Two days later, Katherine and Jack walk to church alone for the first time in weeks. He says that he misses Edith, and, Katherine realises, she does too. But it's a new church, and a new beginning, and Edith will be back at Easter.
The church is smaller than Jack expects, after attending Trinity, which is both beautiful and hulking, looming over the buildings that surround it. This one is small, barely raising itself above the surrounding houses, built of sturdy red brick with a white-painted spire. Inside, the foyer is warm and wood-panelled, and a lady in her late fifties greets them at the door, introducing herself as Auntie Marge. Whose auntie she actually is, Jack isn't terribly sure, but they go along with it and let her shepherd them into a pew beside her.
She talks a mile a minute to Katherine, who, thank goodness, is sat between Auntie Marge and Jack, so he doesn't have to do very much talking. Instead, the woman chatters on, explaining that she was married but her husband died three years ago and she doesn't have any children but she has lots of nieces and nephews and she's basically the extra grandmother of every child in the congregation and Katherine must come over for tea some next week and finally: "Tell me a bit about yourself, then."
"Uh. I'm Katherine." She blinks, trying to keep up with the energy and compassion that seems to burst out of this woman's every orifice. "I'm a journalist."
"A journalist! How wonderful – I do think it's fantastic the kind of career you can have as a young woman these days." Marge clasps her hands together, giving Katherine a wide, beaming smile. The inside of Katherine's chest feels warm, somehow, with such approval. "Will I have read anything you've written?"
"I write for the New York Sun? Under K. Plumber?"
"No, you never covered the strike!" The woman's face lights up. "That's incredible, good for you, ducky."
With that, the first bars of the first hymn ring out from the organ, and Marge is silenced. That is, at least, until the verse starts, at which point she begins booming the words to Abide With Me. What Marge lacks in tunefulness, she certainly makes up for in enthusiasm. A few of the other men in the congregation aren't singing which makes Jack, at least, feel better. He would try, honest, he would, because Katherine has said he has quite a nice voice when she's caught him quietly singing to himself whilst painting, except by the time he's puzzled out the words on the page of the hymn book the verse is over and done with. Still, it's a relief when he can just sit down and listen to the sermon.
The man who he met in the cemetery, who introduces himself as Reverend Michael Byrne, gets up and stands behind a lectern sort of thing at the front of the building. There is stained glass in the church windows and as he sp eaks the light on his face lets bright colours spill from his mouth.
"In John 9, we hear these words: And as Jesus passed by, he saw a man blind from his birth. And his disciples asked him, saying, 'Rabbi, who sinned, this man, or his parents, that he should be born blind?' Jesus answered, 'Neither did this man sin, nor his parents: but that the works of God should be made manifest in him.' When he had thus spoken, he spat on the ground, and made clay of the spittle, and anointed his eyes with the clay, and said unto him 'Go, wash in the pool of Siloam'. He went away therefore, and washed, and came seeing."
Despite knowing that nobody is looking at him, Jack has never felt quite so seen. He knows, of course, that the reverend probably picked out this passage to speak on because he knew that they might attend the service. Or maybe it's entirely a coincidence. But, still, it feels as if it's something he's been supposed to hear for a long, long time. Maybe this is what people mean, when they say faith; trusting in the knowledge that when they attend church on a Sunday, they will be taught something which will change them, forever, for the better. It feels like having a warm blanket draped around his shoulders.
Perhaps, Jack wonders, they also mean community, because the reverend wades through the congregation right over to them just as soon as the service is over and shakes Jack's hand with a big smile on his face.
"Sir! I'm so glad that you could make it – I'm afraid I didn't catch your name when we last met?"
"Jack, Jack Kelly." He smiles back, nudging Katherine forward with the hand he has resting on the small of her back. "An' this Katherine, my wife."
"Lovely to meet you." Katherine smiles, sticking a hand out to shake the Reverend's.
The reverend, easier to see now, now that Jack isn't looking at him through tear-filled eyes, smiles at them. He looks younger, even, than Jack remembers, no older than thirty-one or thirty-two, with dark straight hair, olive skin, and a short beard. He still smiles far more than any minister that Jack's ever seen, in a way that makes Jack a little bit nervous. This man isn't like Reverend Bates; he could match Jack in a fight. Sure, he seems nice, but Jack forces himself to hold back a little in his trust. Just in case.
"I see you've already met Mrs. Margery Evans?"
"Indeed, they have, Reverend." Marge smiles, joining the conversation.
"Well, Marge, this is the very lady I mentioned to you." The reverend gestures to Katherine.
"Oh, ducky, how nice! Come on, let us you and I go and get a cup of coffee, hm?" Marge leads Katherine over to a little trestle table where a pot of coffee and plate of biscuits are set out, being picked at by various members of the congregation. She pours them both a coffee, tugs Katherine into a quiet corner, and straight out asks about the miscarriage.
Katherine expects to find this approach too forward, but she just doesn't. If anything, it's refreshing, being able to just tell somebody about it, other than Jack, of course. Everybody has been wonderful, but they're all treading on eggshells around her, too afraid to mention Lucy or anything remotely to do with her. And Marge gets it. She tells Katherine that it's normal to feel the way that she does and explains that she had three miscarriages, the horror of which Katherine can scarcely imagine. One has wrecked her. Three would kill her. And Marge, who before wouldn't shut up, actually turns out to be a pretty good listener. So, when she puts her hand on Katherine's shoulder and asks her how she's doing, Katherine surprises even herself with her honesty.
"A bit wrecked. I've never needed the hope of Christ more, but it just feels so far away."
"Wait a moment –" Marge says, jumping to her feet and wandering over to a small bookshelf set up against the partition wall that separates the church from its little foyer, "- we have a little lending library here of different books… aha! Take this home and give it a read. There's a passage on one of those dog-eared pages that might help." Marge holds out a book in a worn burgundy binding. In half-faded gold letters across the front is the title: Collected Sermons of Charles H. Spurgeon. "And when do you go back to work? Are you back already?"
"No," Katherine shakes her head, taking the book with something like reverence, "Thursday."
"You must come for tea on Wednesday, then." Marge declares decisively, handing her a slip of paper with her address scribbled on it. "Here is my address, I shall expect you at three. In the meantime, anything you need, anything at all, you must contact me. Especially if you don't have your family around."
"Thank you." She says, and she means it. "Thank you so much."
When Katherine walks out of the church, into the little courtyard, blinking in the bright sunlight, it takes her a moment to spot Jack. When she does, though, well. He's laughing.
Before Lucy rarely an hour would pass without a laugh passing his lips at least once. Since Lucy, he's only really, properly laughed once. This? This is wonderful. She won't say anything, of course, because she knows how she felt when her sister passed, the guilt that wracked her when she laughed or smiled or forgot her sadness in the first few weeks after her death. But still. He's laughing. Jack is at his most handsome when he laughs, tall, relaxed, eyes crinkled at the corners, his grin wide and bright. He's stood in a huddle of a few other men around his age under a tree in the corner of the courtyard, a few of whom have their arms around women. She wanders over, tentative, not wanting to intrude, to ruin his fun. But his face lights up when he sees her and he beckons for her to join them.
…
"Hey." Jack greets her, slipping back into their bedroom that night.
He's been locking up the house, hanging the keys on the hook by the door so that they can find them quickly. It's silly, Katherine knows, that still after a year she's terrified of being trapped inside of a burning house, but Jack never says anything about it, and he always remembers to put them there. Smalls is sleeping on their sofa at the moment, having hit on hard times after getting a nasty cough and wiping out his savings on medicine. The two of them have chatted about it, offered to pay for the medicine, but Smalls is too proud to hear of it, so instead Jack bids him goodnight each night as he locks the front door.
"Hey." She smiles from their bed where she's curled up with her book.
"'S that what the lady from church gave you?" Jack jerks his chin toward the book.
"Yes." She turns the book so that he can see the cover. "It's a book of sermons."
"Fascinatin'." He deadpans, wrinkling his nose as he slides into bed beside her.
Katherine rolls her eyes but snuggles into him anyway, finding the cradle of him between his arm and his chest and nestling herself there. "There's a passage that Marge wanted me to read."
"Go on then."
"Out loud?"
"Y'know I love you readin' to me." Jack replies, leaning his head back on headboard.
Katherine clears her throat. "I think it's this underlined bit that she meant: Hope itself is like a star – not to be seen in the sunshine of prosperity, and only to be discovered in the night of adversity."
Jack stays very quiet for a very long time, so long that Katherine would almost think that he'd fallen asleep if she didn't know the pattern of his breathing so well, the way that it slows into something deeper when sleep takes him. She just waits, leaning herself against him. He's so much better than he used to be, but she still sometimes feels like saying something just slightly wrong might send him into one of those black moods that chase him out of the house to walk around and cool off for hours.
"D'you think she's up there somewhere?" He finally asks. When she turns her head to look at him, he has his eyes open, staring up at the ceiling of their room.
"In heaven?" She asks, following his eyeline. "Or in the stars?"
"Either." Jack doesn't suppose it really matters, so long as she's somewhere better than here.
"I like to think so. I suppose she's like a star – we can't always see her, but she's there."
Katherine waits for his response, but it's a long time coming. She hears his intake of breath, the one he has before he asks a question, but he holds it a long while, as if mulling it over, rolling the question over his tongue like a fine wine, judging it, savouring it, wondering whether it's worth the price tag.
"An'…" Jack clears his throat, shifting beside and beneath her, "is that what God's like?"
Katherine hesitates. He really does know how to ask the difficult theological questions, doesn't he? It's scaring her a little, why he's asking, after everything with church earlier. She worries that perhaps it's been too overwhelming for him, that it's pushed him even further away, that he feels so betrayed by God that he can never return to a place of worship again. And the awful thing is, she understands. She understands why Lucy isn't here, in her head, knows that it's all part of the plan. But the rest? That feeling of betrayal, of why me? That she knows all too well.
"Sort of. Why do you ask?"
Jack just shrugs in response, clamming up tight. Katherine could kick herself for shutting him down like this. But when she glances up at him, that curtain that he draws around his features has left a chink of light exposed. She clings to that, nudging him with her foot.
"Hey. It's me, Jack. Talk to me."
"I still ain't sure 'bout this whole God loves you thing, so don't start, alright?" He shifts again, raising a hand defensively. "I jus'… I feels like there's somethin' missin'. Don't know if it's 'cos o' Luce, but y'know, I tried prayin'. In church, today. I ain't never felt nothin' before, not when the nuns used to make us. But this time I felt… somethin'." He doesn't quite meet her eyes. It sounds stupid, he knows, and he wishes that he has all of the words that Katherine does so that he could explain it properly. Katherine doesn't reply, as if she's waiting for him to say something else, to describe it more fully, whatever the hell it was, a spiritual experience or some shit like that. Jack swipes at his nose, shrugging again, and laughs a little even though it isn't very funny at all. "An' I figures, 'f God's the one who's got our Lucy, it probably pays to be on his good side, right?"
She rolls onto her front, half draping herself over him, shaking her head in wonder. Jack shoots her a glance, worried somehow, just a little, but she just takes his face in her hands, his good, strong face, and kisses him.
"You never cease to amaze me, Jack Kelly."