"Grace, if you rearrange those hymnals one more time, I'm going to think you're avoiding me."

I didn't turn around. "I'm not avoiding you, Pastor Hill. I'm organizing."

"You organized them yesterday."

"They get disorganized."

He chuckled behind me, that low, patient sound I'd known since I was small enough to sit on the front pew and swing my feet. I straightened the last hymnal, squared its spine with its neighbors, and finally faced him. He stood in the aisle with his coat already on, keys jingling in his hand, looking at me the way he always did when he thought I was hiding something.

"You've been here since six," he said.

"Grandma likes her tea at seven. I had time."

"You had time to sleep, too."

I smiled instead of answering. Some habits weren't worth explaining… not the early mornings, not the hours spent dusting pews nobody would notice were dusted, not the quiet I chased through this building like it owed me something. Pastor Hill didn't push. He never did. He just patted the door frame twice, the way he always said goodbye, and told me to lock up when I was done.

The church emptied out around me, footsteps fading into the parking lot, a car door, an engine, and then nothing. Just me and the hush of a building built for listening.

I liked it best this way. Alone with the light coming slant through the stained glass, red and gold pooling on the floorboards like something spilled and left to dry. I sat in the third pew from the front… always the third, never closer… and let my hands go still in my lap for the first time all morning.

My phone buzzed. Ethan.

*Grandma okay? She didn't answer the house phone.*

*She's fine,* I typed back. *Probably napping. I'll check when I get home.*

*You always say that.*

*Because it's always true.*

He sent back a laughing emoji and nothing else, which was as close as my brother got to affection over text. Ethan worried the way other people breathed… constantly, without noticing they were doing it. He'd been that way since our parents died, like the weight of watching over the family had simply transferred to him without anyone asking if he wanted it. I loved him for it. I also wished, sometimes, that he'd let himself want something that wasn't safety.

I slid the phone back into my pocket and looked up at the cross above the altar, plain wood, no ornamentation, the way Pastor Hill liked it. *Nothing to distract from what matters,* he always said. I used to believe that quiet was the same as peace. Lately I wasn't so sure. Peace didn't usually feel this much like waiting.

The bell above the door chimed. I assumed it was Pastor Hill, back for something he'd forgotten… his glasses, maybe because he was always forgetting his glasses… so I didn't turn around right away.

"We've been looking for you," a voice said.

Not Pastor Hill.

I stood so fast the pew groaned under me. Two men stood just inside the doorway, and the first thing I noticed… the only thing I noticed, for one long, disbelieving second… was their eyes. Not brown, not blue, not any color a person's eyes should be. A pale, molten gold, catching the stained-glass light and throwing it back like something lit from within.

"I'm sorry," I said, and my voice came out steadier than I felt, "we're closed. Service was this morning."