There was a long pause.
"I'll teach you," said Nora. "But here's a secret. It's all right to need people, Bird. It's the most normal thing in the world. Even grown-ups. Even your dad. Even pastors." She straightened up. "Especially pastors."
Later, after Birdie had gone to bed, Dale walked her out to the Volaré. It was cold and clear and the stars were out over the lake like somebody had spilled sugar on a black table, and there was frost already on her windshield, and he scraped it for her with the scraper from his own truck while she stood there with her keys.
When he was done he stood beside the driver's door and didn't move out of the way.
"Thank you," he said. "For what you said to her."
"It was true."
"I know. That's why." He looked at her, at the red hair coming down from its pins, and the freckles, and the eyes that he had decided over the past five weeks were gray, not green, gray like the lake on a good day. "Nora."
"Dale," she said, very quietly, "I'm the pastor of a church whose council voted four to three to have me. One of the three drives past your house on his way to the Lions Club every Wednesday night. I can't. Not yet. Not like this, in a driveway."
He stepped back.
She got in the car. She rolled down the window.
"I said not yet," she said. "I didn't say not ever. I wanted to be clear about that. I've spent a long time in my life not being clear about things."
Then she drove off, signaling at the corner, and he stood in the driveway in the cold until he couldn't see her taillights anymore, grinning like a damn fool.
* * *