“…Pastor Jim,” I said, and I stood in the doorway of his small study at First Methodist with Carl note in one hand and the navy blue bank book in the other, while behind me down the narrow hall I could hear Heather quick heels clicking. The pastor looked up from his desk. He was sixty one, soft spoken, with a gray beard and a face like a kindly owl, and he had been our minister for fourteen years. He took one look at my face and rose to his feet. “Bev,” he said. “Come in. Shut the door.”
I laid the bank book on his desk and told him the story. How Kayla had found it in the bench. How Carl had left the note. How the note said there was one more thing he needed to know about the music fund. Pastor Jim read the note slowly, with his lips moving slightly, the way a man reads a letter from an old friend. Then he sat down heavily and took off his glasses and said, “Bev, three weeks ago, our auditor asked me about a discrepancy in the music fund. I did not have the heart to raise it with you.”
He opened a drawer and drew out a file. Inside lay a printout of the music fund ledger for the last five years. Beside it, in Carl square handwriting, was a photocopy of a page from 2022, a few months before he passed. Carl had audited the fund himself, as a favor to the church, and had marked a series of withdrawals with a small red check. Twenty four thousand dollars, over three years, in monthly amounts, each approved by the treasurer. Each labeled Organ maintenance. The organ had not been serviced in six years.
A navy blue bank book in an organ bench, a music fund with a red checkmark, and the first chord of Advent.
There was a knock, sharp and quick. Heather came in without waiting, in her lilac suit, with her handbag on her arm. She was forty six, immaculate, with a smile fixed on her face like a brooch. She said, “Pastor, I am so sorry for the disruption. Bev has been confused. I think she needs to rest.” The pastor said nothing. He slid the printout across the desk toward her. She glanced down. Her smile did not waver, but I saw her fingers tighten on the handle of her bag until the knuckles whitened.
“Heather,” Pastor Jim said gently, “can you explain these entries?” She did not answer for a long moment. When she finally spoke, her voice had gone small and young. She said that the money had been for Kayla. Her niece had been accepted into a music conservatory in Chicago, and the family could not afford it, and Heather had thought, since the church had so much in the fund, and it was only sitting there, that she could borrow a little and repay it later. She said, “I was going to put it back. I swear on my mother.”
I looked at her. I had known Heather since the day she married my son. I had given her my mother recipe for pound cake. I had watched her lead committees and bake for funerals and buy school supplies for children she did not know. I knew she was proud. I knew she was afraid of seeming small. But I had not known she was capable of this. I said, “Heather, why did you take my organ bench away from me?” She wept openly. “Because I knew you would find it,” she said.
Kayla was waiting in the hall, small and pale, in her choir robe. When she heard what her aunt had done, she turned white, and then red, and then began to cry. She said she had known nothing. She said she had been so grateful for the chance to play, and had not asked where the money came from, and that she would withdraw from the conservatory that very day. I took her hands and told her to do nothing of the kind. I said, “Honey, you did not take a cent. You are going to play music. We will find another way to pay.”
The church board met on Tuesday. After three hours, they voted to accept Heather resignation from the music committee and to establish a repayment plan over four years. She did not attend. Her husband stood in her place, red eyed, with his hat in his hands. They also voted, unanimously, to ask me to return to the organ bench, and to name Kayla assistant organist, on a modest stipend, to be taught by me every Wednesday afternoon. I accepted the first request at once. The second took me a little longer. Then I thought of Carl, and I said yes.
I took the bank book to Muncie Federal Savings the following day. A young teller with a nose ring looked up the account and informed me that it held one hundred and ninety one thousand, four hundred and six dollars. I stood in the lobby, and my hand shook on the counter. I did not touch a penny. I walked across the street to the church, found Pastor Jim, and told him that I wished to donate the entire sum to the restoration of the pipe organ, and the new music scholarship, and a small endowment for the youth choir.
On the first Sunday of Advent, I sat down at the organ at First Methodist for the first time in five weeks. I opened the bench and set out the hymnals, and the old wooden lid creaked under my hands. Beside me, on the narrow end of the bench, Kayla sat in her robe, turning pages. When the choir stood, I took a breath, and placed my fingers on the keys. The first chord of O Come, O Come, Emmanuel rolled through the sanctuary like a tide, and I felt, rising through the floor, through the pedals, through my feet, forty six years of Sundays, and one more.