Out to Canaan by Jan Karon Page A

cottage. He stopped for a moment to wipe his face with a handkerchief when Dooley blew by him on his red bicycle.
    â€œHey!” shouted Dooley.
    â€œHey, yourself!” he shouted back.
    He saw the boy throw the bicycle down by Betty’s front steps, fling his helmet in the grass, and race to the door.
    â€œMama! Mama!” he called through the screen door.
    Pauline appeared at the door and let him in as the rector walked up to the porch.
    â€œMama, there’s a job at Hope House! Something in the dining room! I heard it at the store, they need somebody right now.”
    â€œOh.” Pauline grew pale and put her hand to the left side of her face. “I . . . don’t know.”
    â€œYou’ve waited tables, Mama, you can do it! You can do it!”
    He saw the look on Dooley’s face, and tried to swallow down a knot in his throat. In only a few years, this boy on a bicycle would be worth over a million dollars, maybe two million if the market stayed strong. Dooley wouldn’t know this until he was twenty-one, but the rector could see that Sadie Baxter had known exactly what she was doing when she drew up her will.
    â€œCome on, Mama, get dressed and go up there, I’ve got to get back to The Local or Avis’ll kill me, I got five deliveries.”
    â€œI’ll take you,” the rector told Pauline. “I’ll go home and get the car, won’t be a minute.” Hang the meeting in the parish hall at two o’clock.
    Pauline looked at him through the screen door, keeping her hand over the left side of her face. “Oh, but . . . I don’t have anything to . . . I don’t know . . .”
    â€œDon’t be afraid,” he said.
    Tears suddenly filled Pauline’s eyes, but she managed to smile. “OK,” she said, turning to look at her son. “I can do it.”
    â€œRight!” said Dooley. He charged through the door and raced down the steps and was away on his red bicycle, but not before the rector saw the flush of unguarded hope on his face.
    â€œI’ll be back,” said Father Tim. “Wear that blue skirt and white blouse, why don’t you? I thought you looked very . . .”—he wasn’t terribly good at this; he searched for a word—“nice . . . in that.”
    She gazed at him for a long moment, almost smiling, and disappeared down the hall.
    An attractive woman, he thought, tall and slender and surprisinglypoised, somehow. Her old life was written on her face, as all our lives are written, but something shone through that and transformed it.

    In his opinion, Hope House might have done a notch better on their personnel director, Lida Willis.
    â€œHow long have you been sober?” asked the stern-looking woman, eyeing Pauline.
    â€œA year and a half.”
    â€œWhat happened to turn you around?”
    â€œI prayed a prayer,” said Pauline, looking fully into the director’s cool gaze.
    â€œYou prayed a prayer?”
    Though he sat well across the room, feigning interest in a magazine, Father Tim felt the tension of this encounter. God was calling Pauline Barlowe to come up higher.
    â€œYes, ma’am.”
    â€œAre you in AA?”
    â€œNo, ma’am.”
    â€œWhy not?”
    â€œI don’t know. I . . . feel like God has healed me of drinkin’. I don’t crave it no more.”
    â€œShoney’s fired you for drinking on the job?”
    â€œYes. But they said that . . . when I was sober, I was the best they ever had.”
    â€œMiss Barlowe, what makes you think you might be right for this job?”
    â€œI understand being around food, I get along real well with people, and I’m not afraid of hard work.”
    The director sat back in her chair and looked at Pauline, but said nothing.
    â€œI need this job and would be really thankful to get it. I know if you call Sam Ward at