“Tell me what he said to you.”

“He said we should get married,” I answer, throat dry. “Propositioned me rudely.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s it.”

He heaves another shaky breath. “You tell him to go to hell?”

“More or less…”

“Good.”

“What was that about, Ben? Are you in some sort of trouble with Jackson?”

“Nothing serious. I lost some money in a card game, is all. It’s not like I can’t pay him back or anything,” he says quickly. “It’s just the principal of the matter I don’t like. I’ll pay him when I’m good and ready, and not a minute before, understand?”

“Sure,” I nod, though in truth I don’t understand at all.

Ben gives me a menacing look. “Don’t say a word of this to Father.”

I nod once more, eyes wide.

Just then, a pair burst from the bushes, my old friend Harrison Squire, and the pastor’s wife Letty River. The latter is speaking animatedly while I sense the former is looking for an excuse to get away from the verbose, highly opinionated theologian.

“Ah, Frances,” Harrison hails me, and I’m a little startled to find Ben’s vanished, leaving me all on my own. “I just saw someone I needed to speak with, you don’t mind do you, Mrs. River, if I leave you with Dear Frances?”

“Of course not,” the mannishly dressed Letty smiles at me brightly, evidently not at all bothered at being handed off so shamelessly.

“Thank you, my dear,” Harrison murmurs to me as he slips past, and I watch him go with faint amusement.

A forty-something black woman, Letty is tall like me, with short, tightly curling black hair and a wide, gap-toothed smile. She wears men’s trousers and a vest with a pocket watch, and a ruffled, powder blue blouse.

I’ve always gotten along with her. Though we come from very different circumstances, I feel a sort of kinship with this woman who never tries to fit into the expected mold of a pastor’s wife, nor even that of a Rettonian lady. She is simply herself, the quixotic and overly-friendly theologian, historian and philologist, Letitia River.  

“Now here’s an educated lady I could have a nice, long conversation with on feminism and the Bible,” she says, falling into step with me. “Tell me, Frances, what’s your opinion on women ministers?”

“S-sorry?”

“You know, the passage in First Timothy chapter two where the Apostle Paul says women are not permitted to teach or usurp a man’s authority? Didaskein de gynaiki ouk epitrepo,” she quotes the passage to me in Greek. “Whenever I read that I ask myself what Deborah would have had to say about it. You know, Deborah from the book of Judges? Of course you do. Now there was a real leader. I’ll bet even Paul would have stopped his orating to listen if she started preaching.”

“I… guess so?”

She looks me up and down, gives me a fond, patient sort of smile. I guess she senses I won’t be able to offer much of an opinion on feminism and the Bible after all.

“Frances?” Jackson appears suddenly and I recoil automatically. “Just came to check on you, Sweetheart. That brother of yours didn’t put you off on me, did he?”

“I have nothing to say to you.”

“Now, don’t be like that. You must at least permit me the seduction before you reject me.”

“She needs permit you no such thing,” Letty answers for me, visibly annoyed.

Jackson’s face darkens menacingly. “This has nothing to do with you, Preacher Lady.”

“Get thee behind me, Satan,” she replies, then takes my arm to march us both right past him.

“Thank you for that,” I say to her when we’re clear.

“You rejected him splendidly, Honey. Still, it helps to have a friend around with meat heads like that.”

“You know Jackson?”

“I know his type. Human beings throughout history have always fit into one type or another. Most of them I can tell at a glance.”

“Oh?” I say, intrigued. Spying Will Senior a little ways off, I point to him discretely. “And what’s his type?”

Letty looks him up and down critically, shaking hands and smiling like he’s running for office.

“Snake in a suit,” she declares.

Her assessment surprises me. “You really think so? He seemed nice enough to me.”

“Sociopaths always do. He’s the type to come to church to make good business connections, then leave the sanctuary to make crooked deals in the parking lot.”

“What about his son? William Junior?”

“That poor boy. Just a sapling in the shade of a mighty oak. He’ll have a hard time with his new bride,” she predicts. “She’ll overshadow him too, in very short order. Choke the life out of him.”

“That sounds like Louise,” I laugh lowly, rather enjoying this trick of hers.

“Of course,” Letty continues, “she was never interested in William to begin with.”

“What do you mean?”

“Women like your sister are attracted to just one thing: power.”

“But she loves William.”

“She loves what he can give her,” she corrects me, and I consider this seriously. Just then, my brother passes in front of us.

“What about Benjamin?”

Letty’s eyebrow lifts critically as she eyes the young man. “Now there’s a boy with more skeletons in his closet than he knows what to do with.” 

“What do you mean?”

“Why, the orgies of course, with all his models. He’s slept with every single one of them, I’ll wager. And not only that. Why do I get the feeling that boy... Oh, forgive me, Dear. I gossip more than a Christian woman should. Still, I’d be careful around him if I were you. Don’t get yourself tangled up in your brother’s sordid affairs.”

“You don’t have to tell me that. Ah, there’s Harrison,” I say excitedly, pointing to the little man in his pristine gray suit who left me with Letty only a few minutes ago. “What’s his type?” 

“Mr. Squire?” she frowns.

“He’s an old friend, like family.”

“Yes, I’ve met him a few times before. An odd one. Comes and goes like clockwork. He should be totally predictable,” she murmurs, still frowning. “And yet… why do I feel like the clock’s five minutes fast today? Or is that... just a few seconds too slow?”

“What do you mean by that?” I ask her, but she doesn’t answer. Her gaze seems fixed in the distance, like a prophetess of old, seeing the future with strange and colorful clarity.

“Letty?”

“Hm?” She shakes herself from her trance to smile at me dreamily. “What was I saying? Oh, never mind. I say, that pineapple upside down cake looks scrumptious. We’d best grab ourselves a slice before it disappears…”