“Good morning,” he said. “I am Reverend Warren.” He was tall and heavy and dark-skinned, and his voice came out slowly, as if he really enjoyed meeting Saturday Group and wanted his syllables to last. “I welcome you in the name and spirit of Jesus Christ.”

Nobody would have said such a thing in Macey’s church. But it worked for him. He smiled, and they shook hands and introduced themselves and headed inside just as a man on the sidewalk began peeing on the church wall.

Inside, the Church of the Good Shepherd was old and decrepit, but it was familiar. The layout, the style, the use of each room were things Macey knew well. She felt comfortable in the building.

She did not feel as comfortable with her painting partners, a group of teenagers from Good Shepherd: Venita, Isaiah, Chamique and Davonn. Macey had known very few black kids.

“Macey?” said Venita. Her hair was in dozens of braids hardly wider than a pencil lead, the braids gathered in exotic loops and whorls. She wore old clothes for painting and looked fragile inside a droopy faded shirt. “Hi. You and me, we’re doing the yellow room. Come on.”

Isaiah beckoned to Austin. Macey thought the two of them would be a good match if they wrestled; they were built the same—stocky, broad-shouldered, not perfectly proportioned.

Lindsay and Grace did not want to be separated, so Davonn said he would paint alone and the two girls could both paint with Chamique. Chamique said nothing. She looked at Venita, who shrugged. Venita turned to Macey. “Macey’s a store, isn’t it? Used to be one here.”

“They spell it differently,” said Macey. “But it is a store.” She could think of nothing else to say. She could tell that Davonn was hurt and Chamique was angry, and she did not know what to do about it. Lindsay and Grace weren’t easy to lecture. And it wasn’t Macey’s fault that the other six Saturday Group kids hadn’t come and Davonn had no painting partner. Luckily, Austin began talking about baseball, and it turned out that he and Davonn and Isaiah were equally concerned about the Red Sox’s chances this year.

They passed offices and a parlor and went down a set of stairs. “Mmm, cinnamon,” said Macey. “What’s cooking?”

“Snacks for us painters,” said Venita. “My grandmother’s cinnamon-icing sticky buns. Been using her recipe thirty years here. It’s not a church supper without Dorothy Edna’s cinnamon-icing sticky buns.”

“They smell done to me,” said Aus. He grinned and planted himself in front of the open kitchen doors.

“You gotta earn ’em,” said Isaiah, pushing him forward.

They passed through a half-court gymnasium that was mainly beneath the ground, and this was the room where Graff would be working; scaffolding was prepared and tarps covered the floor. Several grown-ups paused in their preparations to shake hands with Graff.