She could not find the old feeling of safely through another week. She was safe. A boy liked her, her hair would grow out. But in the swamp, under the bleak sky, she remembered the nine-year-old. The arson. Even the ruined crayons.
Nana and Papa fussed over her. They were annoyed with Mom and Dad for not taking earlier trains home this week. When your daughter had been burned in a fire in a slum church basement, you should have the parental concern to be home for dinner.
Macey had not wanted Mom and Dad home early. She liked routine, not change.
Papa touched her shorn hair. It was so short he couldn’t wrap a curl around his plump finger. “When I think what could have happened to you in that church! These people are so careless. They don’t have any concern for their very own buildings.”
Since Macey had not admitted that it was arson, her grandfather’s guess was fair enough. But if she explained the arson, he would say it was careless to leave cans of oil paint open, and turpentine open, and rags lying around, and really, really careless to open the side door, and beyond careless right into criminal to have chained the exit.
She had to defend Good Shepherd.
The church the Maceys attended was a huge, gaunt pile of stones, as if somebody had broken off a chunk of English cathedral and dropped it in green grass. It replaced a white wooden church that had burned on Christmas Eve 1892, when the choir set their candles down on piles of sheet music. “Our church burned down,” Macey pointed out, “a hundred years ago when the choir was careless.”
Papa dismissed this comparison with an irritated wave. “You will not participate in Saturday Group again.”
Macey did not care for Papa’s dictating mode. “Well, we’ll see, but I do want to go back to Good Shepherd. Even though Reverend Warren said we were too much responsibility for him, Austin and I thought we could—”
“Reverend Warren is right,” said Papa.
“Why on earth would you want to go back, anyway?” said Nana.
“I liked Venita. You know that special way you feel when a friendship is coming through? Not the slow kind of friendship, where you know somebody all your life, and you sit near each other and the years pass. The fast kind of friendship, where it’s just there, and it’s a privilege. And Venita—”
“Out of the question,” said Papa. “Even your parents will back us up on this. You will never go near that city again.”