“Well, because of the newspaper article,” Janine said quietly. “And Tad Tucker being there, giving a speech. I don’t agree with everything he says—”

“Tad Tucker didn’t write your work for you, did he?”

“No,” Janine said.

“He didn’t change what you wrote, or how you read it?”

“No.”

“And he isn’t keeping you from writing now?”

“No,” Janine said. The wine wasn’t bad, she thought. She hoped there were more bottles. “I guess not.”

Small debris pinged, then thudded above them.

“I don’t know about you, but I just feel like I have so much to say,” Lilian said. “It’s like somebody has been tamping me down all my life, and now it’s my time. Nobody’s gonna stop me, you know what I mean?”

Janine nodded, though she knew it was too dim for Lilian to see her. Janine did not drink, did not even keep alcohol in her house (Rick stored six-packs of beer in the garage fridge), but there were exceptions to every rule: at weddings, she toasted the bride and groom, and at hurricane parties, she consumed whatever was offered until the storm was over. You had to drink to get through the waiting, the wondering, the thrashing wind and rain, the hours without electricity or contact with someone you loved. You had to drink to get through the doubts about a God who would do such a thing as send a hurricane right to you, a storm that might destroy your house or kill your family, your neighbors. And on top of that, a God who would make a member of that very family a weather reporter! You had to wonder about a God like that.

Everyone had those doubts, she’d wanted to tell Marianne, but the words stuck in her throat. I haven’t believed in God, Marianne had said in the interview. Not for a long time.

But what if everything Marianne said was true? What if Lorraine didn’t care whether she was radical or not, but was only looking for a paycheck? All those webinars—each time, she’d paid the administrative fee willingly, propping her debit card against her keyboard and typing in the numbers—what if they’d just been a scam, a way of collecting money and information? It was true that she hadn’t learned much from them. It was true that they’d asked a lot of personal, irrelevant questions at the end. Lilian opened a second bottle, and Janine held out her cup for more.

Just then, Donald opened the door, and somewhere a tree limb came down with a great crack. He jumped over the threshold, slammed the door behind him.

“You didn’t invite her back?” Janine said.

“She wouldn’t come,” Donald said. “She went looking for Eric and Tom. I told her not to, but she said she’d be okay.”

“Why can’t people just stay inside?” said Lilian.