“They’re with their father,” said the woman. “We’re the Gows, Sharon and Dave. We’re the caretakers. I can give the reverend a note if I see him.” I handed her a card from the exterior clip of my phone case.
“Tell me how I can find the other pastor, Sara?” I said. “She must be here.”
“She’s in a conference with the council,” said Sharon Gow.
“What happened?”
The man began to shovel the front walk, sending up furiousjets of snow. “It’s not for us to talk about,” he said. “You can see what happened on the news. There were some camera people out here yesterday.”
My mother spoke up. “My daughter is the news. She’s a reporter. Please tell us where Ruth is.”
“That, ma’am, nobody knows,” said the presumed Dave Gow. “You can probably find the reverend, if you can call him that, at the home of Faith Nilson in Fond du Lac.”
Bemused, my mother and I quick-stepped our way back to our house.
“I don’t know who Faith Nilson is, but I’m not going to give her a chance to hang up on me,” I told Miranda. “I’m going to go see her in person.”
My mother wanted to come but had her book club that afternoon, so I headed to Fond du Lac alone. The drive wasn’t far and because Wisconsin, unlike other places, expects bad weather, the roads were clear, the snow crisp and immaculate. I’d looked up Faith Nilson’s address, which was across from a pretty little forested park. There being no other way to announce myself, I knocked at the door and a tall woman maybe five years older than I, with the longest blond braids I’d ever seen on an adult, opened the door.
“Hi?” she said.
“I’m Reenie Bigelow. I’m trying to find Roman Wild. I’m a friend of his daughter, Felicity, and I’m writing a story about her.”
“Which are you? A friend or writing a story?”
“Both,” I said. “Ruth and Roman were our neighbors. And now Felicity is in trouble and I work for a magazine...”
“We don’t want any trouble,” the woman said. “We have been given enough trouble as our portion.” I wondered if English was her first language.
“Are you Faith Nilson?”
“Yes. Roman is my husband.”
“I don’t understand.”
“In the eyes of God.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Go ask him then,” said Faith Nilson Wild-or-not-Wild. “He’s over there in the park with our children. If you see him, tell him to come home.”
I walked over to the low stone wall that encircled the small park. Snow was picturesquely drifting down on several groups of children who had braved the cold to chase each other and stuff the new powdery stuff down each other’s necks. Their mothers leaned against the climbing fort, like identical padded pillars of nylon. I pulled on my mittens and my whimsical red Beth Pedicini flat-top hat and began to pace the perimeter of the park’s child-sized evergreen maze, hoping that the head-clearing techniques in British novels, where people were always throwing on a mac and heading out for a walk, would literally work.
Suddenly, a voice just behind me said, “Reenie! What are you doing here?”
Roman had to be well into his fifties. But still, he was movie-star handsome. No, that’s wrong. He was cartoon handsome, like a Disney prince come to life: oversize square chin, even white teeth, dramatic scooped dark eyebrows.
“Hi, Reverend Wild. I’m actually... I’m looking for you,” I told him. His carefully concerned frown asked why, but his eyes told me he knew very well. “How are you?”
“I’ve had better days,” he said.
“I wanted to talk to you. I’m writing a story about Felicity. I’m a writer. I don’t know if you knew that.”
“I haven’t seen Felicity in over a year.”
“Okay, well. I’m sure you and Ruth have talked about Felicity?”
“I haven’t seen Ruth in a long while either,” he said, histone the deep, authoritative bass he used in the pulpit. “Ruth and I divorced.”
