Ray’s voice jumped into my thoughts. “Boring you, huh?”

“Absolutely not,” I said. Being a reporter meant I’d learned the art of feigning interest and pretending to listen when I didn’t care all that much, and Ray’s story was quickly losing me. It wasn’t any different from that of so many of the other self-proclaimed spiritual leaders running around California. I motioned to the walls in our room, the facility surrounding us. “Who paid for this?”

“People give out of the generosity of their own hearts, and God always provides,” he said.

Tomorrow I was interviewing the parents of a nineteen-year-old boy, Sean, who had been one of the first kids they’d helped get clean and had recently joined their movement. They’d given a $200,000 donation to Love International three weeks ago. It was hard to tell whether it was in support of the movement or a way to keep a roof over their son’s head while he was with them.

“Have you had enough of this?” he asked, catching me off guard this time.

“What do you mean?”

He smiled at me. “Come on, Kate. I can tell when I’m boring someone to death.”

I shook my head. “Not at all. I find this stuff fascinating,” I said, hoping I sounded convincing.

“You don’t lie to your husband like that, do you?”

I sat up in my chair. “Excuse me?”

“My apologies. I didn’t mean to push any buttons.”

“You didn’t push any buttons,” I snapped.

“I didn’t?” He cocked his head to the side, eyeing me quizzically. “From where I’m standing, it looks like I did.”

Was he like this with everyone? Or was it only with women?

“I’m not a liar,” I said.

“We’re all liars,” he countered, eerily similar to the philosophy professor I’d had in college.

“What do you lie about?” I asked.

A wide smile stretched across his face, lighting up his eyes. “Now we’re getting somewhere,” he said.

It was my second meeting at the center, and I was so much more comfortable this time even though I was still bummed that Scott had refused to come.

“You know how I feel about organized religion,” he had said.

But that wasn’t the point. Religion wasn’t my thing either. My parents hadn’t even brought me to church on the holidays. I just thought it’d be fun, something different for us to do together, but he had no interest. Sometimes I didn’t know why I even tried. He was a creature of habit. Always had been.

I poured myself a cup of coffee and grabbed two of the sugar cookies from the platter before taking a seat on one of the aluminum chairs. When I was a kid, I had loved how routine oriented Scott had been, since it had been so different from the chaos continually erupting at my house. His structure had grounded me. It had kept me sane through all those difficult years, especially after my parents had died, but lately it felt stifling, and I didn’t know what to do about it. Guilt gnawed at me like it did whenever I let those kinds of thoughts creep in. I was lucky to have Scott. Period. I forced myself to pay attention to what was happening around me. The meeting would be a welcome distraction.