"I wasn't sure you'd come back."
"I wasn't sure I'd come in the first place."
People were moving around them, coats and scarves, Mrs. Lindberg saying something about the coffee. Nora let go of his hand. "Wait for me a minute?" she said. "By your truck. Please."
He waited by the truck. She came out ten minutes later with her good coat on over the alb and her stole folded over her arm and stood next to him with her hands in her pockets, both of them looking at the church.
"You could've said," he told her.
"I could have. I didn't."
"Why not?"
She was quiet a moment. "Because you'd already made up your mind I was the church secretary, and you looked so relieved about it," she said. "And because the last three men I've asked for anything since I got here have either laughed at me or told me to go back to Minneapolis, and you didn't. You just said Saturday. I wanted one person in this town who'd treat me like a woman with a flat tire. Instead of a woman in a collar." She looked over at him. "Would you have said Saturday? If you'd known?"
He thought about that honestly, because she'd asked it honestly.
"I don't know," he said. "Maybe not. I've got nothing against you. I don't go in there anymore."
"I know. Mrs. Lindberg told me. And Mrs. Pelto. And Mrs. Pelto's sister. And the man who fixes the organ." She almost smiled. "It's a small town. I heard about your wife the first week. I heard about the funeral."
"Then you heard what Aho said."
"I heard."