The Chapel of Unfinished Faces

How it begins

The saint had acquired a mouth overnight.

Alma remembered the empty plane below its nose because she had measured it, photographed it and argued about it with the parish committee. The figure was unfinished. That was part of its value.

Now the lips rested in the small, polite smile of the woman who had served her soup at the village inn.

The inn had closed that morning.

Silas stood behind her holding the work light. He moved it away when she turned.

"Bring that back."

"It's the angle."

"It wasn't an angle yesterday."

Outside, a quarry truck passed slowly enough to make the chapel windows tremble. Fine dust settled on the saint's shoulders. The new lips remained clean.

Alma took yesterday's photograph from her case.

Silas would not look at it.

She had accepted the commission because the chapel's thirteen figures belonged to an obscure school of regional carving. Unfinished faces, uncut hands, drapery rendered with such tenderness that the stone seemed to remember warmth. Her report was meant to explain why the missing features should remain missing.

The committee wanted them completed for the centenary.

They had already ordered invitations.

"Where is Mrs. Bellamy?" Alma asked.

Silas looked toward the door.

"Her sister says she's gone away."

"Does she often?"

"No."

The caretaker's hand tightened on the light. A pale ring of skin showed where he had stopped wearing a wedding band.

Alma examined the statue's neck.

Beneath the carved collar, a short diagonal mark had begun to form.

She touched her own collar before she could stop herself.

The scar was from an accident at the quarry when she was twelve. Her mother had called it a lucky escape and refused to return to the village.

Silas saw the movement.

His face changed with recognition rather than surprise.

"How many figures?" Alma said.

"Thirteen."

She looked down the aisle.

Fourteen stood beneath the chapel windows.

At the far end, a face still without features had turned slightly toward her workbench.

The committee's invitations waited beside it in a neat cream stack.