“Is it …” He speaks carefully, holding his fingertips together the way he does on Sunday mornings when he’s making a fine theological point that he knows nobody will understand. “Is it guilt that you’re alive and your best friend is … dead?”

“No. It’s guilt that had I not done the things I did, my best friend would not even be dead.”

“I see.” His shoulders sag. Real guilt. He wasn’t counting on that. “Can you say more about it?”

“I could, but …” I shake my head. We watch a flock of starlings move across the sky. It moves like a single being, stretching out, then bunching up, then getting absorbed into a tree. “How’s Mrs. Grimshaw doing?” I ask after a while.

“Well, she actually feels somewhat like you do. She won’t talk, and she can’t pray, so I just try to be there with her.”

“She doesn’t like anyone in the house who’s not family. It makes her uncomfortable.”

“Well, the church has done a lot there recently, cleaning it up, hauling away the … stuff. She seemed to appreciate the help.”

A heavy bass booms out, and a minute later, Allen Mizerak goes by on the new John Deere, CD blaring, rear tires flinging clods of manure all over the road.

“The Mizeraks must be planting now,” I comment. The sight of Allen makes me think back to the day after homecoming, when Grimshaw and Angel and I did the milking together for Rack, and then did it again in the evening. We seemed wiser then, wiser than we are now. It seems to me that the real mistake we made wasn’t just mine, but all of ours, and that we made it right around that time, maybe that very day. It was so easy being together like that, then it was just as easy to throw it away. We didn’t value the best thing we had, which was each other.

“Serena,” Pastor Don says suddenly. “Can I pray for you?”

Asking my permission to pray for me? This is a new courtesy. “Okay,” I agree. “Not in my presence, though, okay? I always found that really rude.”

“Fair enough,” he agrees.

“I don’t understand prayer, anyway,” I blurt. “I mean, my mother prays when she ought to be paying attention. She just turns everything ‘over to the Lord.’ As if He knows her problems better than she does.”

“Maybe she prays so that then she can think.”

“Maybe,” I concede. “But I doubt it.”

“A wise man told me once that when he prays, he doesn’t ask God for any particular outcome. He just says thank you.”

“What would the point of that be?”