Father, and make Your will known to us, and finally, bless this food to the nourishment of our bodies. These things we pray in the name of Your Holy Son, Jesus the Christ. Amen.”
“Amen,” Hub Chatam echoed.
Dressed simply in black slacks and a white shirt, Hub un-buttoned and rolled back the cuffs of his sleeves before picking up his fork. His thinning hair, a mixture of light brown and ash-gray, seemed at odds with his bushy white eyebrows and dark brown eyes. Pushing up his bifocals with the tip of one finger, he trained those dark eyes on his daughter.
Kaylie had turned the remnants of his lunch into a hearty beef stew for their dinner, serving it with buttered bread and prepackaged salad. She kept her gaze carefully averted, applying herself to her meal. For several moments, silence reigned in the cozy, outdated kitchen, broken only by the clink of flatware. Kaylie could feel the comment coming, however, and finally it arrived.
“You waxed eloquent this evening, Kaylie.”
She smiled. “Did I? Guess that’s what comes of spending time praying.”
“That’s what you were doing this afternoon, sitting out in the backyard in the lawn chair? You were praying?”
Nodding, she scooped up a bite of stew. “Spring is a wonderful time to talk to God out of doors. I couldn’t resist.”
“Little warm for mid-April,” her father muttered.
“Mm. We could be in for a hot summer.”
“When have we not?”
Kaylie chuckled. “True.”
Conversation lagged for a few minutes, and finally they got to the crux of the matter. “Who is this Mr. Gallow you mentioned? I assume he is the reason you dumped me after church and raced off to answer your aunts’ beck and call.”
Kaylie sighed mentally. Her father never used to be snide and self-centered. As a pastor, he had been one of the most caring, giving, selfless men she’d ever known, working long hours in the service of others. He had built Downtown Bible into a thriving, growing community of believers with vibrant worship, Scripturally sound doctrine and effective ministry. After choosing about a decade ago to allow a younger generation to lead the church into a new era, he had stepped aside as senior pastor, but neither the membership nor the new administration had been willing to truly let him go.
At their urging, he had assumed the position of Pastor of Congregational Care. The church’s ministry to the home-bound and marginalized had expanded significantly under his tutelage. Part of the job had been organizing teams to check on, visit and minister to those sometimes invisible members, but Hubner Chatam had never been a mere administrator, and he’d often spent five, even six, days of every week in the field.
Then her mother, Kathryn, had died, and Hub never quite seemed to recover from her loss, perhaps because he had been widowed once before. The mother of Kaylie’s two older brothers, Bayard and Morgan, had died of an accidental blow to the head when a hammer had fallen from a tall shelf. After losing his second wife, Hub had lost his zeal for ministry—and his zeal for life along with it. Chandler, her only full sibling, maintained that their father had grieved and resented his way into his heart attack. Kaylie only knew that he had become a very unhappy man, so she let go the remark about her “dumping” him.
“The aunts have taken him in as a favor to Brooks,” she said, knowing that the doctor was one of Hub’s favorite people. The good doctor had also lost a wife, to an inoperable brain tumor, and that seemed to have formed a bond between the two men.
Hub put down his fork thoughtfully. “Dr. Leland is not one to impose.”
“No, he isn’t.”
“What’s wrong with this Gallow?”
Kaylie sipped water from the tumbler beside her plate and said, “He was seriously injured in an accident.”
“What sort of accident?”
Kaylie wrinkled her brow. “I don’t think anyone ever said.”
Hub clucked his tongue and shook his head, muttering, “Gallow, Gallow, unusual name. Don’t believe I know any Gallows. Where is he from?”
“Actually,” she answered with some surprise, “I believe he’s originally from the Netherlands.”
“The Netherlands! You don’t say! Dutch then, is he?”
“You wouldn’t know it to hear him speak,” Kaylie said.
“What about his relatives? Surely you spoke with them.”
Folding her hands in her lap, Kaylie shook her head. “Aren’t any. At least, none near enough to help out.”
“Ah. So your aunts, at the urging of Brooks Leland, have opened the family home to him,” Hub deduced, “and now they