The Weight of Ordinary Days
The rain had stopped sometime before dawn, but the sky over Havenbrook hadn't gotten the message. It hung low and the color of dishwater, pressing down on the church's steeple like a hand testing whether the old wood would still hold weight. Noah stood at the pulpit of First Covenant and watched that sky through the tall windows, watched it the way a man watches weather when he has nothing better to do than wait for it to change.
There were nineteen people in the pews. He'd counted twice, the way he always did now, a habit he hated in himself but couldn't seem to break. Nineteen, in a sanctuary built for two hundred and forty, back when Havenbrook had been the kind of town that filled its churches on principle alone. The pews toward the back sat empty, their wood gone silvery and smooth from decades of Sunday mornings that no longer came. Dust motes drifted in the gray light like something almost holy, if holiness could be measured in neglect.
"Turn with me, if you have your Bibles," Noah said, and his voice came out steady, practiced, a voice that had learned to perform devotion long after the devotion itself had gone quiet. "To the Gospel of John. Chapter one."
Old Mrs.…