“Thank you.” The best thing about him, as far as she was concerned, was that he loved his wife, and had absolutely no interest in Grace. None of them did. She had never felt as comfortable in her life. People went about their business, and sex seemed to be the last thing on their minds. No one seemed to notice her at all, especially not Tom and Bill, the two young partners that she worked for. She could have been five times her age, and she suspected they would never have noticed. They were nice to her, but they were all work. They worked as late as eight and nine o'clock sometimes, and she wondered if they ever saw their children. They even came in on weekends when they had briefs to write for the senior partners.

“Do you have any plans for Thanksgiving?” the secretary who worked with her asked in mid-November. She was a nice older woman with a thick waist and heavy legs, but a kindly face framed by gray hair, and she had never been married. Her name was Winifred Apgard and everyone called her Winnie.

“No, but I'll be fine,” Grace said comfortably. Holidays had never been her forte.

“You're not going home?” Grace shook her head and didn't mention that she didn't have one. Her apartment was home, and she was very self-sufficient.

“I'm going to Philadelphia to see my mother, or I'd have you over,” Winnie said apologetically. She looked like someone's maiden aunt, and she seemed to love her work, and the men she worked for. She clucked over them like a mother hen, and they teased her all the time. She told them to wear their galoshes when it snowed, and warned them of impending storms if they were driving home late.

It was a very different relationship from the one Tom and Bill had with Grace. It was almost as though they pretended not to see her. She wondered sometimes if her youth was threatening to them, or if their wives would have been annoyed, or if Winnie was less of a threat to them, and more comfortable. But it didn't seem to matter. They never said anything of a personal nature to Grace, and while they made jokes with Winnie sometimes, they were always poker-faced with Grace, as though they were being particularly careful not to get to know her. It was a far cry from Bob Swanson, but she liked that a lot about her job.

The week before Thanksgiving, she spent some time on her lunch hour making a few personal phone calls. She had meant to do it for a while, but she'd been busy settling into her apartment. But now it was time to start giving back again. It was something she intended to do for the rest of her life, something she felt she owed the people who had helped her. It was a debt she would never stop paying back. And it was time to begin again now.

She finally found what she was looking for.

The place was called St. Andrew's Shelter, and it was on the Lower East Side, on Delancey. There was a young priest in charge, and he had invited her to come down and meet them the following Sunday morning.

She took the subway down Lexington, changed trains, and got off at Delancey, and walked the rest of the way. It was a rough walk, she realized once she got there. There were bums wandering the streets aimlessly, drunks hunched over in doorways, dozing, or lying openly on the sidewalks. There were warehouses and tenements, and battered-looking stores with heavy gates. There were abandoned cars here and there, and some tough-looking kids cruising for trouble. They glanced at Grace as she walked along, but no one bothered her. And finally, she got to St. Andrew's. It was an old brownstone that looked like it was in pretty bad shape, with paint peeling off the doors, and a sign that was barely hanging by a thread, but there were people coming in and out, mostly women with kids, and a few young girls. One of them looked about fourteen, and Grace could see that she was hugely pregnant.

There were three young girls manning a reception desk when she got inside. They were talking and chattering, and one of them was doing her nails. And there was more noise than Grace thought she'd heard anywhere. The building sounded like it was teeming with voices and kids, there was an argument going on somewhere, there were blacks and whites, Chinese and Puerto Ricans. It looked like a microcosm of New York, or as though someone had hijacked a subway.

She asked for the young priest by name, and she waited a long time for him, watching the action, and when he appeared he was wearing jeans and an old battered oatmeal-colored sweater.

“Father Finnegan?” she asked curiously. He had a real twinkle about him, and he didn't look like a priest. He had bright red hair, and he looked like a kid. But crow's-feet near his eyes, in a sea of freckles on his fair skin, said he was somewhat older than the kid he looked like.

“Father Tim,” he corrected her with a grin. “Miss Adams?”

“Grace.” She smiled at him. You couldn't help but smile at him. He had a real look of joy about him.

“Let's go talk somewhere,” he said calmly, weaving in and out of half a dozen children chasing each other around the main lobby. The building looked as though it might have been a tenement, and had been opened up to provide a home to those who needed it. He had told her on the phone that they had only been in existence for five years and needed a lot of help, especially from volunteers. He had been thrilled to hear from her. She was one of the many miracles he said they needed.

He led her to a kitchen with three old dishwashers that had been donated to them and a big old-fashioned sink. There were posters on the walls, a big round table and some chairs, and two huge pots of coffee. He poured a cup for each of them, and led her to a small room with a desk and three chairs. It looked as though it had been a utility room and was now his office. The place was badly in need of paint and some decent furniture, but sitting there, talking to him, it was easy to forget anything but him. He had that kind of presence about him, and he was completely unaware of it, which was why everyone loved him.

“So what brings you here, Grace? Other than a good heart and a foolish nature?” He grinned at her again, and took a sip of steaming coffee, as his eyes danced with glee.

“I've done this kind of volunteer work before, in Chicago. At a place called St. Mary's.” She gave Paul Weinberg's name as a reference.

“I know it well. I'm from Chicago myself. Been here for twenty years now. And I know St. Mary's. In some ways, we've modeled ourselves on them. They run a very good operation.”

She told him the number of people they serviced at St. Mary's each year, and that there were as many as a dozen families in residence at any given time. Not to mention the people who came and went constantly in a day's time, and returned frequently to avail themselves of the comfort offered at St. Mary's.

“We offer the same thing here,” he said thoughtfully, looking at her. He wondered why someone like her wanted to do this kind of work. But he had learned long since not to question God's gifts to him, but to use them well. He had every intention of putting Grace to work at St. Andrew's. “We see more people here. Maybe close to eighty or a hundred a day, give or take a dozen, mostly give.” He grinned again. “We've had over a hundred women staying here at one time, sometimes twice as many children. Generally, we keep it to a dull roar, and we have about sixty women and a hundred and fifty kids here most of the time. We don't turn anyone away at St. Andrew's. That's the only rule here. They come to our door, they stay, if that's what they want. Most of them don't stay long. They either go back, or they move on, and start new lives. I'd say the average stay is anywhere from a week to two months, maximum. Most of them are out in two weeks.” It had been pretty much the same at St. Mary's.

“Can you house that many people here?” She was surprised. The building didn't look that big, and it wasn't.

“This used to be twenty apartments. We stack 'em as high as we have to, Grace. Our doors are open to everyone, not just to Catholics,” he explained, “we don't even ask that question.”

“Actually …” She smiled at him, there was a warmth that came from him that touched her very soul. There was an innocence and purity about Father Tim that made him seem particularly holy, in a real sense. He was truly a man of God, and Grace felt instantly at ease with him and blessed to be near him. “The doctor who ran St. Mary's was Jewish,” she said conversationally, and he laughed.

“I haven't gone that far yet, but you never know.”

“Is there a doctor in charge here?”

“Me, I guess. I'm a Jesuit, and I have a doctorate in psychology. But Dr. Tim sounds a little strange, doesn't it? Father Tim suits me better.” They both laughed this time and he went to pour them both another cup of coffee from one of the two huge pots.

“We have half a dozen nuns, not in habit, of course, who work here, and about forty volunteers at various times. We need every one of them to keep the place running. We've got some psychiatric nurses who give us time, from NYU, and we get a lot of kids doing psych internships, mostly from Columbia. It's a good group, and they work like demons … sorry, angels.” She really loved him, with his freckles and his laughing eyes. “And what about you, Grace? What brings you to us?”

“I like this kind of work. It means a lot to me.”

“Do you know much about it? I suppose you do after two years at St. Mary's.”

“Enough, I guess, to be useful.” It was all too familiar to her, but she wasn't quite sure whether or not to say it to him. She almost wanted to. She trusted him more than she had anyone in a long time.

“How many times a week or month did you volunteer at St. Mary's?”

“Two nights a week, and every Sunday … most holidays.”