Grace in Deep Waters

Chapter 1

1

Late 1990s

Sydney, Australia

William had buried his youngest daughter three days ago.

He hadn’t technically done the burying, but she was buried nonetheless, and now it was 9:59 on Sunday morning. William rolled his shoulders and took a breath to relax himself. His church leaders had urged him to take the month off, assuring him everyone would understand.

Everyone might understand, but William couldn’t do it. Sit in the house and stare at the wall? Never. He’d go crazy. Much better to be in his normal environment, here at church. Doing what he loved and what people loved him to do.

The music swung into the bridge to announce his entrance. William braced himself. As he heard the last notes, he strode from behind the curtain and across the stage. The lights blinded him for the first few seconds.

Out there were his people. His congregation. Every week he provided them with the spiritual food they longed for. Every week he went home pumped up, having sent them home happy, replete with the words he’d digested and regurgitated for them.

William scanned the people in front of him. Years ago, his mentor had taught him to concentrate on a small selection of representative people. Make them feel he was speaking especially for them. It was a technique he’d perfected, one of the secrets of his success. And he was successful. Victory Church had been dying when he’d started here, and now look at it. Thousands of members. Sure, some left each year, but this church wasn’t about those who couldn’t fit in. There were plenty of other places for those kinds of people. This was a church for winners. People like William.

A winner? Really? What about Blanche?

He mentally squelched the questions before they could bloom into doubt. Blanche would be back home soon. They’d had a ding-dong all-guns-blazing fight, but she’d understand he’d been under pressure. Blanche knew his foibles—she’d been married to him long enough. She’d come around in time. She always did—not that she disagreed with him often. In fact, she’d only become argumentative the last few weeks. That was Esther’s influence, but Esther wouldn’t be influencing anyone any more.

William shivered. Esther was another thing he didn’t want to think about. Time to pull himself together. Do what he did best.

“This is the seventh of our sermons on heroes of the faith.” Noah and Abraham. Joseph and Moses. Joshua and Gideon. This morning it was David’s turn.

“The Philistines came out to fight against the Israelites. They occupied one hill and the Israelites another, with a valley in between the two armies.” He gave a quick summary to give the context. A few years ago he’d done training with a professional storyteller and learned people preferred hearing stories over a dry Bible reading. Telling stories meant he could skip the tongue-twisting names and jazz things up a little. Those biblical authors had written for a different audience. A different culture in more primitive times. Nowadays he needed to keep the stories short and snappy.

“The Philistines sent out their champion, Goliath. He was three metres tall and wore bronze armour weighing nearly sixty kilos.” William hefted an imaginary spear. “His spearhead alone weighed seven kilos.”

The men in the congregation loved these details. They sat up taller as though they were shouldering their own armour.

“Goliath stood and shouted, ‘Choose a man and have him come down to me. If he is able to fight and kill me, we will be your subjects, but if I overcome him, you will become our subjects.’”

William used his voice to project the Israelites’ fear, the Philistines’ bravado. The congregation gazed at him with rapt expressions, and the teenager in the front row shivered. Good. He was in top form, despite the dramas of the last few days. Another person in the third row jerked back as the imaginary stone flew through the air and landed in the centre of Goliath’s forehead. Exactly the kind of reaction he was after. He should have been an actor.

William had practiced his story ten times the day before. It kept his mind off other things like the emptiness of the house without Blanche and wondering when she’d be home. If Blanche stayed away more than a week or two, the elders were going to start asking questions. Awkward questions. He’d already had to evade several curious church members who wanted to know why they hadn’t seen Blanche for a few weeks. It was none of their business, and he had managed to palm them off with the excuse of a sick relative. Not a lie. Specifics would lead to questions about why he wasn’t with his wife. Maybe he should send flowers to her. Women usually appreciated flowers when they were upset.

“‘So David triumphed over Goliath with a sling and a stone. Without a sword in his hand, he struck down the Philistine and killed him.’”

William had memorised the line because the rhythm was perfect. Sometimes even he couldn’t improve on those biblical writers. He paraphrased the next part. “Then David ran over and stood above Goliath. He took Goliath’s own sword and hacked off his head.” Hacked sounded so much better than cut. “When the Philistines saw their hero was dead, they turned and ran. And so Israel conquered the Philistines.”

The story had already taken a quarter of his sermon time. This week he hadn’t been able to concentrate to prepare his normal quality of content. Instead, he’d focused on polishing what he had and working out a memorable title and section headings. All the content in the world wasn’t much help if he bored people to death.

“Do you have giant-sized issues in your life? Issues that seem insurmountable? Issues well beyond your own ability to deal with?” Rhetorical questions, relevant to people’s everyday lives, were one of his favourite ways to start. They snared people’s interest from the first line. Pertinent questions, plus humour, plus stories, equalled a perfect formula for success. It was something he was drilling into Nick, his protégé.

“Know your enemy.” William enunciated his first point. He listed off possible enemies—sickness, difficult people or work challenges. His listeners nodded. He avoided mentioning cancer. Would anyone notice? If only Esther had shown more faith. Her prayers had been half-hearted from the start.

But yours weren’t.

Where had this pesky thought come from? There had to be some explanation for why Esther hadn’t been healed.

All over the auditorium, people were maintaining eye contact as he launched into his second point, “Know your God.” This was a point he made so often, he had to work hard to make it sound new. After all, he couldn’t say “God is powerful” every week.

Nick frowned from the front row. William would have to speak to him after the service. He and Nick were as close as a father and son, but Nick couldn’t appear to disagree with William. Not in public. Disunity among staff members destroyed churches. Ripped them apart. That was one reason Esther had had to leave. Her doubts threatened everything he’d built.

A shiver of sadness slithered through him. If only she had dealt with her giants and come home.

As usual, the congregation were eating out of his hand by the end of the final point, “Nail your giant.” He had them repeat the phrase several times. The final shout would probably have registered on the Richter scale. Thirty minutes of speaking, and he felt like he’d completed an Ironman race.

The musical postlude swelled, and William sat down on the preacher’s chair and mopped his brow with his handkerchief. That had gone well. He bowed his head to pray and his coat rustled. He’d absentmindedly slipped the envelope he’d found on his church desk this morning into the inner pocket. It had been more than twenty years since he’d seen his mother’s handwriting. She’d stopped writing to him after he’d marked half a dozen of her letters ‘return to sender’. Why would she be writing to him now? Considering its timing, the letter wouldn’t say anything he wanted to hear. He should toss it and be done with it.

But what if it was from Esther? A pressure rose in his throat, and he covered his mouth lest it erupt. They’d exchanged hard words recently, but she’d always been tractable. It wouldn’t be like her to hold a grudge. He’d open the letter in a heartbeat if it was from Esther, but that wasn’t likely. The letter was probably a lecture from his mother, and he wasn’t in the mood for lectures. He pushed the envelope deeper into his pocket.

He’d put it in a safe place and read it when he was in the right mood.

Whenever that would be.