The Color Of Light. Emilie Richards
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faced Analiese, and up close she saw his eyes were wild, his pupils distended. She was still several feet away but his smell preceded him. Poverty and despair, vomit and urine. She steeled herself not to react, and watched as the young woman found her feet and disappeared into the crowd.
“How ’bout you?” he asked, a grin revealing decaying teeth. “Am I scaring you enough to give me some money?”
“Why don’t I see if I can find somebody with Rescue Ministries to help you? They have better solutions.”
He moved closer. She refused to retreat. In that moment it seemed that she’d been retreating all day. There was no sexton’s closet here, and the time had come to stand her ground.
“I need money!”
Now she smelled alcohol, too, although her first guess had been drugs. She felt and heard movement behind her, and she hoped that reinforcements were closing in.
“I know you do,” she said calmly. “I can get you help. Come with me and we’ll find somebody at the front who can get you dinner and shelter for the night.”
Analiese had plenty of street smarts. Before seminary she had been a broadcast journalist who had done stories in some of San Diego’s meanest neighborhoods, so she was paying close attention to the man’s body language. Unfortunately she had overestimated how drunk he was. She hadn’t expected him to move so quickly. One moment he was an arm’s length away, the next his hands were closing around her neck. She only had time for a quick gasp before her arms came up between his, and she slammed them against his wrists to break his grip.
Furious, he grabbed her again, and this time he shoved her with all his considerable strength.
The fall seemed to take forever, but once she hit the grass, she rolled to her side and tried to push upright. The man who had attacked her was screaming now, as if he’d been tackled. At the moment she couldn’t worry about him. She was still lying on the ground. The people closest to her tried to make room to help, but the crowd surrounding them was expanding and pushing in from the edges. She was jostled as people tried to clear a space. Somebody’s Doc Martens stomped on her hand.
“Give her some room!”
Analiese looked up and just glimpsed a man hovering protectively over her, arm extended. She grabbed his hand gratefully, and he hauled her to her feet.
Once there she tried to thank him, but the crowd surged around her, packing together so tightly that the moment she dropped his hand he disappeared. Police arrived, and she was jostled still more as people made room. Seconds later she glimpsed her attacker being dragged away, screeching about his rights. The police were speaking calmly and trying to convince him to walk on his own, partly, she was sure, because they were surrounded by advocates for the homeless who were watching carefully.
A man in shorts and a tie-dyed T-shirt asked if she was all right, and she nodded, but he wasn’t the one who had rescued her. That man had been taller and dark-haired.
Somebody took her elbow, and she whirled to find Ethan looking down at her. He put his other arm around her and hugged her quickly. “Ana, are you all right?”
She thought she was, although she might sport bruises on her neck and the outline of a heel on her hand as a reminder of the past moments.
“Think so,” she said, shaking her hand back and forth to be sure.
“The police have things under control.” Ethan stepped away a bit and pointed toward the edge of the crowd. “Not his lucky day. He ran right into them after he shoved you.”
“He shouldn’t have gotten out of bed this morning either.”
He smiled warmly, but he continued to hold her elbow to steady her. “Know why he pushed you?”
“Because I was in easy reach and wanted to give him help he’s not ready for. He’s hungry, frightened, tired, angry—”
“You’re being kind. Don’t forget drunk or high. He didn’t seem too steady on his feet.”
“That, too.”
“Let’s see if we can fight our way to the edge.” Ethan guided her in that direction.
“I’d better head for the speakers’ stand.”
“You can make your way up front once we’re out of the throng. Afterward you might want to find the police. You probably should tell them what happened.”
She stayed close to Ethan, letting him clear a path. Out of the worst of the crowd she brushed off her skirt and straightened her blazer. She only rarely wore a clerical collar. Today she wore a burgundy scarf knotted over a light pullover. When she spoke, her role as senior minister of one of the largest Protestant churches in Asheville, North Carolina, should lend enough weight without trappings.
On the other hand, maybe if she had been wearing her collar, the man who had attacked her would have thought better of it.
Definitely an unworthy thought. She had another as she wondered if wearing her collar more often would help with the council executive committee. She sighed and stood still for Ethan’s inspection.
“Am I presentable?”
Another smile. He stretched out his hand and brushed something off her cheek, rubbing it with the tips of his fingers until he was satisfied. “You’re sure you’re okay?”
“He gave me a great opening for my speech. Life on the streets is difficult, even terrifying, and it can have consequences for everybody, the homeless and the onlookers. We need to help people rebuild their lives.”
“Are you practicing?”
She answered his smile with one of her own. “Thank you. I’m glad you found me.”
“You so rarely need help, it was a pleasure.”
She liked the way Ethan always made it clear he approved of her. There was nothing between them except friendship, but he reminded her that she was a woman as well as a pastor.
“You held your own at the meeting this afternoon,” he said. “Now go hold your own up there.” He nodded to the front. “I’ll find you when it’s over.”
She squeezed his hand in thanks, and then one final time she brushed off her skirt and started around the crowd.
She reached the stand and watched as another speaker, a local homeless advocate, stood to offer her a hand up the rickety steps. At the top, before she greeted the others on the platform, she turned for a quick survey of the crowd. She scanned the closest faces, but her goal was impossible.
Even though she’d only glimpsed him, the man who had protected her and helped her off the ground had looked disturbingly familiar. For just a moment she would have sworn it was Isaiah Colburn, who, the last time she had communicated with him, was serving a Catholic parish in San Diego.
Father Isaiah Colburn who, in recent years, had carefully, tactfully, separated himself from the young Protestant minister he had once befriended, the same young woman who, despite knowing the pitfalls, had fallen hopelessly in love with him.
FOURTEEN-YEAR-OLD SHILOH FOWLER was so used to disappointment that when the old lady in the church office told her it was too late in the day to get help and the Fowler family should try elsewhere, she wasn’t surprised.
“We’ve tried elsewhere,” she explained, although she knew better than to think continuing the discussion would make a difference. “My mother’s sick, and we just need a place to stay for tonight so she’ll be out of the cold. I’m not asking for anything for myself.”
Shiloh hated sympathy, but for once she was sort of glad to see it in this stranger’s eyes. On the other hand, as always, sympathy wasn’t much help.
“I don’t know what