We sat for an hour, her story coming out hesitantly at first, and then, as she became caught up in her memories, more fluidly.

The family hadn’t wanted Matt to go to school at KU, but he won a scholarship and he was passionate about science. As a little boy he’d saved the money he made raking hay and running errands to buy a microscope kit over at the hobby shop they used to have in town. Their parents had been upset, but he was determined.

And then, after he’d been in Lawrence awhile, he began questioning the Bible story of creation. When he started his graduate degree, their parents learned he’d begun accepting evolutionary theory.

Charmaine gave a strained smile. “Maybe that doesn’t seem shocking to you, but we were raised as Bible Christians. My parents couldn’t talk him out of it. Dad brought Pastor Mulveney to the house to pray over Matt the last time he was home. Matt was respectful, but he said that though he’d never turn his back on Jesus, God gave us brains to use and learn, and what he learned had made him believe the evidence that geology and the stars gave us about the age of the world.

“Matt tried to get Mother and Dad to come to Lawrence, to see the people he was working with, but they said Matt was wrong, he’d turned his back on Jesus, he was damned forever; if they visited him, it would seem like they agreed with him.”

She reached down to pet Peppy, to give herself a little breathing room.

“I can’t tell you how hard a time that was,” she finally went on. “I was four years younger and I followed him around like a duckling when we were growing up. I missed him terribly. My parents tried to forbid me to write to him, but I was nineteen, I was working in the local hardware store and the owner let me get my mail there. I kept his letters.”

She’d brought one of the letters he’d written after that painful Christmas.

Dear Sis,

I’m not trying to run away from you or from Jesus. The deeper I can see in nature, the more wonderful God’s work looks. But He gave us brains and minds for a reason and I can’t ignore what reason teaches me. If I could, I would. I’m so lonely, Sis. My professor who got me my graduate fellowship left to teach at a university in Washington and I’m working in the lab of the department chair, who thinks I’m lower than the dirt on the floor …

Poor Matt: condemned by his parents, called an incompetent loser by his thesis adviser. No wonder when he’d found love in Jenny Perec’s arms he’d clung tightly to her.