It was Sharon’s question. The practical one.
I gave Tamra the same honest answer I’d later give Sharon over coffee.
“Because you’re the pastor’s wife of a church that’s one bad year away from closing its doors,” I said. “And we weren’t going to be the reason folks in this town said five old biddies ran off the new pastor’s wife two years into his call.”
She looked up at me.
“Some things are worth losing quietly instead of winning loud,” I said. “We decided the kitchen was one of them. I’m not sure now that we decided right. But it’s what we decided. And I don’t regret the kindness of it. Even if I regret some of the silence.”
Tamra was quiet for a minute.
Then she said the thing I think she’d needed to say ever since nine-forty that morning, when a catering van slid into a ditch forty miles away.
