The Sparrow Sisters

For Emma, who dared me

A
ll stories are true. Some of them actually happened.”

Three sisters in the third pew nodded sharply in unison as John Hathaway looked out over his congregation; this made him stutter in an otherwise seamless sermon.

Patience Sparrow rocked in the pew until she made her sister Sorrel look away from the altar. Nettie Sparrow leaned in so that she could see both her sisters and smiled when she noticed they were already bent toward each other. Someone's stomach growled. It was Easter Sunday, and the women were ready to bolt. It wasn't that the sermon was dull, or that they already knew how right the Episcopal minister was. Some stories, told enough, became as true as their words. Any of these sisters could tell you that. It's just that they were
hungry.
The three swayed back and resumed their attentive poses.

In the last pew but two, Henry Carlyle sat on the aisle. He was not a regular at the First Episcopal Church on the green. He was too new in town to be a regular anywhere, although he thought the little bakery down the street from his house was so good he might start showing up there every day. The phone in his pocket vibrated against his thigh, and he put his hand over it before the woman next to him got the wrong idea. She'd already shot him several curious glances, and he'd let his heavy, dark forelock fall over his eye to block her out. Henry needed a haircut. The phone buzzed again. He knew it was work; Henry didn't have a friend in Granite Point, not yet anyway. Sampling the churches in town was his sorry attempt at meeting people. He watched the three heads a few pews up from his. He'd seen them laughing, acting up really, their shoulders shaking like naughty kids. A soft snort floated up from the redhead when the blonde in the middle nudged the others. Their behavior seemed so unlikely; one of the women (they were women, he had to acknowledge) had graying hair. Henry knew he'd have to slip out to answer the call, but before he did, he told himself a story about the women: how they couldn't convince their husbands or kids to come to church with them, how they were best friends or neighbors who would pick up their Easter desserts at the bakery after the service. But his story wasn't true because how could he know anything at all about the Sparrow Sisters? The true story would come later.