CHAPTER 17

The Reverend Cosmo Bentworth was not an idle man, just easy-going and very, very hard to provoke.  That was why he had loved his parishioners with a deep, fatherly love and why they had returned his love by renewing his contract for thirty-seven years.  Usually, when watching the ladies of the steering committee, Reverend Bentworth was reminded of the Cedar Waxwings that used to congregate outside his bedroom window when he was a boy in Billings.  He had hung little seed-covered suet balls on the limbs of the trees outside his bedroom window and watched them for hours.  But now, as he sat at the far left corner of the meeting table watching Charlotte speak, he began to contemplate what retirement might be like.

It wouldn’t have been so bad if there was a full board, but a committee seat had been vacant for three weeks, not because of too few appropriate applicants, nor because of a unanimous unwillingness to take a vote, but rather because the second cousin of the chairwoman had discovered her husband having an affair with their niece and family tensions were running too high for anyone to focus on anything else.  The Reverend Cosmo Bentworth reminded himself that many, many Saints had won God’s favor by facing chaos and, even if he couldn’t think of any of their names at the moment, he too could deal fairly with disorder and controversy.  He flexed his shoulders and prepared for a righteous battle.