“I mean, the way you wear it.”

Gray Ellen was taken off-guard by Gabrielle’s directness, her sincere tone. She’d expected a haughty whiff of old money. “You’re very gracious.”

Gabrielle patted her arm and let her hand rest there a moment. “I’m glad you came tonight. You’re not what I expected.”

What had she expected?

“I mean, when Sam came by the house that day looking for Alex Manly, I guess I expected a blonde. Someone more Nordic.” Gabrielle squeezed her arm. “I mean it as a compliment. You’re so warm.”

Gray Ellen felt herself blush. This woman was so much smoother, so much more adept at the social graces. For the first time in years, she felt like a bumpkin.

“Forgive me—I didn’t mean to embarrass you.”

Gray Ellen relaxed. “It’s just that, well, down here, I haven’t felt at my best. No one has seen me at my best. Have you ever felt that way?” What was it about this woman that drew her out so easily?

Gabrielle took her hand and squeezed it quickly. “I know perfectly. This town, it can be hard on a woman.”

“But nowhere in Scripture are we told that the damned will live forever in hell,” Colonel Waddell declaimed with gusto, brandishing his fork. “That’s an invention of medieval folklore.” He laughed. “The image of hideous, malformed miserables roasting forever in unquenchable flames.”

Bessie, refilling wineglasses, thought, I know one miserable white billy goat I’d like to see roasting on a pitchfork, praise Jesus.

Father Dennen gulped a big swallow of wine and said, “What of St. Mark? ‘But he that shall blaspheme against the Holy Ghost hath never forgiveness, but is in danger of eternal damnation.’ ”

“Ah!” said Waddell, flashing his knife. “But the language of Scripture is all thesis and antithesis! Do this, or else that will happen—eh, Father? Clear dichotomies of choice, time after time. Everything defined by what it is not. If damnation is the opposite of eternal life, then it must not only be punishment but an equally eternal death.”

“You’re stretching a point,” Father Dennen said, taking another stuffed onion, big as an orange, from Bessie. “The Bible’s more than rhetoric.”

Sam was impressed that Father Dennen could be so civil—he’d never seen the priest be anything but fierce. But that’s the mistake we always make, he thought. People are complicated, full of contradictions. It’s what made it so hard to trust them, or to condemn them.

Still talking under the men, Gabrielle said, “I’ll help you get along.”

“When will I stop feeling like an outsider?”

Gabrielle smiled, her eyes crinkling. She whispered, “They say you’re no longer a newcomer in this town when everybody who remembers that you moved here from someplace else is dead.”

They laughed together. “That’s a comfort,” Gray Ellen said.