“Oh, you just preach and teach and make love to me,” she would say. “God’s in his heaven, a cake’s in the oven, and Mrs. Williams is waiting for me to take her to the Social Security office.” She would kiss me lightly and glide from the room.

I have gotten good at telling time from the light these days, so I know when it’s time for me to go in from the porch. I pour another cup of coffee and go into the study. The clock will read six-thirty. At first I will be disquieted by the house, the smell and look, from the crocheted pillow slips to the bluish shade of the rug in the parlor to the knives and forks in the kitchen. It’s all Anne. Three years later. All Anne. As if she would bound into the room full of business and mischief, a piece of bread in her mouth, a pen stuck in her hair, a list in her hand. Then I think I should rearrange the house, get new furniture, paint the room another color . . . or just move. At this point I usually stop thinking.

I will turn my mind to Sunday’s sermon. There was a time when I would prepare Sunday’s sermon on Saturday night. I have a feeling the congregation wouldn’t notice very much—I’ve certainly done it enough to be good at wiping up a pretty good Saturday-night special. But I would notice. It’s as if I’m trying to write the sermon I want to hear, not the perfect sermon, but the perfect sermon for me.

So I pore over the Bible, reading, taking notes, making tentative outlines. Banishing from my mind any thoughts of the present, of the recent past, of the uncertain future. Thinking only of God and his laws.

Most mornings on the way to the office I stop by Aunt Ruth’s house and check on her. She is usually up, sitting on her porch. The conversation is quick, short.

I’m usually in the office by seven-thirty, before the teachers, though Mrs. Just is already there, the telltale clack of her typewriter echoing in the empty school halls.