The Expected One by Kathleen McGowan Page A

that Maureen was the one who had sounded her door chime and flashed a quick, I’ll-be-right-with-you smile before continuing the conversation with her customer. “Ametrine is amethyst that contains a piece of citrine inside of it. Here, if you hold it up to the light, you’ll be able to see the beautiful gold center.”
    The teenage customer was squinting at the crystal in the light. “It’s so pretty,” she exclaimed. “But I was told that I needed amethyst. Will this do the same thing?”
    “Yes, and more.” Rachel smiled patiently. “Amethyst is believed to expand your spiritual nature, and citrine is good for balancing emotions in the physical body. All in all, it’s quite a potent combination. But I have pure amethyst just over here, if you prefer.”
    Maureen was only half listening to the exchange. She was infinitely more curious about the books Rachel had told her about. The bookshelves appeared to be categorized by subject, and she scanned them quickly. There were volumes on Native American topics, a Celtic section where a less driven Maureen would have lingered on a different day, and the ubiquitous angel section.
    To the right of the angels were some books on Christian thought.
Aha, I must be getting warmer.
She kept looking and stopped abruptly. There was a large white volume with heavy black letters — MAGDALENE.
    “I see you’re finding everything just fine without me!”
    Maureen jumped half a foot; she hadn’t heard Rachel walk up behind her. The young customer was tinkling the door chimes as she exited the shop, clutching a small blue and white bag with her chosen crystal.
    “This is one of the books I was telling you about. The rest are really more like booklets. Here, I think you should look at this one.”
    Rachel removed a thin booklet, not much more than a pamphlet, from the eye-level shelf. It was pink and looked like it had been printed on a home computer.
Mary in McLean,
it declared in 24-point Times New Roman.
    “Which Mary is it?” Maureen asked. While writing the book, she had followed up a number of interesting research leads, only to find that they pertained to the Virgin, and not to the Magdalene.
    “
Your
Mary,” Rachel said with a knowing smile.
    Maureen gave the woman a half smile in return.
My Mary, indeed.
She was beginning to feel that way.
    “It doesn’t need to specify, because it was written by a local person. The spiritual community in McLean knows it’s Mary Magdalene. As I told you earlier, she has her own following here.”
    Rachel went on to explain that for many generations, residents of this small Virginia town had reported spiritual visions. “Jesus has been seen here on nearly a hundred documented occasions in the last century. The odd thing is that He’s often seen standing on the side of the road — the main road — the one you took to get here, in fact. A few of the visions have actually involved Christ on the cross, also seen from the main road. In some of the visions, Christ has been seen walking with a woman. She has been described repeatedly as a small figure with long hair.”
    Rachel leafed through the booklet, pointing out the various chapters. “The first vision of this type was documented early in the twentieth century; the woman who had the vision was one Gwendolyn Maddox, and it transpired in her back garden, of all places. She insisted that the woman with Christ was Mary Magdalene, while her parish priest was somewhat insistent that the vision had actually been of Christ and the
Virgin
Mary. I suppose you get more Vatican points if you see
Her.
But old Gwen was adamant. It was Mary
Magdalene.
She said that she didn’t know how she knew, she just did. And Gwen also claimed that the vision had completely cured her of a particularly nasty case of rheumatoid arthritis. That’s when she set up a shrine and opened her garden to the public. To this day, the local people pray to Mary Magdalene for healing.
    “It’s also fascinating to note