"I told Tom to come in when he was finished, and I'm pretty sure I just saw a figure walking up the sidewalk. I'm going to scoot through the office and go see."
"I can come with you. Although I left my purse in the car."
He waved a hand. "I'll deal with it. I might've just been seeing things."
She kind of thought he might be saying that so she wouldn't follow him. But she didn't want to push in when he specifically told her not to. Maybe he wanted her to watch her kids. She wasn't sure.
Regardless, she did not follow him out, but turned, looking around the room one more time, trying to think of anything he had missed. She saw a shelf of books, and even a broom, a dustpan, and a sweeper in the corner. Along with boxes of disinfectant wipes. And tissues.
Truly, she thought he'd thought of everything.
And then she thought about how comfortable it was to talk to him. And how impressed she was that he applied the Bible so casually yet competently to everyday life.
There was definitely a lot to admire in Mark Stevens.
Chapter 11
The rattling of the parsonage windows woke Mark from a restless sleep.
Gusts of wind so strong he braced himself for the windows to implode and shatter all over the floor rocked the house.
He went from being partially asleep to wide awake in an instant. Sitting up, he grabbed his phone, bringing up the weather app.
Red highlighted words swam before his eyes before they focused.Storm gathering intensity, worse than forecasters feared.
Yeah, he could see that. He hadn't expected this terrible wind. Sheltered as they were in the mountains, it seemed more like a blizzard than anything he could remember.
Throwing his feet over the side of the bed, he looked out to see snow whipping by, and the windows rattled again.
He reached over to turn his bedside light on so he could see to find his shoes, which he'd left beside the bed so he could find them easily in case he got up in the middle of the night, but when he snapped the light, nothing happened.
It took a moment to register. The electricity was out.
That sent a new spike of adrenaline through him, as he ran overin his mind the things that he needed to do. Go start the generator, make sure there was heat in the fellowship hall, then... see if the roads were clear enough for him to jump in his car and drive around to see if anyone needed him to pick them up and bring them to the church.
He glanced out the window, trying to see how much snow had fallen.
With the wind, it was hard to tell, but he could still see some bare spots in the church parking lot, so he guessed that it was less than a couple of inches. He would still be able to get around.
Using his phone as a flashlight, he found where he'd set his clothes in a pile and quickly got dressed.
There was a part of him that was excited—this was his first real test as pastor of the Mistletoe Meadows community. Part of him was scared. The townspeople were used to Pastor Johnson and the way he did things, and maybe Mark would not measure up. Part of him had his mind on all of his parishioners, but there was one that came to the forefront of his mind, and as he hurried out to start the generator and make sure the heat was working in the fellowship hall, Olivia and her twins took up most of his thoughts. He wouldn’t be able to concentrate on helping everyone else until he was sure she was taken care of.
As soon as he made sure the fellowship hall was warming, he got in his car and drove directly to her place.
He could look over and see that the streetlights were out, and he was pretty sure that meant that Olivia did not have heat.
If she lived above the shop with her boys, it was probably getting pretty cold, although he had no way of knowing what time the lights had gone out.
There were elderly people in his congregation, and several who had no close relatives to check on them, and he knew he couldn't spend as much time as he wanted to with Olivia, but he justified stopping at her place first because if he could get her to go over to the fellowship hall, she could help all the people who showed upwhile he drove around to see if there was anyone else he could help.
That seemed very logical in his brain, but if he were being honest, he knew the main reason he went over there first was because it was where he wanted to be.
He wished he would've gotten her phone number earlier as he knocked on the door. Could she even hear him over the roaring of the wind? If her windows were rattling the way his were, she probably couldn't.
He waited for a bit, and then rapped as hard as he could again.
What was he going to do if she didn't answer? He was almost certain she had no electricity.
