But on this morning, the day after the Christmas cookie exchange, she rolled over to find Ian standing by the table, looking very different. He had on a navy-blue denim jacket rather than his old worn work jacket. He wore khakis and boots that weren’t beat to hell. The shirt beneath the jacket was white. “I’m going to be out for a while. You’ll be okay? You’re feeling all right?”

“I’m good. Feeling back to normal. Are you going to sell firewood? Isn’t it late for you?”

“Something else this morning. But I’ll be back early.”

“Ian, where are you going?” she asked, sitting up.

He glanced away for just a second and then, coming closer to the couch, he said, “I’m going to church. I do that once in a while. I’ll be back—”

“You belong to a church?” she asked, straightening in surprise.

“No. No, no. I just drop in sometimes. Different ones. It doesn’t matter which one, not really.”

She was at full attention. “What denomination are you?” she asked.

“None. Really. I wasn’t even raised in a church—we weren’t religious. It’s just a little thing I do. Not regularly. I’ll be back in—”

“Please, can I go with you?” she asked.

“Marcie,” he groaned, drawing it out almost painfully. “Let’s not do that…”

But she jumped off the couch, nearly knocking him over as she grabbed up a pair of jeans from the top of her duffel. “I don’t have any really nice clothes…Just jeans and boots, but last time I went to church, it was pretty casual. Not many people dress up anymore.”

“You should stay home—”

“I won’t be any trouble at all.”

“Listen, can I be straight with you here?”

She pulled up her jeans quickly, not even thinking he might have caught a flash of her panties in the process until he turned away. “That would be fun—you being straight with me for once.” She ripped his shirt over her head and dug around in her duffel for her best sweater.

Without looking at her, he said, “I go in real quiet, late, sit in the back. I’m not unfriendly. I say hello and God bless and move on. People don’t remember me—I don’t show up at the same church even twice a year. I don’t want to belong to a church or anything—I just want to hear the music sometimes. I’m not a joiner—”

“Yeah, you’re a loner. I know this…”

“I like the solitude, I do—but I see people all the time. I just live alone—and I don’t belong to a church or a union or anything. That’s all. I go to listen. Maybe there’s something in it. I’m open to inspiration.”

“Fine. That’s fine. I’ll say hello and God bless,” she said, pulling her sweater over her head. She looked down at herself—all wrinkled. He turned around to find her completely changed. She sat on the sofa and pulled her boots over black socks. From the look on his face, if she took much more time in dressing, he’d be gone without her.

“No. No, it won’t work. You’re the kind of person people will want to talk to. You like making friends, getting connected and I don’t. I’ll just stay home and—”

She ran to the sink, pumped a little water to wet her hands. She ran them over her wild curls to calm them a bit. “Take me, too, Ian. I won’t even sit with you. I’ll pretend I don’t know you. You can act like I’m some poorly dressed homeless person who just happens to be there the same time as you.”

“Aw, Marcie—I wish I hadn’t even told you the truth. How about I bring you a book from the library? You tell me what you want.”

“You’re going to the library? Oh God, please please please can you take me with you? Ian, I’ve hardly been anywhere since I found your cabin! I don’t have to talk to people. Really! But for God’s sake, don’t make me read another biography or whatever you pick out for me. I won’t sit with you at the church and I’ll be quiet at the library! God, I just want to go out and do something around people—I spent a month looking for you and talked to people all day till I hated talking to them! Now if I could just be in the world for a while…I promise—I won’t make you uncomfortable. If I do one thing wrong, you can growl and roar at me all you want.” And then she coughed.

“You’re still sick. Listen to you.”

She caught her breath. “It’s because you got me worked up. Really, I’m all right. Mel said I was fine. She checked me over, said I’m not contagious and that it’s not uncommon to have that cough a while. Please. Please. Please!”

“Goddamn it,” he muttered.

She smiled at him. “Nice language for someone on his way to church.”

Ian didn’t talk the entire way into Fortuna. He stared stonily ahead and Marcie decided that since she had begged her way along, she’d better stay quiet and do exactly as she’d promised. When they pulled up to a Presbyterian church, she walked ahead of him into the building, took a program and found a seat in a pew in the back. Not surprisingly, Ian sat across the aisle from her in his own pew, acting as if he didn’t know her.

Well, he wanted to be alone. And so this way he could be. She wasn’t about to let his peculiarities work her up. So she just listened to the scriptures, the choir. The sermon.

It was mid December, time to start examining the story of the birth of Christ. She usually didn’t go to church at Christmas until it was closer to the actual day and she always enjoyed the story—the stable, the birth, the shepherds and wise men…

“One of the things that interests me year-round—as a Christian, as a theologian, as a human being—is that star,” the minister said. “There’s a lot of conjecture as to whether it was an actual astronomical event or something divinely created to announce the birth of Christ. You’ll expect me to tell you that it is my belief, from scripture, that it was the latter. What’s more important to me is not whether it was nature in motion, or a Godly miracle, but what it means to us today. It’s a symbol of Christianity that reigns second only to the cross. It is a gift of light, of guidance, of leadership, of passage and understanding and illumination.

“Have you ever been driven to do something, but lacked direction? Have you ever been one of those people who didn’t pray too often but were in sudden, desperate need of help and found yourself on your knees? The star is faith. A belief that a power greater than ourselves will, given the opportunity, lead us to our destination. The star is meaning, purpose, promise that we’ll be given divine illumination. That our way will be filled with the light of understanding and keep us from stumbling. That is the miracle of the star.

“As we enter a season of loving, healing, forgiving…a season of promise…so many of us will look to the heavens for that star. I think, sometimes, that star is in our hearts as well.”

He talked a little about the wise men, the kings, and the shepherds who left their flocks. They were driven. They had a task, a goal. As men, they were so different, the simple shepherds, the kings, but it’s not only rich men who are driven or poor men who follow a calling. They simply responded to a gut reaction, to a mission that had to be fulfilled for their good, for the savior they were compelled to welcome to the world, for the well-being of all. It must have been a driving force, impossible to ignore, though to those around them, it might have seemed foolish. Or even crazy. Imagine these kings packing up and traipsing across the country on some harebrained idea that there was a special infant—coming to save the world, to heal mankind—born in a stable far away. Their servants and soldiers must have thought they had lost it.

Then came the star—guiding them. Leading them.

“Is there something,” the pastor asked his congregation, “we feel compelled to do in this season of giving, this season of rebirth? Do people around us suggest we mind our own business or let matters rest?”

His words began to run together and Marcie wasn’t sure how much of what she heard was the minister’s sermon, and how much her own mind, her own heart. Is there something you are inexplicably driven to complete and you can no more stop yourself than you can turn back time? Is this a mission of mercy, meant for goodness and healing? For love and kindness? Because you have to ask yourself that. This is not a season to heal your own wounds at the expense of another—but a time for rekindling love and moving ahead into a better world. Isn’t that what the birth of Christ promised? A better world?

Then we have to ask ourselves—do I see the way? Do I see—do I feel the star in the east? Am I being led?

Marcie felt tears on her cheeks and clearly heard the pastor say, “Let’s all say a little prayer that gives God permission to guide us in the right direction, in doing good, mending hurts, healing hearts, asking for forgiveness. And then we’ll sing.”

But she was already praying, and not to God as she was supposed to be. Her prayer went out to someone else.

Oh, Bobby, help! Am I meant to be here? To do this? Because he’s everything you said he was—he’s strong and invincible, and yet so tender, so sweet. So complicated, so simple. Sometimes I think of irrational things—Jesus whipping the money changers in the temple in fierceness, in battle, and then feeding the hungry masses from five loaves and five fish…. If you could have seen him roar at me like I was the biggest threat, then feed that big buck right from his hand…I swear, the day the mountain lion came to the property, he shot over the cat so as not to harm it, though he could have killed it and maybe should have. He’s good, Bobby, and he just can’t do something like that without really…Oh, Bobby, if it’s wrong for me to invade his world, disrupt his life and make him unhappy, please give me a sign. It’s true, I want to bring him home, but I need him to bring me home! I swear to God, I only want to do the right thing, to feel that things are finally settled so we can all go on to the kind of lives you would have wanted for us. Please, Bobby, tell me! I’ll pay attention….

And while her head was bowed, beseeching her dead husband instead of God, as she’d been instructed, the congregation stood and belted out a hymn. It took her a moment to wipe her eyes and think, I’m crazy as a loon. Praying to a man who’s been dead for a year, who was lost to me years before that. Do I really think Bobby’s going to give me an answer faster than God? What kind of nutjob am I?

She surreptitiously stole a look across the aisle at Ian. He stood straight and tall, all bushy and proud. And he wasn’t singing! Of all the crazy things. This was one place his voice could not only be exercised but appreciated, yet he didn’t sing. What a horrible waste. She was filled with a longing to hear him amaze the rest of this congregation with his glorious voice. Yet he was silent.

She sniffed back her tears. Maybe he wasn’t all that wonderful. Maybe he was just plain selfish.

She had no idea why this whole episode—so spiritually emotional for her—would make her angry. And she didn’t brood over it; she just told herself to get over it and go along as she’d promised. At least until she figured things out.

When the hymn was finished, the benediction read and the pastor led the recessional, she was one of the first out of the church. She shook the pastor’s hand and thanked him for a moving sermon.

“Moved you a little much, I think, sister,” he said.

“Touched me, yes,” she said, guarding herself not to sniff.

“Come here,” he said, pulling her into his arms and giving her a hug.

Oh, bad idea. If she didn’t steel herself, she’d start sobbing. It was his arms around her—it weakened her. She’d had a million comforting hugs since Bobby finally left them, but her hug tank had been on the low side lately. She desperately needed some reassurance, and as ridiculous as she felt about her prayerful plea to Bobby, it would have come as a comfort to feel his hand on her shoulder, telling her to move ahead, follow her heart….