In This Mountain by Jan Karon Page B

back hurts, there’s a glare on the screen, the type is too small. The answer is to get your own laptop, like a normal person!” She snorted. “Sit down, I’ll read it to you. ‘Dear Father…’”
    She blinked and looked up. “You know, I can get you online in a heartbeat!”
    “I don’t want to be online!”
    “Anytime! Just let me know.”
    “No way,” he said, meaning it.
    “Stick your head in the sand, let life pass you by,” she muttered.
    “‘Dear Father…’”
    A sudden shower pecked at the windows. He heard his wife’s radio playing in her workroom.
    “‘What a thumping good idea to have your Mitford and ours become sister villages. I’m sure the whole business wants a bit of pomp to make it official. I can’t think what sort but I’m certain my wife Judy can make it click. She’s known for pulling off the best jumble sales in the realm, and our vicar is clever at this sort of thing, as well. We’ll all of us put our heads together and come up with something splendid, I’m sure. Sincere best wishes on your mission work in Tennessee, I believe that’s where a considerable amount of your whisky comes from. Will keep in touch through your good sec’y. Yours sincerely, Cedric Hart, Esq.’”
    “Terrific,” he said. “Anything else?”
    “That’s it. Anything you want to send before I look for Clyde Barlowe?”
    “This,” he said, handing her a piece of paper on which he’d scrawled a quote for Stuart Cullen.
    “You could do it yourself,” she said.
    “Blast it, Emma…”
    Church architecture , she typed, ought to be an earthly and temporal fulfillment of the Savior’s own prophesy that though the voices of men be still, the rocks and stones themselves will cry out with the laud and praise and honor due unto the King of kings and the Lord of lords. Michel di Giovanni, medieval builder and designer.
    “Who to?” she asked.
    “The bishop.”
    He watched her move the mouse around. “Done! Now. Ready if you are.”
    “Excellent!” He was on the edge of his seat.
    “But don’t get your hopes up,” she said, peering over her half-glasses.
    “Oh, no,” he said.
    “This will take a little time.”
    “Right.”
    She waved her hand at him. “So do what you have to do to your essay so I can input it before I leave.”
    Trying to cast the search from his mind, he created two paragraphs from one and crossed out a line that he’d formerly thought stunning. He noted by the faded type that the ribbon on his Royal manual was wearing through, a circumstance that Emma wouldn’t favor in the least when transcribing.
    The clock ticked, the rain pecked, the radio played Brahms. Couldn’t she somehow just go to the B’s and find it? What was taking so long?
    He deleted a paragraph, transposed two lines, and capitalized Blake as in William. Thirty minutes to find one ordinary name?
    “Lookit!” she exclaimed.
    “What?”
    “I’ll be darned.”
    “What?”
    “Well, well,” she said, paying him no attention at all.
    There was nothing to do but get up and look over her shoulder.
    “See there?” She jabbed her finger at a list of names.
    “Where?”
    “Right there. Cate Turner. Idn’t that Lace Turner’s daddy’s name?”
    “Why, yes.”
    “There’s only one Cate Turner on th’ list, and he’s livin’ in Hope Creek, that little town close to Holding.”
    “Lace isn’t anxious to know where her father is. Far from it. Keep looking.” In truth, Lace had been legally adopted by the Harpers and had taken their surname, though most Mitfordians, out of habit, still referred to her as Lace Turner.
    “Why are you in the T’ s, anyway?” he asked, irritated. “You can’t find Barlowe in the T’ s.”
    “I was lookin’ for Caldecott Turner, my high school sweetheart, we called him Cal.”
    “Emma, Emma…”
    “I already looked in th’ Barlowes.”
    “ And?”
    “And I hate to tell you, but there’s no Clyde Barlowe.”
    “There’s got to be a Clyde Barlowe.