Asher can think only of Bell. He recalls an early morning when he had swept her porch, collecting sand and dirt from the floorboards, moving it all into a neat little pile which he brushed up onto the dustpan and then sprinkled into the ambrosia at the corner of the steps.

The sounds of morning in Key West sounded like prayers. They especially had on that morning. Strange birds in the palm trees, singing high, sharp notes. The supping of the colored water against the sides of the pool. Asher had loved everything, even the sounds of bicycles rolling along the street, and the crow of a rooster hopping among the tombstones in the cemetery, or the purr of an airplane (a silver chip on the sky, catching sunlight) coming in, bringing new people, or one leaving, taking away the ones whose time on the island had come and gone.

That morning, Bell was playing “All Creatures of Our God and King.”

She had left her front door wide open to let in the morning air, so he could see her at the piano, arching her shoulders into the music, head thrown back and eyes closed. Usually she only played but this morning she had sung: a big, solid voice like the resounding notes on an organ. Asher had moved his lips to the lyrics, audible only in his own mind:

Thou rising morn, in praise rejoice

Ye lights of evening, find a voice.

O praise Him! O praise Him!

Alleluia, alleluia

Asher thought alleluia the most beautiful word he had ever heard. Bell swayed her head back and forth, feeling Alleluia, savoring it. He had tasted Alleluia on the air that morning.

He wants more than anything to go forward and receive communion. It has been too long.

The row in front of them has already moved into the line.

Asher knows this is foolish of him, to tempt the priest that way, to stand in display of all these people, many of whom are most likely local. But he stands and motions for Justin to follow him. They wait in the line and watch what everyone else is doing because this is not how communion is done in their church at all.

They kneel at the rail and put out their hands like the others, keep their heads bowed. Asher realizes no one is looking at them; everyone is concentrating on the holy task at hand. Then the wafer is dissolving on his tongue

(The body of Christ, the priest says)

and Asher’s lips are on the golden cup being held out to him

(The cup of salvation, a whisper, but something familiar about the voice)

and he is taking communion with his own child, a thousand miles from home, on the run, in hiding. He feels as if he is taking his first full breath in a long while.