Free Heat and Light by Jennifer Haigh

did it all himself. Long ago, before her marriage, her only action was to meet him in his car at the dinner break. Let me look at you, he said while he finished himself off. Ten minutes later she was back in the building.
    He did it all himself.
    THEY GET INTO THE VAN, Olivia in the backseat. On the front seat is an arrangement of yellow carnations, an all-purpose flower.
    Living Waters is in the center of town, in an old storefront. That’s not a church, Rich likes to say, and it’s true that the building looks deserted, its plate glass windows covered in butcher paper. The sign out front was dismantled long ago, but the ghost of the words is still visible, the old-fashioned cursive: Friedman’s Furniture.
    Heads turn as they enter the church. In her white dress Olivia is an angel, which is all that matters. Shelby had no time to fix her own hair or put in contact lenses, but she is just the mother. No one is looking at her.
    A mother is judged by her child’s appearance. This is an established fact.
    The church is as full as it ever gets, though Pastor Jess, eternally hopeful, sets out a dozen extra chairs. Shelby leaves her jacket and purse on her usual chair in the front row. She likes a clear view of the pastor—beautifully dressed, always, in an elegant pants suit. That surprised her at first, Shelby who’d always worn dresses to church. Now she sees the wisdom of it. A pastor shouldn’t have to worry about a run in her stockings, or her slip showing. She should move in her clothing as easily as men do, freeing her mind for higher things.
    She leads Olivia downstairs for the Children’s Service, songs, and a Bible reading and a discussion of the day’s lesson. Later they’d have milk and cookies while the adults enjoyed their coffee upstairs. A half-dozen little ones are already there, sitting cross-legged on colorful squares of carpet. The walls are decorated with their drawings, recognizable as Bible scenes because all the men have beards.
    Upstairs she takes her seat and gratefully closes her eyes. For years her own prayer had been an afterthought; she spent the hour dispensing toys and whispered scoldings, sitting between Braden and Olivia to keep them from acting up. Now, each Sunday, she feels her soul opening—moved in new ways, touched in places she has never been touched. It’s a thing no male minister would ever think of, that a person might actually pay attention to the service if her children were safely occupied elsewhere. If she were, for one blessed hour a week, left in peace.
    Even Pastor Wes—rest his soul—had never thought of such a thing.
    When Braden was born with the hole in his heart, it was PastorWes who sat at the hospital with Shelby. Who, during the surgery, held her hand in the waiting room, their heads bowed in prayer. It was the most significant event of her adult life, and yet no one remembered it. Not Rich, who pretended it had never happened; and certainly not Braden, transformed overnight from a sickly baby to a hyperactive toddler, full of mischief. Only Pastor Wes had been a true witness to her suffering, the waiting and wondering, the episodes of panic and dread. Certain that her baby was dying, she never guessed (nobody did) that in a few years Pastor Wes would be dead himself, of some young man’s cancer no one knew he had.
    The only true witness to her suffering. And Pastor Wes is gone, gone.
    The opening hymn is an old one Shelby remembers. It isn’t one she particularly cares for, and yet she finds herself moved by the words as she sings them.
    Â Â Â Â  Even though it be a cross that raiseth me,
    Â Â Â Â  still all my song shall be
    Â Â Â Â  nearer, my God, to Thee
    When Pastor Jess rises to give the lesson, Shelby leans forward in her seat. The pastor speaks to the congregation one person at a time, her eyes moving from face to face as though she notices everything about you: whether