raw and bloody, or not at all, leaving his sores to fester. Sometimes Clara had to clean him, a task she dreaded. When she pressed her hand on his forehead, the skin felt clammy. The nurse had told her that he wouldn’t live to see the snow melt. He was going to die and take his secrets with him. Clara went into the bathroom and fetched fingernail clippers. Stanley’s eyes were shut when she came back in the room, his breathing raspy. She cut ivory half-moons from his left hand, holding the palm gingerly, careful not to draw blood. Each snip of the clippers made his eyelashes flutter, but other than that there was no response. “I want to know about my mother. I want to know if you loved her.”
A vein pulsed thinly at his temple, the only sign of his irritation. “I’ve told you everything you need to know.”
“You’ve spoken in riddles. When you’re gone I’m going to go looking for her.”
One rheumy eye flicked open. “You must never go back there.”
“Why not?”
But the eye had sealed shut again and soon, despite her questions and her clipping, he was asleep. Clara carried the curving nails into the bathroom where she balled them up in a tissue and discarded them in the waste bin. She went back into his room, pulled up the sheets around him, and was turning up the dials on his electric blanket when the doorbell rang. Clara frowned. If this was the nurse Regina, she was going to have words with her.
But waiting for her on the porch was a young man in a dark coat, his face chapped by blowing wind and snow.
“Can I help you?”
“You must be his daughter, Clara.”
“I am.” Clara hadn’t invited him in yet. The house’s heat rushed out the door, another thing her penny-pinching father disliked. “Who are you?”
He pulled off leather gloves and held out his hand. “I’m Pastor Logan,” he said. His eyes were pale blue, almost turquoise, with lovely lashes. He had whitish-blond hair, high cheekbones. Clara held his perfectly smooth hand in hers, which he must have taken as an invitation to come inside. “I’m sorry to bother you, but I was coming home from church, and I saw your car in the driveway.”
Uninvited, he took off his coat and hung it from a peg. Clara shut the door reluctantly. She saw his collar now, the dark clerical shirt. His presence here, his seeming familiarity, bothered her. “I still don’t know why you’re here.”
His brow furrowed. “I’m your father’s pastor, from St. Mark’s Lutheran a few blocks down. Your dad didn’t mention me?”
“I didn’t even know my dad went to church.”
“Oh, Stanley’s been a member for years. He even served on the council before he started dialysis.”
In the foyer’s tight space she was aware of his aftershave, a hint of cinnamon, and underneath the earthy scent of his skin. “We didn’t even go to church growing up.”
He absorbed this as if it was old news to him. “How’s Stanley doing?”
“The same.” There was something airy and elemental about the pastor’s Nordic good looks, his gleaming white teeth.
“Would you mind if I gave him communion?” He held up a slender black case.
“I doubt he’s even awake. He’s just had his dialysis treatment.” For some reason she felt angry with this pastor and with her father for not telling her, as if he was leading a secret life. And it was a good secret, unlike the rest of what he kept from her, but it bothered her the same.
“Okay if I look in on him? I’ve been coming every week.”
Clara relented, and when they went into his bedroom, her father’s eyes were open, and he even smiled for the young pastor. Clara looked at her father with a sense of mingled wonder and betrayal. After all these fiercely agnostic years, the old man had been taking religion on the side. Was he taking out insurance with the reaper knocking? His eyes blinked in the lamplight, hooded by furry gray brows. He had a lifelong drinker’s face, his nose split with red veins. “I’m so glad you got to meet my Clara,” he said. “She’s living with me, just temporarily. She’s a student, you know, a linguist. She’s going to be a professor one day.”
“Yes, I know.” The pastor turned toward her, smiling. “He talks about you all the time. It’s good that you’re here with him.” He set his black case down on the nightstand and cracked