Dear Life

that he was probably a very up-to-date minister who went in more for the symbolic.
    Some sort of search had to be carried out, never mind the weather. Back sheds and an old horse barn unused for years had to be pried open and ransacked in case she had taken shelter there. Nothing came to light. The local radio station was alerted and broadcast a description.
    If Leah had been hitchhiking, Ray thought, she might have been picked up before the storm got started, which could be good or bad.
    The broadcast said that she was a little under average height—Ray would have said a little over—and that she had straight medium-brown hair. He would have said very dark brown, close to black.
    Her father did not take part in the search; nor did any of her brothers. Of course, the boys were younger than she was and would never have got out of the house without the father’s consent anyway. When Ray went around to the house on foot and made it through to the door, it was hardly opened, and the father didn’t waste any time telling him that the girl was most likely a runaway. Her punishment was out of his hands and in God’s now. There was no invitation to Ray to come in and thaw himself out. Perhaps there was still no heat in the house.
    The storm did die down, around the middle of the next day. The snowplows got out and cleared the town streets. The county plows took over the highway. The drivers were told to keep their eyes open for a body frozen in the drifts.
    The day after that, the mail truck came through and there was a letter. It was addressed not to anyone in Leah’s family but to the minister and his wife. It was from Leah, to report that she had got married. The bridegroom was the minister’s son, who was a saxophone player in a jazz band. He had added the words “Surprise Surprise” at the bottom of the page. Or so it was reported, though Isabel asked how anybody could know that, unless they were in the habit of steaming envelopes open at the post office.
    The sax player hadn’t lived in this town when he was a child. His father had been posted elsewhere then. And he had visited very rarely. Most people could not even have told you what he looked like. He never attended church. He had brought a woman home a couple of years ago. Very made-up and dressy. It was said that she was his wife, but apparently she hadn’t been.
    How often had the girl been in the minister’s house, doingthe ironing, when the sax player was there? Some people had worked it out. It would have been one time only. This was what Ray heard at the police station, where gossip could flourish as well as it did among women.
    Isabel thought it was a great story. And not the elopers’ fault. They had not ordered the snowstorm, after all.
    It turned out that she herself had some slight knowledge of the sax player. She had run into him at the post office once, when he happened to be home and she was having one of her spells of being well enough to go out. She had sent away for a record but it hadn’t come. He had asked her what it was and she had told him. Something she could not remember now. He’d told her then about his own involvement with a different kind of music. Something had already made her sure that he wasn’t a local. The way he leaned into her and the way he smelled strongly of Juicy Fruit gum. He didn’t mention the parsonage, but somebody else told her of the connection, after he had wished her good-bye and good luck.
    Just a little bit flirtatious, or sure of his welcome. Some nonsense about letting him come and listen to the record if it ever arrived. She hoped she was meant to take that as a joke.
    She teased Ray, wondering if it was on account of his descriptions of the wide world via the movies that the girl had got the idea.
    Ray did not reveal and could hardly believe the desolation he had felt during the time when the girl was missing. He was, of course, greatly relieved when he found out what had happened.
    Still, she was gone. In a not entirely unusual or unhopefulway, she was gone. Absurdly, he felt offended. As if she could have shown some inkling, at least, that there was another part of her life.
    Her parents and all the other children were soon gone as well, and it seemed that nobody knew where.
    The minister and his wife did not leave town when he retired.
    They were able to keep the same house and it was often still referred to as the parsonage, although it was not really that anymore. The new minister’s