The name on the sub-account was Pastor Jeffrey Mauer, trustee.
Not the parish. Not the diocese. The pastor, personally, as trustee of something called the Renewal and Outreach Fund, which Stuart said had been opened in his name in the spring of last year at a credit union across the river. Forty thousand dollars had been moved into it from the roof fund on a single signature.
Pastor Jeff did not grab the paper after all. He stopped halfway across the table with his hand out, and everyone in that hall watched him decide, in the space of a breath, what kind of man he wanted to be.
He sat down. He said, I can explain. And then he did not.
Stuart did not accuse him of anything. He said the diocese would conduct a proper review, that the money would be traced to the penny, and that nothing was decided tonight. He said all that politely, in a voice that carried across two hundred people holding paper napkins.
What he did say, plainly, was that a gift made to a parish belongs to the parish. It does not belong to a pastor, and it does not move to a personal account for a pet project, and the diocese has rules about every dollar of it. Ramona and I had given to the roof. The roof was where it was supposed to stay.
A woman from the Altar Society stood up and said the name of every family who had given to the roof fund, one after another, from memory. There were fifty-one. Nobody had asked her to.
I had sat in the back with the visitors at my own wifes funeral, and the only record the church had lost was the one it had been hoping nobody would find.
The review took three months. The forty thousand dollars was returned in full to the roof fund. The credit union account was closed. The diocese placed Pastor Jeff on administrative leave and referred the matter to the bishop, who reassigned him to a desk position at the chancery, where he has no access to any account at all. He wrote me a letter in January. It was four lines. I will keep it to myself.
The parish held a Mass in my wifes memory on the first Sunday of Advent. Stuart celebrated it himself, which was not his job, and I think it was a kindness. The fourth pew, left side, under the St. Joseph window, had a small card on it. Reserved. Karen sat on my right, with her husband and the grandkids, and the empty space on my left was the one Ramona used to take.
The finance council voted to put a brass plate on the end of the pew. It says, Eugene and Ramona, 2009, and under that it says, They paid for the roof. It was Karens idea. She said it was the first thing in her life she had ever been prouder of than a plaque on a bench.
I took the checks home that night. A hundred and sixty of them, with the rubber band back on. I put them in Ramonas shoebox marked ROOF, and I put the box on the shelf in the basement where she kept it.
The new pastor, who arrived in the spring, is a gray-haired man named Father Anselm who has been a priest for forty years. The first Sunday he looked at the fourth pew and then at me, and he said, Eugene, I believe this is yours. I said, Father, it always was.