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followed, making meek little suggestions whenever I could. I was quiet where Cathy was outgoing, conscientious where she was adventurous. And while I was definitely “the responsible one,” all through our childhood I deferred to her when it was time to make a decision. She was positive and decisive and always knew what to do, and so even if it wasn’t the decision I would have made, I usually went along.
    Now I was the eldest, and I had to be decisive. I had to think like Cathy.
    But a few minutes of thinking like Cathy made me very nervous. I couldn’t stride into Mother’s room and insist that she listen to me and obey me. Cathy could do that, but I was, alas, still myself, certain that direct confrontation led to direct destruction.
    And I decided that I wasn’t going to make this decision or take this action without my remaining sisters sharing the heat.
    So I wrote a long email about Mother’s condition and her refusal to go to the doctor, stressing the seriousness of it all, and, in an aside, mentioning the college president and his apparent interest in the estate we’d had every expectation of inheriting, and cc’ed the whole tome to Laura and Theresa.
    Thank God for email. No matter where Theresa had been posted, or where Laura was on location, they could pick up their email. In fact, last year Laura had been doing a film in one of the remotest places on earth, Tonga , and she sent me a photo attachment of her with the chubby, rattan-skirted Tongan king.
    And even in her cloister outside of Pittsburgh , Theresa had email. Or at least the mother superior did. I presumed she’d pass on the message.
    We were a rootless globetrotting set of sisters—a natural reaction, I supposed, to parents who, like Laura’s Tongan king, were rulers of their small region and uncomfortable anywhere else.
    While I was at it, I called into my office and told Jill that my mother wasn’t well, and that I’d had to come home to help her. I felt guilty about this, even though it was true enough. Jill made the appropriate sympathetic noises and reminded me about the wedding on Saturday and the two services on Sunday. “Terry?” she asked delicately.
    Terry was our youth minister, an energetic young man just out of seminary. He was wonderful with kids, but froze when he was in front of an adult group. “I don’t think he’s ready for primetime yet. I’ll call the presbytery and see who’s on call this weekend to fill in.”
    “Chuck would be glad to do it, I’m sure.”
    Jill had a carefully calibrated voice, a real asset in a church secretary. This time her tone was telling me that calling the presbytery first would offend the Second Church ’s former minister, Chuck, and that in turn would offend all the Seconders. And Chuck, though long retired to the golf course, was an experienced and accomplished preacher, and did a good wedding too. My only objection, and it was a selfish one, was that every week he sat in the third row and took notes on my sermons, not the gratifying notes of someone struck by my wisdom and spirituality, you understand, but notes which he’d expand on in an email that I’d receive Monday morning: I paused too long at the conclusion of the reading, and I made the same point about the prodigal son’s older brother twice, and that prop I used, the dragon beanie baby, was really a bit undignified for the later, more traditional service.
    But Chuck got away with that because he knew what he was talking about, and so, reluctantly, I got his number from Jill and called him. Don’t worry, he assured me, he happened to have six new sermons in reserve, just in case, so I shouldn’t hurry back.
    Oh, well, I thought as I hung up. At least the Seconders would be happy for a couple weeks. Sometimes I thought they saw me as a usurper, though I hadn’t replaced Chuck. Between his retirement, just after the church merger, and my hiring, another minister tried to meld the two congregations. He failed utterly,