Even more than the food, Luke had enjoyed Sana coming home early on Monday, the day before, saying that she’d made wonderful progress on her DNA studies and had gotten the pulp samples already into the PCR stage, which Luke had not understood at all. Not that it mattered, since Sana had used the free time to take Luke out to buy him clothes that fit instead of wearing Father Karlin’s, which didn’t.

For Luke shopping had turned out to be a delightful experience, as he had not shopped for clothes for as long as he could remember, and he appreciated Sana’s input as he tried things on and struggled over choices. He’d also enjoyed the festive holiday atmosphere with a mere fourteen shopping days left before Christmas. Then to cap the day, Sana and Luke had stayed up after dinner to enjoy another fire, while affording Sana a turn to tell her life story and even her current problems. Luke had been sympathetic when his impressions had been confirmed that Shawn was not treating her as Shawn did when they were first married, particularly in the intimacy realm, as Luke knew that Shawn slept in a guest room on the second floor while Sana slept in the master bedroom on the third floor. Although Luke did not pretend to understand everything Sana said, he had told her that he’d pray for her, and that he couldn’t understand why Shawn did not want to sleep with her, because he thought she was beautiful.

“Thank you for the reassurance and the prayers,” Sana had said. “But, to be truthful, at this point, I prefer not to sleep with him.”

Similar to Sana, Shawn had made real progress as well over the previous two days. He’d reached the stage he’d hoped for, where the unrolling of the first scroll was proceeding much more rapidly. Monday he’d finished only a single page, but that day, Tuesday, he’d done more than two. Taking the time to read the unrolled portion, he was also feeling better about Simon not being quite the ogre he was reputed to have been. Even though he recognized that Simon was writing about himself, Shawn thought the better he came off as a person, the better witness he would be to the identity of the bones.