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mind, Shade. I was just curious.”
    He shrugged as though he’d decided it was all right to share. “I was in a car accident last year. I injured my right hand and wrist. They had to put the exposed bones back together and sew up some nasty lacerations.” He ran a finger along a thin white scar on the outside of his hand. “They said I had nerve damage and pretty much guaranteed it would never return to normal. The doctor suggested I learn to use my left hand, and the physical therapist made sure I did.”
    He pushed the coiled snake around the table with his right index finger.
    “But you’re using it right now. Did it turn out better than expected?”
    “I was laid up in the hospital a long time so that meant a lot of physical therapy. It helped. That and prayer.”
    “So you had other serious injuries?”
    The shadow darkened. “It was a bad accident.”
    Pastor Charles said to get to know him and she tried. Sadly, the first interesting tidbit she stumbled upon was connected to a horrible memory that backed him right into a corner. He wasn’t even fighting to get out. He just shut down.
    She scrambled to set him free. “Well, if you have any lingering problems I sure couldn’t tell by the way you played the other night. You sounded great.”
    His smile was half its usual brilliance. “Thanks.”
    “On to business.” She crossed her arms in front of her on the table. “I have a music question I think you can help me with.”
    “Shoot.”
    “What do you know about click tracks?”
    “In what way?”
    She pulled out two articles she printed from the Internet and another from a magazine about church worship. “From what I understand, you can run a click track through your sound system and straight into the band’s ear monitors. The clicks can be set at whatever tempo you want and all the band has to do is stay with the track. The band can hear the clicks but the congregation can’t.”
    “Why are you interested in that?”
    “Well, Max is a good drummer, but he’s not a great drummer. He’s learning, and I have him working with a percussionist at the college, but he often loses the tempo in the middle of the song. He speeds up, slows down, whatever, and when it’s his responsibility to start the song we never know what we’re gonna get.”
    Shade leaned back and hung one arm over the back of the chair. His smug grin made her feel stupid before he even opened his mouth. “C’mon, Candi, you know that’s a universal problem with drummers.”
    “Of course I know that, and believe me, he takes a lot of heat about it.”
    “He’ll get better with time and practice. You don’t need a click track.”
    “But it might help. The experts I’ve been reading say it creates a more polished sound.”
    “It also zaps spontaneity and teaches your drummer to rely on that manufactured click rather than the natural clock in his head. He won’t get better. He’ll just learn to respond like one of Pavlov’s dogs.”
    She drew a quick mental picture of that but was too annoyed to stop and laugh about it. “I’m also interested in the additional effects we can add to enhance the music. For example, I would like to add a cello or violin once in a while and, in case you haven’t noticed, I don’t have an orchestra at my disposal. It would be nice to have that option.”
    Shade nodded but didn’t look convinced.
    “I also have Kevin to contend with,” she continued. “If I’m leading the song, he watches me and doesn’t get lost. If he’s leading, he inevitably speeds up. Sometimes it’s like he and Max are in a race to finish. In congregational singing, that’s deadly. I often feel like we have to go back and pick them up.”
    Shade laughed and downed the last of his coffee. “He’s young. He’ll get better, too.”
    Candi leaned in further as the muscles in her shoulders tightened and threatened a tension headache. He was so typically male. It was like talking to the proverbial brick wall. “Do