"Silence"

On a quiet day, when the pews were empty and the sun shined through the rainbow glass, they said you could hear the angels singing.

If you stood there long enough you should hear a soft whisper--"Holy holy holy"--in the finest voices ever made.

Maybe that was just something they told to children to keep them from squirming and fidgeting and whispering--"Be good, and maybe you'll hear the angels."

Leah was alone and old enough to behave.

All she could hear were distant voices from somewhere else--as completely human as the man controlling the soft roar of the vacuum cleaner in the chapel.

She twisted her purse strap in her hands--hard enough to leave those angry pink marks that would fade before night fall--and sighed. The world was all too human--every sacred seat and step had been made by hands as human as the ones that strangled her purse.

Two-thirds of the Holy Family--mother and child--smiled out at her from a sea of colored glass, and they were no different from any other family.

Whatever she had been looking for wasn't here. She dropped a handful of change in the donation box and walked out on heavy, earthly feet.