All Mortal Flesh by Julia Spencer-Fleming

sixth?”
    “They were still vacationing in the Caribbean on the Feast of the Epiphany.”
    “Well, they’ll have to wait until Easter with the rest of them.” She laid that one on Lois’s desk. “Mrs. Thomas wants a home visit, okay, Mr. Stevenson… Mrs. Darnley—what does it say about our parish when half the congregation is either shut-in, at the Infirmary, or in the hospital?”
    “It says it’s time for a membership drive at the Adirondack Community College?”
    “It’s scary that
I’m
one of the youngest attendees of my own church.” She flipped through a few more. “Abigail Campbell wants me to perform a funeral service for a
lamb
?”
    “She said it was the children’s 4-H project. Something got into their byre and tore the poor thing up, and the kids were devastated.”
    Clare waved the slip at Lois. “What was this lamb’s fate going to be, before it became coyote chow?”
    Lois steepled her fingers. “Easter dinner.”
    “Which they would have asked me to bless, I suppose.” She shook her head. “I’ll have to think about this one.” She glanced up at the office clock. “Look, if anyone calls this morning, I’m going to be unavailable a little longer. I’m expecting a visitor. Reverend Elizabeth de Groot. She’s been assigned to us by the bishop. As our new, prepaid, full-time deacon.”
    The secretary’s perfectly shaped brows rose, and Clare found herself thinking,
No Botox for her! You go, Lois
.
    “When is she starting?”
    “Uh… now, I guess.”
    “Now? Today? Nice of the diocese to notify us.”
    Clare wanted Lois to form her own opinion of the new deacon, so she skipped over the reason they were receiving the bishop’s largesse. “It was a surprise to me, too.”
    Lois sat ramrod stiff in her typing chair. “Well, it’s not going to be my fault she’s not in the new directory. It went to press last Friday.”
    “Don’t worry about it. And think of it this way—she’ll be another willing worker. Many hands make light labor, and all that.”
    A calculating look crept over Lois’s face. “You mean she wouldn’t just be doing pastoral work?”
    “Of course, her focus will be on assisting me with the counseling and the services. But I don’t see why she couldn’t help out in other ways.” After all, a very busy deacon was less likely to have extra time to poke her nose into Clare’s business.
    Lois smiled. It was not a beatific sight. “Oh, yes. I can think of lots of jobs I could use some help on.”
    “There you go. Now, before I get sidetracked, I’m going to need—”
    “Excuse me.”
    Clare and Lois both turned around. The woman standing in the office doorway didn’t look anything like the mental image Clare had built up of the Reverend Elizabeth de Groot, which ran heavily to Dame Judi Dench. This woman was younger, for one thing, maybe a decade or so older than Clare herself. She was petite—bird-boned, as Clare’s grandmother Fergusson would have said. Noticeably skinnier than Lois, who at a size six was usually the thinnest woman in the room. But Lois was close to Clare’s height. This woman could have walked underneath both their chins without mussing her beautifully blown-out ash blond mane. She was wearing a little black suit with her collar that looked like Chanel, if Chanel made clerical garb.
    Clare could feel the ghost of her own seventeen-year-old self stretching to reclaim her skin. Her wrists, poking out from beneath her sweater, seemed huge and bony. Her hair was already coming out of the knot at the back of her head. She was sure that if she looked, she would see the same grease around her fingernails that had been her permanent badge when she worked on airplane engines with her dad.
    “I’m Elizabeth de Groot.” The woman smiled pleasantly. No wonder. It was undoubtedly a wonderful thing to be Elizabeth de Groot. Her smile grew more fixed, and Clare realized she hadn’t responded.
    “Hi! I’m Clare Fergusson.” She stuck out