When I awoke, thoughts of skiing were quickly forgotten when I spied the book on the coffee table. After breakfast, I threw myself on the couch and picked up where I’d left off. By two I’d finished and started the second book for the third time; dinnertime came, and I read while eating Pasta-Roni. I debated calling Greg, but then I realized there probably wasn’t much more he could tell me; I’d asked him nearly every question a person could ask, and I’d read the books multiple times. How much more information did I really need? What I needed to do was organize my thoughts and ideas, sort through it all instead of just reading it over and over.

In my mind I drew up a flow chart. Step one. God: Yes or no? If yes, move on, if no, game over and go hit the slopes.

I thought for a minute.

God.

Yes.

I let this statement sit for a while, turning it over and looking at it from all angles. Lots of people believed in God, didn’t they? Maybe not the one I was thinking about, but a god of some kind, somewhere. I could believe in God and not be tagged as a fanatic.

I took a deep breath. Level one cleared.

Step two. Truth: relative or absolute? If it was relative, then I was done, but if it was absolute, then only one religion was going to work, and I needed to figure out if this was it.

I sat on that one for a while. Mathematics: absolute. Two plus two always equaled four, whether you liked it or not. White couldn’t be black; the grass couldn’t be the sky; a cat couldn’t be a dog. Those were absolutes. But they weren’t ideas, they weren’t emotions, they weren’t decisions—those were different, weren’t they?

I thought about people who killed because they said God told them to. If truth was relative, then we had no right to tell them they were wrong. I couldn’t imagine being okay with what they did, but if I didn’t want them imposing their beliefs on me, then could I impose my sense of right and wrong on them?

I thought about the business world, about hearing my father tell stories over dinner about stealing clients from rival companies and fudging expense reports and how handy statistics were for telling people anything you wanted to tell them. “It’s how business gets done,” he’d say. Everybody’s doing it. How bad can it be when everyone is in on it?

I thought about Penelope Jones, about sleeping with her when Dianne was still alive. We were still living together, but I’d distanced myself from her and her illness and looked for my own comfort. Right or wrong? Black or white? Relative or absolute?