Chapter 36
Chapter
Thirty-Six
The church bell rang. Nora glanced at her family waiting by the sanctuary doors, then back at Austin. She would have liked to walk in with him, but today she needed to be with them. He seemed to understand and gave her a nod.
Christian walked between their parents. At the doorway, he stopped. A few conversations faded as people turned to look.
Marlowe moved to one side of him and Nora to the other. Dad rested a hand against Christian’s back, and together they made their way to the pew four rows from the front—the one where their family had sat every Sunday before he disappeared.
Mom slid in first and left a place beside her for Christian. He hesitated, then sat. Dad took the seat on his other side. Everyone else—including Wren and Nash—filled in behind them.
Whispers reached Nora despite her efforts not to listen.
Christian. Ten years. Looks just like him.
Christian picked at the corner of the bulletin before whispering to her, “Everyone’s staring.”
“They’ll stop.”
“When?”
Nora had no answer for that.
The pianist began the opening hymn, and the congregation rose. Nora took a hymnal from the rack and opened it. Instead of turning to the announced number, she found “Softly and Tenderly.”
The page was nothing like the one left on her porch. The paper was white instead of yellowed, the title printed in darker lettering, and the notes arranged differently across the page. She glanced at the hymnals along the pew. All appeared to be the same edition.
The page she’d been sent hadn’t come from one of these.
Relief should have followed. Instead, uneasiness settled more deeply inside her. Churches rarely threw anything away. Somewhere in this building—or in any number of churches around Fog Lake—boxes of old hymnals could be gathering dust in a closet.
Whoever had sent the message only needed access to one.
Nora turned to the opening hymn.
“Trust and Obey.”
She remembered her and her siblings crowded beside their parents, the girls harmonizing while seven-year-old Christian complained that he couldn’t see the page.
Emotion caught in her throat.
Beside her, Christian had gone still. His fingers tightened around the hymnal until the thin pages bowed. When Nora glanced at him, he lowered his gaze and began singing, one beat behind everyone else.
Maybe the memories had overwhelmed him too.
Nora managed the final verse, though her voice barely rose above the congregation’s. Her wrist throbbed beneath its bandage, and every breath reminded her of the fall. Christian stood beside her, looking so much like the brother she remembered.
She wanted that to be enough.
The irony of the hymn wasn’t lost on her. Trust and obey—but trust what? Her family’s joy? Her own instincts? God’s silence?
Somewhere in the past three weeks, trusting had become synonymous with staying blind. And obedience had started to feel like cowardice.
She wasn’t sure that was what the hymn meant.
Nora had been sitting at the command table for nearly three hours when Pauline stopped beside her with a fresh pot of coffee.
“You look like you could use some of this.” Pauline pulled a foam cup from the stack. “Black?”
“Please.”
Pauline filled the cup and set it beside the search log. Steam curled off the top.
Nora wrapped her good hand around it. The heat soaked into her fingers. She took a swallow. Strong and bitter—exactly what she needed.
Her gaze dropped to the log. Row after row of teams, grids, and times. Nothing written beside any of them.
Her thoughts wouldn’t stay there.
The hymnals in the sanctuary hadn’t matched the page left on her porch. So it had come from somewhere else. Another book, another shelf, another closet in this building or one like it.
And Pauline knew where everything in this church was kept. Every box. Every forgotten thing nobody had ever thrown away.
Asking meant giving a reason. Nora didn’t have one she could say out loud.
She set down her pen anyway. “Pauline, does the church still have any of the old red hymnals we used to use ten or more years ago?”
Pauline’s eyebrows rose. “Those ancient things? What on earth are you asking about those for?”
“Mom used to hum ‘Softly and Tenderly’ out of one.” It wasn’t a lie. It wasn’t the whole truth, either. “I just had a memory of it today.”
“Well, as it happens, I know right where a box of them is.” Pauline set the pot on the table. “I found it myself Friday, in the storage room off the fellowship hall. I thought we’d gotten rid of them years ago. Hold on.”
A few minutes later, she returned carrying a battered red hymnal.
Pauline placed it beside the search log.
Nora stared at the faded cover. Its corners had been worn soft, and several threads showed along the binding.
“What were you doing in the storage room?”
“We’re clearing it out for Homecoming. Pastor Whitfield wants to use some of the old photographs and music for a display.” Pauline smiled. “You know this church. We haven’t thrown away anything since the 1950s.”
Normally, Nora might have laughed.
Instead, she opened the hymnal.
The yellowed pages whispered beneath her fingers as she ran her thumb along the edges. She turned to the index, found the number she wanted, and flipped toward the back.
“Softly and Tenderly.”
Nora’s pulse quickened.
The title appeared in the same faded type she remembered. The notes were arranged across the page in the same way, with the verses printed beneath them. This page remained attached to the binding, but the hymnal was almost certainly the same edition as the page left on her porch.
“Who else was there Friday?” she asked.
Pauline’s brow furrowed. “Oh, several of us were cleaning. Pastor Whitfield was in and out. Dale moved most of the heavier boxes, and Zack Grant helped me sort the old music. A few other regulars were there also.” She paused. “Why?”
Before she could answer, the fellowship hall doors opened. The first search team filed inside.
Nora recognized the answer before anyone spoke. Mud streaked their boots, and disappointment weighed down their shoulders.
No one had found Preston.
She placed the hymnal beneath the edge of her clipboard, intending to show it to Luke as soon as he returned. Then she marked the time beside the team’s grid number and accepted the radio one of the volunteers handed her.