Several other people I recognized from my ride through town, many of them older folks. I could see glimmers of their younger selves, devout, eyes big with love of Jeremiah, as I stared at them in the lantern glow. It felt like all of time was present in that room, the past as well as the future, all of it happening now, in this very moment. I knew that Jeremiah was there, and the Spirit he served, and Mom as well, together in that church. I never felt more loved, less alone, than I did in that moment.

I had finally found my place in this world.

“We came because we needed to see,” said Wilmer. “We needed to see it with our own eyes, that our Jeremiah is back, that he’s come back in you.”

“I was told I would see him again before I died,” said the ponytail lady. “He promised me that in a dream.” She reached out and touched my face, her fingers wet and cold. “I wanted to believe. I wanted to know.”

I watched them, their raincoats dripping on the church floor, their faces bright and expectant as lightning crashed behind them.

“You all came for me?” I said. I looked at Cass, her crooked-tooth grin, the way the lightning lit her bright and wild. “Even you?”

“Jeremiah spoke to me in a dream too,” she said. “He was beautiful, standing in this perfect garden, his voice like a song. He told me all about you, how I had to move down here to your grandmother’s land. How we were destined to meet each other. I left home and moved here, all for you.”

“And for the Farm,” said Stephens. “So it could come back, and things could be good in the town again.”

“So they could be better than they ever were before,” said his father.

“Every song I write is for you,” said Jack. “The Spirit gives me a song, and I sing it, and the songs are yours.”

“I told them tonight was the night,” said Grandma. “Tonight you would come here, and you would take up your calling. I saw it in a vision.” She smiled. “Mine are nowhere near what yours are, Lee, dear, but they are powerful in their own right.”

“We came to witness and to intervene, if need be,” said Sheriff Bearden. “The Spirit has a plan, it always does.”

Murphy grabbed my arm. I’d completely forgotten she was there.

“Lee, what the fuck is going on?” she said.

“I don’t know if I can explain it,” I said. “I’m not sure if I totally understand it myself.”