethan looking down at her. He put his other arm around her and hugged her quickly. “Ana, are you all right?”
She thought she was, although she might sport bruises on her neck and the outline of a heel on her hand as a reminder of the past moments.
“Think so,” she said, shaking her hand back and forth to be sure.
“The police have things under control.” Ethan stepped away a bit and pointed toward the edge of the crowd. “Not his lucky day. He ran right into them after he shoved you.”
“He shouldn’t have gotten out of bed this morning either.”
He smiled warmly, but he continued to hold her elbow to steady her. “Know why he pushed you?”
“Because I was in easy reach and wanted to give him help he’s not ready for. He’s hungry, frightened, tired, angry—”
“You’re being kind. Don’t forget drunk or high. He didn’t seem too steady on his feet.”
“That, too.”
“Let’s see if we can fight our way to the edge.” Ethan guided her in that direction.
“I’d better head for the speakers’ stand.”
“You can make your way up front once we’re out of the throng. Afterward you might want to find the police. You probably should tell them what happened.”
She stayed close to Ethan, letting him clear a path. Out of the worst of the crowd she brushed off her skirt and straightened her blazer. She only rarely wore a clerical collar. Today she wore a burgundy scarf knotted over a light pullover. When she spoke, her role as senior minister of one of the largest Protestant churches in Asheville, North Carolina, should lend enough weight without trappings.
On the other hand, maybe if she had been wearing her collar, the man who had attacked her would have thought better of it.
Definitely an unworthy thought. She had another as she wondered if wearing her collar more often would help with the council executive committee. She sighed and stood still for Ethan’s inspection.
“Am I presentable?”
Another smile. He stretched out his hand and brushed something off her cheek, rubbing it with the tips of his fingers until he was satisfied. “You’re sure you’re okay?”
“He gave me a great opening for my speech. Life on the streets is difficult, even terrifying, and it can have consequences for everybody, the homeless and the onlookers. We need to help people rebuild their lives.”
“Are you practicing?”
She answered his smile with one of her own. “Thank you. I’m glad you found me.”
“You so rarely need help, it was a pleasure.”
She liked the way Ethan always made it clear he approved of her. There was nothing between them except friendship, but he reminded her that she was a woman as well as a pastor.
“You held your own at the meeting this afternoon,” he said. “Now go hold your own up there.” He nodded to the front. “I’ll find you when it’s over.”
She squeezed his hand in thanks, and then one final time she brushed off her skirt and started around the crowd.
She reached the stand and watched as another speaker, a local homeless advocate, stood to offer her a hand up the rickety steps. At the top, before she greeted the others on the platform, she turned for a quick survey of the crowd. She scanned the closest faces, but her goal was impossible.
Even though she’d only glimpsed him, the man who had protected her and helped her off the ground had looked disturbingly familiar. For just a moment she would have sworn it was Isaiah Colburn, who, the last time she had communicated with him, was serving a Catholic parish in San Diego.
Father Isaiah Colburn who, in recent years, had carefully, tactfully, separated himself from the young Protestant minister he had once befriended, the same young woman who, despite knowing the pitfalls, had fallen hopelessly in love with him.
FOURTEEN-YEAR-OLD SHILOH FOWLER was so used to disappointment that when the old lady in the church office told her it was too late in the day to get help and the Fowler family should try elsewhere, she wasn’t surprised.
“We’ve tried elsewhere,” she explained, although she knew better than to think continuing the discussion would make a difference. “My mother’s sick, and we just need a place to stay for tonight so she’ll be out of the cold. I’m not asking for anything for myself.”
Shiloh hated sympathy, but for once she was sort of glad to see it in this stranger’s eyes. On the other hand, as always, sympathy wasn’t much help.
“I don’t know what to tell you,” the woman said. “I’m leaving for the night, and I have to lock up. Our minister is gone, and everybody else on staff is gone, too. You have the list of social service agencies I gave you?”
Shiloh was holding the list in plain sight, so it was clear the question was rhetorical, a word she was fond of and had recently added to her vocabulary. “Like I said, we don’t have much gas. All these places are downtown.”
The woman nodded. Then she walked behind her desk, got her purse and rummaged through it, coming out with a ten-dollar bill, which she held out to Shiloh. “I don’t know what else to do for you.”
They needed that money. Really needed it, because all they had was a ten to match it and a few ones to go with it.
Shiloh had taken money before, but this evening her hand remained closed, her arm by her side. “I can’t take money from you. That’s not what I was asking for. I just thought, well, maybe your church...” Her voice trailed off.
The woman walked around her desk, took Shiloh’s hand and put the bill inside it, closing the girl’s fingers around it. “We help when we can. It’s just that there’s nobody here, honey. Reverend Ana’s away...” Something flickered in the woman’s dark eyes. “At a rally for the homeless downtown.” She clearly realized how ironic that was. “There’ll be people at the rally from the different agencies on that list. It’s pretty late, but if you leave right now, maybe you can still catch the end of it.”
Shiloh knew about downtown. The Fowlers’ Ford inhaled gas as if it knew each fume might be the last, and parking inside city limits was so expensive the ten dollars would be long gone before they could find anybody who might help. Besides, she already