Читать книгу Ties That Bind - Marie Bostwick - Страница 14

Clementine padded into the kitchen, flopped down next to the stove, and went immediately to sleep, snoring and twitching her feet as she dreamed. Philippa opened cupboards, scavenging for a teapot, tea, and sugar while telling me how excited she was to be in New Bern and how nervous she was about preaching the Christmas services. I thought she was just being modest.

“I’m not,” she assured me, opening a corner cabinet that held canned vegetables and peering into it. “Trust me. My sermons are nothing to write home about.”

“But,” I protested, “your father is—”

With her back still to me, she held up her hand. “Reverend Philip Clarkson, the preacher’s preacher. I know. But there’s no such thing as a preaching gene, and if there was, I wouldn’t have inherited it. My parents adopted me at birth. Spending your whole childhood listening to brilliant sermons is no guarantee either. In seminary, I got a C in preaching—the only C of my entire academic career.

“Here we are!” she exclaimed and pulled two white ceramic mugs out of a lower cabinet. “Who keeps their mugs on the bottom? Do you think it would be all right for me to switch the flour and baking stuff to the lower cupboard?” Without waiting for an answer, she began removing all the mugs from the cabinet.

She was petite, not more than five foot three, with a slim waist and thin wrists. She had a lithe build and moved gracefully even while wearing black, fur-lined ankle boots. Her skin was dark, the color of coffee with a touch of cream. Her hair was blackish brown, a halo of tight corkscrews that stopped halfway between her jaw and shoulders. She wore bright pink nail polish that matched her pink cable knit sweater and charcoal denim leggings that stretched tight over muscular calves.

Before tea, I had helped unpack the car. While carrying in a pair of skis, she told me that she loved sports and the outdoors. She’d met her husband, Tim, through a bike club. Until his illness, they had enjoyed hiking, biking, kayaking, and cross-country skiing. At that moment, wearing those clothes, she looked like anyone you might meet in New Bern, a customer who might come into the shop looking for a few yards of fabric, or maybe a teacher at the elementary school. What would she look like standing in the pulpit with a white neckband visible above a black robe and an embroidered gold clerical stole hanging from her shoulders?

Obviously, Philippa Clarkson wasn’t what I’d expected. But had I known beforehand that he was really a she, I still don’t think I’d have pictured someone who looked, acted, or sounded like this. She was feminine but athletic, humble but decisive, intelligent without being intimidating. Something in her straightforward manner, how she was aware of her strengths even while she acknowledged her weaknesses, told me that this was a woman at peace with herself and with God. Inner light positively streamed from Philippa Clarkson.

I liked her a lot. I hoped everyone else would feel the same. And I hoped that she really was better at preaching than she thought.

“C isn’t so bad. It’s average, right?”

“Yes,” she said, pouring steaming water into mugs and setting one in front of me before sitting down on a kitchen stool, “but when Philip Clarkson is your dad, people expect you to be quite a bit better than average. Did you know that two of my dad’s sermons were on the syllabus of my second-year preaching course at seminary?” She raised her eyebrows to emphasize her point.

“I can see where that could be a little daunting. But I don’t think anyone in New Bern is expecting you to be like your—” I stopped myself, thinking about our meeting and how thrilled the board had been at the prospect of having an offspring of Philip Clarkson in our pulpit. “You’ll be fine. Of course you’re nervous. Your first sermon in your new church is bound to induce a few butterflies.”

“A few,” Philippa said with a wry smile. “And the timing only adds to the pressure. At Christmas, people expect to hear a sermon that will elicit tears of joy, peals of laughter, banish all doubts, and jolt them into a deep and spiritual renewal that will last … oh, at least until Easter.” She laughed.

“I’m not saying that there’s absolutely no possibility that my sermon will elicit that sort of response but, if it does … it won’t be because of me. Know what I mean?”

She scooped two spoonfuls of sugar into her teacup and stirred. “A Christmas miracle. That’s what I need.”