Free Bookends by Liz Curtis Higgs Page A

pull over on the gravel shoulder and settle things. Throwing the gearshift into park, he turned around in his seat and grabbed Trix’s collar.
    “This isn’t playtime, Trix.” Goldens loved nothing more than pleasing their masters, so Jonas made sure she understood he was not at all pleased. Trix slumped down in the backseat with a canine sigh, repentant and humbled, while Emilie slowly rose to a sitting position in the front, easing back against the seat with noticeable caution, still balancing the tape recorder on her lap.
    “She’ll be fine now, Dr. Getz. Trix loves people, that’s all.” He steered the car back onto Route 501, checking the rearview mirror to be certain the retriever was still minding her manners. “Once we get out in the field at Middle Creek, you’ll see what a well-behaved girl she can be.”
    Beneath Emilie’s calm exterior, he sensed a slight bristle.
    “Is that how you like all your females? Well behaved?”
    “No, not all of ’em. Just my dogs.”
Good grief, is she always this cranky in the morning?
“We’ll be on Kleinfeltersville Road before you know it. Meantime, help yourself to a cup of coffee. There’s a thermos around here somewhere.”
    She found it jammed between their seats. Opening it with great care, she poured herself little more than a swallow of the steaming liquid. Even then, she wrinkled her nose.
    “Lemme guess.” He grimaced. “Tea drinker.”
    She nodded between sips.
    “Figures. You didn’t seem too enamored of the stuff they handed out on Christmas Eve.”
    “No, but I drank it,” she reminded him. “The lovefeast is liturgy, not sustenance. When Count Zinzendorf unintentionally served the first lovefeast in 1727, it was meant to be a time of fellowship and worship.”
    “Funny—” he wrinkled his forehead, struggling to recall a vague reference he’d read in
The Moravian
—“I thought it was lunch.”
    “Well, yes.” She waved her hand dismissively. “It might have started outthat way, but even then he could see the spiritual significance of it all.”
    Jonas couldn’t help himself. “You were there, of course.”
    “Very amusing.” She sipped her coffee, then grimaced. “All our research indicates that the lovefeast began August 13, the day the Renewed
Unitas Fratrum
was born.”
    “If you say so, Doc.” Maybe he didn’t have all the details down, but he remembered the important stuff. About how the day was compared to Pentecost. About the impassioned, twenty-something Zinzendorf offering a fervent prayer that so moved the assembly that the Holy Spirit filled the place and no one wanted to go home for the noonday meal.
    Instead the Count ordered simple foods to be brought and shared.
    The first lovefeast.
    “Yeah, that was quite a day, Doc.” They drove along in a neutral silence for another fifteen minutes, until he turned left along a winding country road, the nature preserve almost in sight. “So. Ready to go owling?”
    She peered through the glass into the morning darkness. “Owling? That’s a word?”
    He turned left at the Middle Creek entrance, heading uphill toward the Visitor Center. “It is to a birder. You have all the bait we need in your lap.” He pointed to the tape recorder, then pulled into the parking lot, already filling up with assorted vehicles. “Bring that along, will you? C’mon, Trix, the fun has already begun.”
    Released from her backseat prison, Trix let out a bark of enthusiasm and leaped through the open door, wagging and wiggling as Jonas snapped a leash on her collar. With other dogs around, it was a necessity. He led the way as Emilie—tape recorder in one hand, Helen’s binoculars in the other—picked her way across the stiff grass toward the group of people congregated around a large map. Most of the crew had elaborate spotting scopes on tripods, and for a heartbeat, Jonas regretted leaving his at home. Truth was, though, between a frisky golden and a feisty female, his hands were