“Now wait a minute,” Lucy says harshly as she opens the door and begins to get out of the car. “We’re doing God’s work here—we’re his messengers, and it’s God speaking now, not us,” and sure enough it must be true, because here’s Lucy McPherson crossing the lawn toward the surprised Keilbachers, Lucy who gets teary if she’s told the story of someone’s suffering or sacrifice, Lucy who waters up if you look at her sideways—here she is just as calm as can be, as she stands before Emma and Martin and gives them the news—as steady as a doctor, as they help Emma off the lawn and inside. And all through that long horrible night, as Emma is racked with hysterical grief, and Martin sits on the back porch staring at little handprints in the concrete, at nothing, it’s Lucy that they turn to to make coffee, to fix soup, to hold Emma, to deal with the police, and with the mortuary, and with all the business that the others cannot face, shaken as they are; it’s Lucy they turn to.

Chapter 60

60

When Dennis arrives home from Washington, very late that night, exhausted and depressed, he finds an empty house. And no note. At first he’s angry, then worried; and he can’t think what to do about it. It’s completely unlike Lucy, he can’t think of a possible explanation where she could be at three in the morning. Has she left him, like Dan Houston’s wife? A moment of panic spikes into him at the thought; then he shakes his head, clearing it of such nonsense. Lucy wouldn’t do it.

Has something happened to her? An hour passes and the fear grows in him, then almost two hours pass, and it’s just occurred to him that he could call the reverend, rather than the police, when she pulls into the driveway. He hurries out to greet her, relieved and angry.

“Where have you been!”

She tells him.

“Ah,” he says stiffly, and puts his arms around her. Holds her.

He’s too tired for this, he thinks. Too tired.

They stand there. He’s awfully tired. He remembers a game he played with his brother when they were boys, during the marathon driving tours his parents took them on. At night in the motel rooms they took a deck of cards and divided it, and made card houses on the floor, in opposite corners of the room. Card fortresses would be a better name for them. Then they took a plastic spoon from McDonald’s, and used it as a projectile—bent it back like a catapult arm with their thumbs and fingers, and let fly. The spoon took the most hilarious knuckleball flights across the room, and mostly missed. They laughed.…