“What the hell do you think evangelizing is?” she asked. “I’d really like to know where your brother met these people. And I thought Frances paid our salaries.”

“It was getting expensive. With the property taxes, and all the fees—”

“But when we talked it seemed like she was happy to pay for it all! Like it made her proud!”

Eric stood slowly and moved to her bed. He sat very close and poured more punch into her cup. “Frances is eighty-two years old,” he said. “Largo Shores is almost four thousand a month. And that’s in the independent-living section. She can’t spend all her savings on our project—”

“Her project,” Marianne said. “This was her idea.”

“Her project,” Eric agreed.

Marianne suddenly felt very sleepy. She rested her head on Eric’s shoulder. “Does she know about them? GWGW? I mean, she didn’t seem like someone who would appreciate some corporate group coming in and taking over everything.”

“They’re not. And she doesn’t know much—she doesn’t need to. GWGW is Mark’s thing, a supplement. You know that.”

“I feel so reassured. So supported!” She sat up.

“I’m going to talk to him,” Eric said. “About the copier. Okay?”

“That would be helpful,” she admitted. “But I don’t like the idea of them. God’s Word God’s World. God’s World God’s Word. It’s hard to keep straight. Plus, what the fuck are we doing? I think that, all day long. What the fuck are we doing?”

“Probably best not to think about it,” Eric said.

“Best not to think about what?”

“About what we’re doing, or about GWGW. We’re doing it. It’s going okay. It’s going great, considering.”

“But God’s World—”

“They’re a Christian organization, just like us.”

“Not just like us,” Marianne said. She lowered her voice to a whisper. “We’re not serious about what we’re doing. We’re … taking advantage of certain expectations. We’re exploiting certain ideas.”

Eric laughed. “What do you think they’re doing?”

“Fuck,” she said. She hadn’t thought of it that way—there were so many ways to be cynical and exploitative. It didn’t seem so bad, when the profits were keeping her own friends afloat, paying back student loans. But a corporation? “I guess you’re right. As long as they’re just paying for copiers and card stock. Just promise you won’t let things go too far, okay? Promise it’ll still be us in charge?”

“Yeah,” he said. “Of course.”

“Promise?”

“I promise,” Eric said. He stared into his cup, turning the viscous liquid around the edges. “I think this is my last chance, Marianne,” he said after a while, his voice quiet and pleading. “I need this to work.”

“Last chance,” she scoffed. “You’re an internationally published, internationally traveling novelist and teacher. This isn’t about last chances.”