The good Reverend Nichols sat and pondered his tea. He also pondered his late lunch of cucumber sandwiches and a couple of biscuits.
He was in a pondering mood, the Reverend was, and had been for most of the day.
He had pondered quite a bit since this mornings festivities. Pondered about the lives of his few regular congregants, pondered about the rose garden near the smaller chapel, pondered about the condition of the flagstone path that wound it's way around the Abbey and out to the small parking lot near the main road. He even pondered about the condition of the small sign board used for church bulletins.
Mostly though, he pondered about his track record regarding marriages.
Reverend Nichols had kept track of every marriage he had officiated over the years, all 1,127 of them. Meticulous track. He knew the names of ever child born to every couple he had joined in matrimony, and even the names of most of the grandchild those children had sired.
He also knew one glaringly ugly, inexplicable fact that was just, well, unfathomable.
Of those 1,127 couples he had joined as one, 970 of them had ended in divorce.
A failure rate touching on 85% was understandably disconcerting to the good Reverend.
So he pondered. Pondered what could possibly be the cause of such a high divorce rate. Was it him? Was he cursing all those unions when he thought he was blessing them? Was it the small chapel? Maybe the small chapel was cursed. It was possible - there was the legend of the highwayman who had been denied sanctuary in the chapel almost two centuries ago - he could have cursed the chapel before he met the hangman.
He also pondered, however briefly, whether or not he should have mentioned those numbers to the young couple he married this morning.
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