The Third Grace by Deb Elkink Page A

the method, one lost the message. Eb was inclined to think that Aglaia was catching a ride on the myths without knowing where they were taking her. There was a difference between using art to get to a destination, and clinging to art for the sake of the art. What was Aglaia’s destination?
    Eb himself, in bitterness over the death of his wee daughter, had wasted years running in circles to escape facing a loving God. Father, he muttered now, always only a breath away from prayer, I hate to see Aglaia bound in some fatalistic cycle, going ’round and ’round as on a fairground carousel she can’t dismount. Give her the eyes to focus on you waiting in the sidelines to take her homeward.
    A drop hit Eb’s nose and another his cheek. He was just blocks away from Iona’s cooking and he was hungry. Dear Iona fed him so faithfully! Maybe they should splurge and go out to dinner one night soon. If his career hopes came to fruition, before long he’d be treating her to the freshest pineapple she’d ever tasted.

Eight
    A glaia hobbled out of her kitchen through the sliding doors to the third-story patio on Saturday morning with her favorite pottery mug in hand. The best thing about her apartment was the view of Mount Evans from her deck. She sat in the cool dawn with her left foot resting on the other patio chair. The snow-tipped Rockies glistened blue with ghostly transparency, floating on a bed of cloud. A distant thought sang into her mind like a hymn: I lift up my eyes to the hills—where does my help come from?
    Aglaia blinked away the words brought up by the sight of creation in its grandeur. Why couldn’t she enjoy the beauty of nature without the ever-present voice within pointing her to something beyond?
    The first time she’d seen the mountains was the year she was six. Her father had bolted a borrowed camper onto the back of the half-ton, and the four of them rattled over gravel roads and turned west onto the highway. How had Mom convinced Dad to leave the farm on such a sunny day, with hay to mow? The oscillation and the availability of Joel’s shoulder conspired to send her back to sleep, and hours later her lids fluttered open just as they rounded the curve of a lake—opened upon the broken reflection of the mountains on the watery surface, their jagged peaks pointing down as though heaven had fallen into earth.
    On the balcony, Aglaia covered her knees against the chilly breeze and wished for socks but was too lazy to move. She cupped her hands around the steaming coffee mug. On early mornings like this as a girl she used to catch her mother at the kitchen table with her elbows on the oilcloth reading, or resting her head on her forearms in prayer. Dad would come in from the chores and join Mom, the two of them murmuring in Plautdietsch while she peeped through the stairway banister and strained in vain to catch a secret before she’d burst in on them for a hug.
    â€œWhat are you doing up at this hour?” he asks, then lifts her up into his lap and rubs his nose into her neck, making her giggle. “Soon you’ll be too big to sit on my lap,” he threatens. But Daddy’s always ready to hug her when the work is done. He slides the Bible over—not the old German Bible anymore but the English one, so she and Joel can understand it—and reads the morning’s passage aloud, her nose tickly with the hay dust on his sleeve.
    â€œOn the morning of the third day there was thunder and lightning, with a thick cloud over the mountain.” His voice is rumbly. “And the whole mountain trembled violently.” The mountain of her father quakes beneath her and hugs her closer. “The Lord descended to the top of Mount Sinai and called Moses to the top of the mountain. So Moses went up. And God spoke all these words…”
    Aglaia assumed her parents still followed the morning devotional ritual, even with the house empty of offspring