Harry opened her mouth but nothing came out. A large white snowflake touched her tongue, melting. She intended to say something skeptical, but the words escaped her. Better to allow Brother Prescott—as well as Brother Thomas, standing silently beside him—his belief. She didn't know what she believed about the Virgin Mary except she was glad there was a woman in the holy hierarchy. Her pastor, the Rev. Herbert Jones, a wise and compassionate man, sidestepped dogma, the dogma of any church including his own, which was Lutheran. He preferred to concentrate on the emotional and spiritual well-being of his flock. He'd often said that Mary's fortunes throughout the centuries reflected the status of woman.
Harry wanted to call him.
"Herb?" Susan whispered to Harry.
"How'd you know what I was thinking?" Harry whispered back as they walked away from the statue. Brother Thomas hurried to his room to pick up a few odds and ends to contribute to dinner. Brother Prescott bid them good-bye, following Brother Thomas.
Susan raised her eyebrows. "Harry, I usually know what you're thinking."
"You do, don't you?" They held on to each other as they slipped and slid down the sloping, winding path to the first parking lot where Susan's Audi wagon sat, windshield covered with snow.
"Mom!" Owen, Susan's corgi, brother to Tucker, greeted her with delight.
"I'm here." Tucker announced with glee.
Susan opened the door, and sister and brother rapturously touched noses and wagged nonexistent tails, as Harry wiped off the passenger side of the windshield and Susan cleaned the driver's side.
"Too bad this machine doesn't have a creep gear." Susan sighed, mentioning first gear in vehicles such as the Wrangler, which allows the driver to go slowly without stalling out. She thought a moment. "G-Uncle was overwhelmed by the fading tears. He couldn't speak."
Harry replied. "Yeah. I hope this doesn't presage disaster."
Harry left Susan as she warmed up her car. By the time she reached her old Ford F-150 truck, the bottoms of her jeans were soaked.
She opened the door.
"I hate you!" Mrs. Murphy jumped off the seat onto the snow, instantly regretting it.
Harry, Tucker, and Pewter giggled as the sleek tiger cat laid her ears back, shaking each paw in turn.
"Fuss." Harry leaned over, picked up the beautiful animal, wiped off her paws, and set her back on the front seat next to Pewter, who didn't budge. She wasn't going to get her paws cold and wet. Harry reached in, turned on the ignition as she depressed the clutch. She had parked in gear, also, putting the brake on. The truck was a manual shift with over 160,000 miles on the speedometer. She preferred manual transmission; she felt it gave her much better control of the vehicle. As this was a 1978 Ford half ton, she was right. The new trucks with automatic contained a computer chip that sensed when gears needed shifting better than most humans could. Having an automatic wasn't such a bad thing in the new F-15 0s.
The powerful eight-cylinder engine turned over despite the cold, the low rumble music to Harry's ears. If it had an engine in it, she loved it. She put the gear in neutral, pulled on the emergency brake. She yanked out a long-handled brush from behind the bench seat covered with an old Baker blanket. After wiping off the snow on the windshield, she manually turned the hubcap centers on the front wheels to four-wheel drive, locking them.
"I told you not to leave the truck," Pewter smugly said as Mrs. Murphy licked her paws. "Where would you run, anyway? All that does is put her in a bad mood. No catnip."
"Thought I'd run back up the hill, make her huff and puff." The tiger cat bit a tiny piece of ice from between her toes. "Grooming takes so much time."
"You go overboard," Tucker, who was still outside, called up. Harry picked her up, putting her next to the cats.
"You're a sloppy pig." Mrs. Murphy's mood could use a lift.
"Crab. Because you're such a crab I'm not going to tell you what I saw."
Repenting instantly, Mrs. Murphy, hind leg still in midair, looked over. "What? I'm really not in a bad mood. This little ice bit irritates me, that's all," she fibbed.
"Tell, Tucker. I'll let you play with my catnip mousie." Pewter, so easy to bribe, thought she could do the same to the corgi.
"That old thing." Tucker enjoyed her moment of glory as exhaust belched from the new tailpipe Harry had installed last summer.
Harry backed out, shifting the gears into four-wheel drive.
As Harry carefully drove along the Skyline Drive to the turnoff for Route 250 East, Tucker excitedly told the cats about the Virgin Mary crying blood.
"But that's a statue," Pewter sensibly replied.
"Was it truly blood?" Mrs. Murphy wondered.
"I don't rightly know. It was the color of blood, the consistency, but I couldn't smell it. She's high and it's too cold. By the time the blood reached her heart it washed away"
"Blood carries a powerful scent, almost metallic." Mrs. Murphy knew the odor well.
"By the time we returned with Brother Prescott and Brother Thomas, she was weeping pale pink. The tears were slowing down. Probably something to do with the temperature."
"Did Mom say prayers?" Pewter, curious as to human religious impulses, asked.
"She was thoughtful and still before we saw the tears. I smelled Susan, so I ran down to her. Mom followed. The statue cried when Susan and Mom walked back up to it. Susan's upset."
"Why?" both cats said in unison.
Mrs. Murphy quickly yelled, "Jigs for tuna!"
Pewter, long whiskers swept forward, grumbled, "You win."
In the South, if two people say the same thing at the same time, the first person to say, "Jigs for " gets whatever they ask for—in this case, tuna. Pewter, ever solicitous of her stomach, would have to share a morsel of flaky tuna.
"Susan is afraid her marriage is getting stale." Tucker gave her opinion of the conversation. "Maybe tempted by young women in Richmond."
"Ooo," Pewter crooned.
"Oh, boy, there will be hell to pay if he doesn't resist temptation." Mrs. Murphy considered monogamy one of those peculiar human concepts. They tried, but it was against their nature. Some could do it but most couldn't, and she thought the idea nothing but misery.
"Glad Mom put snow tires on this truck last week," Pewter noted appreciatively.
"Yeah." Mrs. Murphy, hind paws on the seat, leaned forward so her front paws rested on the dash. "Coming down thick now. We're lucky the temperature dropped so it's not raining anymore. That's the worst."
"Spring is so far away" Tucker hoped ice wasn't underneath the new-fallen snow.
Harry didn't punch in BoomBoom's number until she was safely down Afton Mountain. "Boom, Harry."
"Where are you?"
"Foot of Afton Mountain."
"Getting rough out there," the statuesque blonde said.
"Could I stop by for a minute, unless you're in the midst of cooking?"
"Come on. Alicia's here. We're going to the club later for Thanksgiving dinner. We've plenty of time."
"Fifteen minutes," Harry succinctly replied. They'd grown up together so could employ shorthand without offending.
Alicia Palmer, in her mid-fifties, had been a huge star in film. She retired in her middle forties, having married well on a few occasions; divorcing well, too. But the great love of Alicia's life had been Mary Pat Reines, a kind, generous, and fabulously wealthy woman who'd died when Alicia was in her mid-twenties. Alicia had inherited Mary Pat's estate. Over the years she'd visit the place once or twice a year, but she finally came home from Santa Barbara to settle in last year. She wondered why it took her so long to return to Virginia, only realizing once she came home that she had never laid Mary Pat's ghost to rest. Once this emotional milestone was crossed, Alicia's heart lightened.