Stanley stifled a sigh. Different and quirky—to the summer of ′71. Here, in a new century, he’d hoped, he’d yearned, he had waited so long—

“The focus on good, in-depth coverage is the first priority,” Adam said, lifting his face, feeling certain. “You know, hiring reasonably well, enabling talent to thrive, and having a newsroom that’s not top-down. I’m not seeking any particular outcomes, and I don’t necessarily expect any cataclysmic outcome from this managing editor choice. We’re existing at a very complicated time right now. The threat of terrorism is ongoing. The occupation and leaving of Iraq is going to last a long time and be very difficult. I think we’re in very uncertain waters politically here, and so the … the fate of this paper’s management will depend on lots of factors, and this choice may or may not turn out to be one of them.”

“Adam.”

“Yes. We’ve had lots of time….”

“Adam.”

“Wait … do you know, I just thought …”

“Adam. I know what you say—out there.”

Adam looked abashed. He glanced around him as if to check whether anyone but Stanley had earshot on his pat reversion to the tape in his head.

“Christ,” Adam muttered.

“Yes.”

“I have to stop that.”

“It’s easier.”

“Infinitely.”

They were quiet. They both took what they could from the surroundings. Stanley had never met his birth father; he liked that this church had been his. Adam liked that no one ever bumped into them here. It was almost theirs and no one else’s. Stanley jumped into thinking of Mabel, sitting here, beside them. In his mind, she would fit.

“Can you imagine Mabel here?” he asked Adam.

Adam had to think. “No,” he finally said.

“I think she’d get it,” he said.

“Get?”

“Our coming here.”

“Oh.”

“Don’t you think?”

“Possibly.”

“You know, Adam,” he said, after another silence, “I have a feeling about something.”

“Oh?” Adam sat up and stopped tracing the whorls of wood in the pew.

“I know there’s really nothing to back this up,” Stanley continued. “And I feel it’s one of my least reliable hunches, in terms of surface facts, you know, meriting it. But the feeling is stronger than I’ve had in years.” Stanley paused, worried that he had overstated. “It’s about that crash, that one early in the month, the one we thought was a helicopter, or the president was aboard.”

“Huh.” Adam was interested. He put his hands on his knees, a move for him signaling seriousness.

“I think there’s more to it.”

“You do.”

“I don’t know what. But I just feel there’s more there.”

“The beginning of it was strange,” Adam said. He realized he wanted to tell Stanley what had happened. He thought about how he should begin.

“That night?” Stanley whispered as a woman with prayer cards bobbed past their pew.