Table of Contents
PENGUIN BOOKS
A COMMON LIFE
Jan Karon says she writes to give readers an extended family, and to applaud the extraordinary beauty of ordinary lives. Other bestselling novels in the Mitford Years series are At Home in Mitford; A Light in the Window; These High, Green Hills; Out to Canaan; and A New Song. Coming in 2002 is her seventh novel in the series, In This Mountain. Her childrens books include Miss Fannies Hat and Jeremy: The Tale of an Honest Bunny.
For my much-appreciated
nieces and nephews,
with love
David Craig, Jennifer Craig,
Lisa Knaack, Courtney Setzer, Monica Setzer,
Randy Setzer, and Taja Setzer
Give them wisdom and devotion in the ordering of their common life, that each may be to the other a strength in need, a counselor in perplexity, a comfort in sorrow, and a companion in joy.
Amen.
The Book of Common Prayer
Acknowledgments
Warm thanks to Viking Penguin Chairman Susan Petersen Kennedy; my agent, Liz Darhansoff; my editor, Carolyn Carlson; Paul Halley; Ruth Bush; Kay Auten; Betty Cox; Bishop Keith Ackerman; Father Charles L. Holt; Father Terry Sweeney; Harvey Karon; Martha J. Marcus; Gail Mayes; James Harris Podgers; Betty Pitts, and the late Hayden Pitts.
Special thanks to Father James Harris, a faithful friend to Mitford; to Victoria magazine for excerpts from Mitford fiction that appeared in its pages; and to the lovely Carolyn Clement, our own Hessie Mayhew, who gathered and arranged the wedding flowers which are captured in pastels by Donna Kae Nelson for the jacket of this book.
CHAPTER ONE
The Proposal
Father Timothy Kavanagh stood at the stone wall on the ridge above Mitford, watching the deepening blush of a late June sunset.
He conceded that it wasnt the worst way to celebrate a birthday, though hed secretly hoped to celebrate it with Cynthia. For years, hed tried to fool himself that his birthday meant very little or nothing, and so, if no cards appeared, or cake or presents, that would be fine.
Indeed, there had been no card from Cynthia, though hed received a stack from his parishioners, and certainly shed given no promise of cake or candles that definitively pronounced, This is it, Timothy, the day you appeared on earth, and though I know you dont really care about such things, were going to celebrate, anyway, because youre important to me. He was deeply ashamed to admit that hed waited for this from her; in truth, had expected it, hoped for it.
Hed known suffering in his thirty-eight years in the priesthood, though nearly always because of someone elses grief or affliction. Now he suffered for himself, for his maddening inability to let his walls down with her, to cast off his armor and simply and utterly love her. He had pled with God to consume his longing and his love, to cast it out as ashes and let nothing interfere with the fulfillment of the vows hed made years ago as an ordinand. Why should such a flame as this beat up in him now? He was sixty-two years old, he was beyond loving in the flesh! And yet, as desperately as hed prayed for his longing to be removed, he craved for it to be satisfied.
He remembered the times she had shut herself away from him, guarding her heart. The loss of her ravishing openness had left him cold as a stone, as if a great cloud had gone over the sun.
What if she were to shut herself away from him once and for all? He paced beside the low stone wall, forgetting the sunset over the valley.
Hed never understood much about his feelings toward Cynthia, but he knew and understood this: He didnt want to keep teetering on the edge, afraid to step forward, terrified to turn back.
The weight on his chest was palpable; hed felt it often since she moved next door and into his life. Yet it wasnt there because he loved her, it was there because he was afraid to love her completely.
Perhaps he would always have such a weight; perhaps there was no true liberation in love. And certainly he could not ask her to accept him as he wasflawed and frightened, not knowing.
He sank to his knees by the stone wall, and looked up and opened his mouth to speak, but instead caught his breath sharply.
A great flow of crimson and gold was spilling across the sky like lava, running molten from west to east. He watched, awestruck, as the pyre consumed the blue haze of the firmament and bathed the heavens with a glory that shook and moved him to his very depths.
Please! he whispered.
It was then that he felt a sensation of warmth welling in him, a kind of liquid infilling hed never experienced before. Something in his soul lifted up, as startling as a covey of quail breaking from the underbrush, and his heart acknowledged, suddenly and finally, that his love for her could not, would not be extinguished. He knew at last that no amount of effort, no amount of pleading with God would enable him to sustain any longer the desperate, wounding battle he had launched against loving her.
In a way he couldnt explain, and in the space of the merest instant, he knew hed come fully awake for the first time in his life.
He also knew that he wanted nothing more than to be with her, at her side, and that after all the wasted months, he couldnt afford to waste another moment. But what if hed waited too long, come to his senses too late?
He sprang to his feet, as relieved as if hed shaken off an approaching illness; then, animated by a power not his own, he found himself running.
There comes a time, his cousin Walter had said, when theres no turning back.
He felt the motion of his legs and the breeze on his skin and the hammering in his temples, as if he might somehow implode, all of it combusting into a sharp inner flame, a durable fire, a thousand hosannas.
Streaming with sweat, he raced down Old Church Lane and into the cool green enclosure of Baxter Park, his body as weightless as a glider borne on wings of ether, though his heart was heavy with dread. She could have gone away as shed done before... and this time, she might never come back.
The dark silhouette of the hedge separating the park from Cynthias house and the rectory appeared far away, another country, a landmark he might never reach.
As he drew closer, he saw that her house was dark, but his own was aglow with light in every window, as if some wonderful thing might be happening.
He bounded through the hedge; she was standing on his stoop. She held the door open, and the light from the kitchen gleamed behind her.
She stood there as if shed known the very moment he turned into the park and, sensing the urgency of his heart, felt her own compelled to greet it.
He ran up the steps, his chest heaving, as she stepped back and smiled at him. Happy birthday! she said.
