Page 94 of Veil of Silence

Christian picked at the corner of the bulletin before whispering to her, “Everyone’s staring.”

“They’ll stop.”

“When?”

Nora had no answer for that.

The pianist began the opening hymn, and the congregation rose. Nora took a hymnal from the rack and opened it. Instead of turning to the announced number, she found “Softly and Tenderly.”

The page was nothing like the one left on her porch. The paper was white instead of yellowed, the title printed in darker lettering, and the notes arranged differently across the page. She glanced at the hymnals along the pew. All appeared to be the same edition.

The page she’d been sent hadn’t come from one of these.

Relief should have followed. Instead, uneasiness settled more deeply inside her. Churches rarely threw anything away. Somewhere in this building—or in any number of churches around Fog Lake—boxes of old hymnals could be gathering dust in a closet.

Whoever had sent the message only needed access to one.

Nora turned to the opening hymn.

“Trust and Obey.”

She remembered her and her siblings crowded beside their parents, the girls harmonizing while seven-year-old Christian complained that he couldn’t see the page.

Emotion caught in her throat.

Beside her, Christian had gone still. His fingers tightened around the hymnal until the thin pages bowed. When Nora glanced at him, he lowered his gaze and began singing, one beat behind everyone else.

Maybe the memories had overwhelmed him too.

Nora managed the final verse, though her voice barely rose above the congregation’s. Her wrist throbbed beneath its bandage, and every breath reminded her of the fall. Christian stood beside her, looking so much like the brother she remembered.

She wanted that to be enough.

The irony of the hymn wasn’t lost on her. Trust and obey—but trust what? Her family’s joy? Her own instincts? God’s silence?

Somewhere in the past three weeks, trusting had become synonymous with staying blind. And obedience had started to feel like cowardice.

She wasn’t sure that was what the hymn meant.

Nora had been sitting at the command table for nearly three hours when Pauline stopped beside her with a fresh pot of coffee.

“You look like you could use some of this.” Pauline pulled a foam cup from the stack. “Black?”

“Please.”

Pauline filled the cup and set it beside the search log. Steam curled off the top.

Nora wrapped her good hand around it. The heat soaked into her fingers. She took a swallow. Strong and bitter—exactly what she needed.

Her gaze dropped to the log. Row after row of teams, grids, and times. Nothing written beside any of them.

Her thoughts wouldn’t stay there.

The hymnals in the sanctuary hadn’t matched the page left on her porch. So it had come from somewhere else. Another book, another shelf, another closet in this building or one like it.

And Pauline knew where everything in this church was kept. Every box. Every forgotten thing nobody had ever thrown away.

Asking meant giving a reason. Nora didn’t have one she could say out loud.