Chapter Four

four

Circle of Faith meetings were held at the Fair Mile Crossroads in a building that had once been a Pump and Go, and seasoned members still talked about the work it had taken to conquer the odor of gasoline and mildew. But Janey Fields had joined only last year, and it was hard for her to imagine the Faith house as anything other than the cozy place it was, with comfy castoff couches and homemade curtains, card tables, a refrigerator, and an interpretive mural of the Resurrection, which Ruthie’s daughter, Cherish, had been working on under Maya Paluski’s supervision. Jesus’ body was complete, but he still had no face or feet or hands. Cherish said she’d finish them as soon as she’d done more preliminary sketches. In the meantime, Maya had started painting angels all around him, ordinary-looking women dressed in business suits, lab coats, aprons, maternity dresses. One was holding an artist’s palette; Maya said that was for Cherish. She said that Cherish Mader was the most talented art student she’d ever had. Cherish wasn’t a member of the Circle—she was only seventeen—but she often helped out around the Faith house. To day she’d made the coffee and set out cups and saucers before heading back home to work on a paper for school.

Beyond the wide display windows, the razor lines of the plowed county highways sliced the snowy fields into precise geometric shapes. Like ice cream sandwiches, Janey thought. Snow had been falling steadily since morning, but nine Faith members had shown up for the Saturday meeting in spite of the weather: Ruthie Mader, of course, and Janey; Margaret Kirsch, whose daughter Lisa Marie was Cherish’s best friend; Maya Paluski; Lorna Pranke; Jolena Carp; Shelley Beuchel; Tabby and Mary Smoot, who were sisters; and finally the newest member, Anna Graf—no, they were to call her Anna Grey. Last week’s meeting had been a spaghetti supper, open to any woman who wanted to come, more of a social event than anything. But today’s meeting was closed, which meant that only full members could attend. Anna Grey had just been initiated; she kept reaching for her gold Faith cross as if she were afraid she might have lost it. Her eyes were puffy and red, and when Ruthie asked, she said she’d had a fight with her husband. He didn’t like the idea of her joining a women-only prayer group, and everyone smiled sympathetically when she told them that.

“My husband was the same way,” Shelley assured her, “until he started seeing the difference in me.” Shelley had just finished her last round of chemo; her head was wrapped in a pretty floral scarf the Circle had given her to celebrate.

Anna Grey said, “I’m sure I could set myself on fire and Bill wouldn’t see any difference in me.” You could tell she was trying to be funny, but her smile was more like the wince of someone who’d just stepped on something sharp.

“Look at it this way,” Ruthie said. “He’s noticed this change in you, hasn’t he? You decide to take some time for yourself, just once a week, just to pray with friends, and suddenly you’re on his mind. It’s a start, really, if you think of it that way.”

For the first time, Anna Grey looked directly at Ruthie, and Janey remembered how it had been when she herself, new to the group, first looked into Ruthie’s deep-set eyes. Ruthie wasn’t exactly what you’d call pretty, but there was something about the way she gave you her full attention when she spoke, and the plain, old-fashioned way she pulled back her hair—she didn’t have a permanent, like the others—and the loose dresses she always wore, which seemed to change direction about a quarter second after she did…it was hard for anyone to explain. You just had to see her, and once you did, you were forever changed. When Ruthie took your hand during a Circle of Prayer, it was like nothing you’d ever felt before. It was leaving the misery of the body. It was going out beyond yourself so you saw all sides to everything. It was loving what you saw and carrying that love back with you so that, when you opened your eyes again, people glowed with a fresh, whole light.

Lorna put her hand over her mouth, the way she always did when she wanted to speak. “Stan looks forward to my meetings,” she said, “because he gets the house to himself. We never realized how rarely that happened all those years, with him working and me at home. Now he plays around in the kitchen, invents sandwich combinations. He calls them his Stanleys.” Lorna laughed. “He offered to make us a dozen for today. I put him off this time, but, ladies, you’ve been warned.”

Everybody was laughing now, if a little ruefully. These days, they were all praying for the chief, whose mind simply wasn’t what it used to be. They were praying for Lorna, whose health had been poor ever since her hysterectomy. They were praying for Shelley’s cancer cells to melt away. They were praying for Jolena Carp’s retarded son, Lovey, who was twenty-two years old and unable to speak; for Tabby and Mary’s ailing dog, Buster; for Maya Paluski’s diabetes; for various troubled marriages, lost jobs, problems with alcohol. They prayed that Ruthie would find a way to pay the back taxes on her farm so she wouldn’t have to sell out to Big Roly, as so many others had done. Technically, Big Roly owned the Faith house; he’d let Ruthie fix it up and use it for next to nothing, hoping to soften her up. But all of them knew that try as he might, Big Roly would never get Ruthie’s land. For when they joined hands in that comfortable room, a constellation of gold crosses shining at their throats, no one could doubt that her prayers would be answered.

Ask and ye shall receive; seek and ye shall find; knock and the door shall be opened to you. These were the words Faith members lived by, and one only had to look at Shelley, now in a second remission against every medical prediction, to know that God was listening. Jolena Carp’s Lovey, still unable to speak, had started to crayon beautiful pictures; Maya was managing her diabetes through diet and exercise. Last fall, when it looked as though Ruthie wouldn’t come up with her minimum tax payment, the Circle met at night to join hands, and the next day, she won nine hundred dollars at bingo, the largest pot in Saint Fridolin’s history. Sometimes it seemed to Janey as if everyone’s prayers except her own were being answered. But it was wrong to think that way, for God revealed His glory in His own good time. Infertility might have left her devastated, cost her a marriage, shaken her to the core; still, she had to believe that this, like all things, was a part of God’s plan. If she only had faith the size of a mustard seed, He would focus His healing power upon her.

Now they began the meeting by asking for God’s blessing. Today’s topic was the story of the Good Samaritan, and after Ruthie had finished reading from the Bible, she invited them to share encounters with Good Samaritans they had known. Anna Grey talked about Maya’s persistent concern over her unhappiness at work; Shelley told about a woman from her church who’d brought supper to Shelley’s family for two weeks while Shelley was in the hospital. Tabby and Mary talked about the time their car broke down coming back from Madison and a man and his two young boys had stopped to help. While he fixed their car, the boys sang a duet they had been practicing for a play at school. “There we were on the interstate,” Tabby said, “all these semi trucks roaring by and the boys just singing away. We tried to pay their father, but he wouldn’t take our money. Wouldn’t even let us give those boys a dollar.”

“Though we slipped them a little something while his back was turned,” Mary said.

And so it went, and as the women talked, they found themselves recalling times they’d tried to help someone and been rebuffed, or needed help themselves and had not received it, or themselves walked on past another soul in need. They talked about their children, their husbands, parents and siblings and friends. They talked about their jobs, books they had read, places they had visited or hoped someday to go. They gave advice, laughed, and listened. And then, as the meeting drew to a close, they all joined hands to form a Circle of Prayer for Good Samaritans everywhere. Angels, Ruthie called them. Though it was rare to encounter a spirit angel, there were many human angels in the world, ordinary people just like any one of them. One person could make a difference. One person had the power to change the way things were, to transform the events of daily life into multiple blessings. The meeting ended with each woman in turn reaffirming her Vow of Silence, a vow which assured that whatever had been said within Faith walls would remain there.

Afterward, there was always punch and cookies, a little bit of sweet wine. So it was late in the afternoon by the time Janey finally headed home on County O, passing Tom Mader’s memorial cross, its crisp plastic necklace of roses. Behind it, the Neumillers’ Holsteins were confined to a single icy pasture, and it seemed to Janey there was wistfulness in the way they stared past the electric fence at the unspoiled whiteness of fields. She re membered making snow angels with her brothers, how they’d visit friends in the country and spend an afternoon making a chain of angels stretching as far as the eye could see. It was a happy memory, and Janey gave thanks for this small gift. She always felt good after Faith meetings. Perhaps, when she got back to her parents’ house, she’d do some more work on her résumé. Tabby Smoot managed a Pizza Hut, and though she had no job openings at present, she’d encouraged Janey to apply in case something came available. There was also a job at the Badger State Mall, which Ruthie had seen in the Ambient Weekly. It had been a year since Janey had moved home from Green Bay, and all the Faith members said she’d feel better once she was earning money again, getting out of her parents’ house.

The snow had let up, and now the sky cracked and bled, releasing its pale yolk of sun. Farther up the road, the fields were spotted with new ranch houses, crisscrossed by snowmobile tracks as savage as welts left by a whip. Something in the distance caught Janey’s eye—three snowmobiles making lazy buzzard circles not twenty yards from the edge of the highway. As she approached, she saw they were circling someone. The figure floundered in the deep snow as the snowmobiles went round and round. At times, they cut so close that he disappeared in a powdery plume—she could tell it was a boy; they were all boys—but when the snow settled, Janey saw he was still there.

She slowed reluctantly. All she wanted to do was keep on driving until she reached her parents’ house, go up to her room, turn on the little typewriter that Mary and Tabby had loaned her. Perhaps she could finish the résumé today, have it ready to mail out on Monday—a small step, but more than she’d felt able to accomplish in months. The boy probably lived nearby anyway, in one of those ugly ranches that were going up left and right. Developers like Big Roly bought the old farmsteads for nothing, subdivided them into residential lots, and sold them to people nobody knew. Or maybe the boy’s own snowmobile had broken down somewhere, and the others were going to help him fix it. Or perhaps this was a spat between kids. In that case, what right did Janey have to meddle? All of these thoughts were going through her mind when, beneath her thick wool scarf, she felt the weight of her Faith cross tapping lightly against her collarbone. Once, she would have overlooked the significance of such a thing, but Ruthie had taught her to recognize God’s nudge, His whisper in her ear.

She pulled up alongside the shoulder, as close as she could without getting stuck. It took a while before the boys noticed her; when they did, they darted a few yards farther into the field and waited, engines idling. The boy they’d been tormenting stared at the ground. She could see his shoulders moving, as if he were breathing hard, or crying. “You want a ride?” she called, stepping off the shoulder. The snow was deeper than she’d realized, and she promptly sank to her knees. One of the boys cut his engine, motioned the others to do the same. “C’mon,” he hollered. “We’ll take you there this time.”

“Yeah, we promise,” another boy said.

“Let me give you a ride,” Janey called again, and when the boy turned his face toward the sound of her voice, she saw the blood on his chin. Who knew what might have happened to him had she hardened her heart and driven on by? The boy hesitated briefly, looked back at the others. They all were younger than Janey first thought—twelve, maybe thirteen, tops. Too young to be playing on snowmobiles unsupervised. When the boy began trudging toward her, they started their engines again, hooted and jeered. Janey couldn’t hear what they were saying. It was probably just as well.

“Where did you want to go?” Janey said, leading him back to her mother’s Buick. “I can take you there.” She wasn’t sure if she should drive him to the hospital or what. Maybe he needed stitches. Or a tetanus shot. As they pulled away, the boys rode off into the fields, shrank to dim specks, vanished like demons.

“Are you lost?” Janey said. “Where do you live, near the Crossroads?”

“Do you have anything to eat?” the boy asked.

“No,” Janey said. It was an odd question, though reassuring. If he was hungry, he couldn’t be badly hurt.

“Oh,” the boy said. “What about gum?”

“Gum isn’t good for you. It rots your teeth.”

“Not sugar-free gum.”

“That’s bad for your kidneys,” Janey said—she remembered reading that somewhere. Or maybe her father had told her. At any rate, the boy certainly didn’t look like he needed something to eat. In fact, he carried quite a bit of extra weight. But thoughts like that were judgmental, wrong. She tried to think of what Ruthie would do in a situation like this. She tried to see the boy through Ruthie’s eyes, to open her mouth and let God move her tongue, which Ruthie said was just a matter of having faith that all the right words would be there.

“What’s your name?” she said. “What were you doing in the field?” But the boy simply repeated that he was hungry, using his coat sleeve to wipe at his chin. Janey’s father was a retired GP. Perhaps the best thing was to take him home, let Dad check him out.

“I guess I could take you to my house,” she said. “You could have a sandwich or something.”

“What kind of sandwich?” the boy asked.

“Tell me your name,” Janey said, “and I’ll tell you what kind of sandwich.”

The boy considered this seriously. He shivered, and Janey turned up the heater, aimed the vents at his face. What kind of parents let a child this age go out without a scarf or a proper pair of mittens? And instead of a hat, all the boy had was the hood of his coat. No wonder he was freezing. It struck Janey, as it often did, how unfair it was that such people could have children and she could not. Three miscarriages, then eight years of ovulation charts, hormone injections, mood swings and bleeding, and, finally, the loss of bleeding altogether. She and Harper looked into adoption, but it was too expensive; besides, the wait would have been years. “I’m sorry,” Harp had finally said. “All I’ve ever wanted was a family of my own.” And though Janey’s friends had all sided with her, in her heart she knew she’d have done the same thing.

“My name,” the boy said, startling Janey from her thoughts, “is Shawn.”

“Well, Shawn,” Janey said, “we have bologna, or peanut butter, or cold meat loaf with ketchup.”

“Meat loaf,” the boy said, “but I don’t want any ketchup on it.”

“OK,” Janey said, slowing for her turn onto the D road. Her parents’ house was behind the Solomon strip on the Saw Whet Road, in one of the few original neighborhoods that remained in Solomon. Janey had grown up with a best friend who lived next door, and each of them had dated the boy across the street, Danny Hope, all elbows and shins. Tonight was the night of the neighborhood block party Danny’s parents hosted each year. It was always held in the dead of winter, and in recent years it had gotten pretty wild. Men wore their wives’ sundresses, summer gowns, and bikinis; women wore their husbands’ short-sleeve bowling shirts, neckties and boxers and skimpy tees. There were summery foods and tropical drinks; the Hopes turned up the heat and set out fans and buckets of ice. The Ambient Weekly took pictures. At midnight, members of the Polar Bear Club stripped as naked as they dared, rushed out of the house, and rolled in the snow until Chief Pranke arrived to hustle them back inside. Both Mum and Daddy had been trying to get Janey to go to the Hopes’ party, especially now that Danny, a successful chiropractor, had divorced his wife and come back home from Houston to think things over.

“You don’t even have to dress up,” Daddy had said at lunch. “You can be the chaperone.”

“And once you see the dress Daddy’s going to wear, you’ll know he’s going to need a chaperone,” Mum said, and she waggled a scolding finger at Daddy until he kissed it, kissed it again. They were worse than newlyweds. They took classes in ballroom dancing at the community center. They were planning a Carnival cruise. Nights, they watched TV on the couch, cuddled up under the afghan like teenagers. If Janey came downstairs, they’d sit up quick and make room, Mum patting the space between them. “Come join the old folks,” she’d say. Wheel of Fortune was their favorite show. They’d yell at the contestants, urge them to spin, buy another vowel, while Janey slumped deeper into the cushions, feeling like an intruder. Her brothers had gone into insurance: Lee had an Allstate office in Minneapolis; Matt had one in Saint Paul. They came home with their wives and children twice a year.

Janey was the only one who hadn’t made good. After ten years of marriage, she was right back where she’d started: single, childless, dependent on her parents. At first, she’d seen doctor friends of Daddy’s, who prescribed hormones to start her monthly bleeding, pills to cure her sorrow. But her sorrow deepened, her bleeding still did not return, and some days she wept for hours on end. Things might have gone on this way if Mum hadn’t thought of the Circle of Faith. Mum had attended meetings herself before Daddy retired and they’d fallen in love again. Janey would never forget the day that Ruthie came to the house like an old-fashioned doctor, her black satchel filled with gifts: a journal for Janey to record positive thoughts, a small china angel that was also a night light, three white candles she asked Janey to light whenever she felt the dark thoughts closing in.

“What’s the matter?” the boy asked. They were parked in the driveway, but Janey didn’t remember pulling up to the house. When the dark thoughts came, she’d lose time that way—not a lot, not like that TV girl with all the personalities. Just a blip. She’d drive to a Faith meeting, and when she arrived, she’d realize she couldn’t remember a thing she’d seen along the way. Or she’d be doing something like folding laundry, and then it would all be folded.

“Nothing’s wrong,” Janey said. “This is where I live.”

She led him through the garage and brought him through the back door into the sudden warmth of the house. Mum was vacuuming; the cord stretched down the hall and disappeared into the living room. She’d used the same Hoover for twenty-five years, and it sounded as if she was driving a tractor back and forth.

“Hello?” Janey shouted, and when Daddy called back, “Down here!” she led the boy downstairs into the basement den, where the noise was absorbed into the wall-to-wall carpet. The den was spanking new, one of Daddy’s retirement projects.

“A visitor!” Daddy said, clearly delighted. He was busy combing Rusty. Rusty woofed once when he saw the boy, but he was even-tempered and never barked at anyone for long.

“I found him along County O,” Janey said. “His name is Shawn, but that’s all he’ll tell me.”

“What did you do to your face there, pal?” Daddy said, as if Janey brought stray children home every day. He let go of Rusty, who wagged his tail so hard it made his whole backside swing to and fro.

The boy shrugged. “Got beat up.”

“Oh, yeah?” Daddy said. He took the boy’s face in his hands, tipped his chin up to the light. “By who?”

“Just some kids,” the boy said. When Daddy released his face, he let Rusty lick his hands. “This is a very nice house.”

“Thank you,” Daddy said, pleased. “Tell you what. Why don’t you tell me your dad’s name, and we’ll just call him up and have him give those kids a talking to.”

“Can I have something to eat?” the boy replied.

Daddy looked a little surprised. “Sure, why not?” he said, and he turned to Janey. “Wipe him down with Merthiolate and then bring him up to the kitchen. I’ll see if Mum knows where he belongs.” He headed for the stairs, Rusty dancing happily underfoot. Kitchen was one of the words he knew, like walk and treat and Rusty. Janey often thought it would be wonderful to be a dog like Rusty, with so few words to be responsible for, all of them pleasant and promising.

She led the boy into the utility bathroom, gave him a washcloth from the linen closet, then opened the medicine chest, where Mum kept first-aid supplies and a collection of tiny wrapped hotel soaps. Janey’s antidepressants and hormone tablets were on the bottom shelf, in full deliberate view, so Mum and Daddy wouldn’t suspect she’d stopped taking them. Every night, she’d flush another batch down the toilet. Only God had the power to heal, and Janey was determined to put her faith in Him. Still, she couldn’t help but wish for a sign, some small thing that would let her know that He was watching. Ruthie said God spoke to people nowadays as often as He had during Bible times—it was just that the modern mind wasn’t trained to understand. Janey wondered if she’d recognize a sign if it came. Upstairs, the sound of the vacuum cleaner stopped, and suddenly all the little sounds around her seemed too loud: the closing of the cabinet, the scuff of her feet on the tile floor, the boy’s thick breathing as he lathered his face and hands.

“What were you doing with those boys?” Janey said. “Where were they taking you? You can tell me. You don’t have to be afraid.”

She handed him a towel, and he patted his face dry. His chin was still a little puffy, but with the blood washed away, it didn’t look too bad. There was only one small cut, more of a scratch really, under his mouth.

“I don’t want any of that stuff on me,” he said, eyeing the Merthiolate.

“Just on the cut,” she said. “To keep it from getting infected.”

“It won’t get infected,” he said.

“It might,” Janey said.

“No, it won’t,” the boy said. “God will make it heal. God can do anything if you believe He can.”

His words took Janey by surprise. A strange thing happened: She felt the cross at her throat begin to move, tap-tapping like a heartbeat. She grabbed for it—dropped it! It was hot! Then the bathroom door swung open, clipping her hip. “Knock-knock,” Mum said, which was what she always said whenever she came into a room. She wore one of Daddy’s old baby-blue seersucker suits, and she’d darkened the space between her eyebrows, so it looked as if one long eyebrow stretched across her forehead. Her tie was fat and black, with the word DANGEROUS spelled down the front in red letters. “Daddy’s upstairs doing his nails. Oh, goodness,” she said, noticing the boy’s wide eyes, “you must think I’ve escaped from the loony bin! It’s just that I’m on my way to a party where everyone dresses silly. Do I look silly?”

The boy nodded hesitantly. Mum laughed, delighted. “There’s an honest answer,” she said. “I’m Kathryn. And you’re Shawn?”

The boy didn’t answer.

“Don’t be afraid, love. Where do you live?” She turned to Janey. “Do we know anything about him?”

“He believes in the power of God,” Janey said, and when Mum gave her a funny look, she wished she hadn’t said anything. At lunch, when Janey had told Mum for the hundredth time that, no, she didn’t want to go to the Hopes’ party, Mum said she was concerned that Janey was getting too religious, that she spent too much time with Faith members and not enough with other people. Back in Mum’s day, they didn’t meet at the Fair Mile Crossroads—they just sat around in Ruthie’s living room, played cards, and talked, and maybe they each had a splash of kümmel in a shot glass. “Of course, we prayed,” Mum said. “And a few times we went on retreat. But there wasn’t all this talk about angels and goodness and—I don’t know—miracles.”

“You and Daddy are a miracle,” Janey said, “compared to how you used to be.”

Daddy said agreeably, “So we are. So we are.”

“And there certainly weren’t any vows of silence,” Mum continued, as if she hadn’t heard. “What’s so secret that you can’t tell your own parents what you pray for?”

“Nothing,” Janey said, trying not to sound irritable. “It’s just that we pray for personal things sometimes. Like, if somebody has a problem, they bring it to a meeting and we talk about it and then we pray about it. Like, when it’s time to pray for me”—Janey paused; it was OK to talk about your own requests—“we pray that someday I’ll meet somebody again and have a family.” She had to whisper to keep from crying.

“But, sweetheart,” Mum said, her eyes filling with sympathetic tears, “how can God answer a prayer like that if you stay hidden away in the house?”

“Aw, she’ll venture out again when she’s ready.” Daddy was trying to smooth things over; now he changed the subject. “Boy, would I love to be a fly on the wall during one of those meetings!” he said, nudging Janey’s shoulder in a playful way. “Bet I’d learn a thing or two.” Men were always saying things like that; it was just because they weren’t invited. They thought that meant you were talking about sex. Or else that you were talking about them.

Now Mum took the boy by the hand. “I hear you’ve been asking for a snack,” she said, and Janey followed them up the stairs. Mum had been cleaning since early this morning, and everything smelled of lemons. The curtains were freshly ironed, and the floors were waxed. She’d even raked the old shag rug in the living room. Janey hadn’t offered to do anything, because no matter how carefully she washed or waxed or dusted, Mum would do it all over again. She said she couldn’t help herself. “It’s just that I have my routine,” she said. “Relax, Pumpkin. Think of yourself as our special guest.”

Daddy was in the kitchen. He’d changed into a peach muumuu splashed with yellow flowers. He had flip-flops on his feet. Rhinestone clip-ons hung from his earlobes. “What do you think?” he said, and he turned in a lavish circle. Rusty circled with him, toenails click-clicking on the linoleum.

“Darling,” Mum said. “You’ll be the belle of the ball.”

The boy giggled.

They kissed, and in that casual gesture Janey saw everything her own life lacked. Harper had already remarried, and now he was the father of a baby girl. Month after month, when her bleeding did not come, she prayed the same prayer: Only say the word, Lord, and I shall be healed. Sometimes she watched Praise the Lord! on TV, listening closely to the testimonies of everyday people who’d witnessed the supernatural. Christ had appeared to one man in the form of a very young boy; another man had been in a plane crash and heard God’s voice saying he would be OK. Even people in Ambient had experienced things that could not be explained. There was a family who saw the ghost of a girl in their living room every New Year’s Eve. At the Faith house one time, as they’d prayed for Shelley Beuchel, a blue light had descended from the ceiling, slid down the walls and across the floor and up her body, where it rested on her forehead like a kiss.

“I’m going to find out what to do with our visitor,” Daddy said, and he headed down the hall toward the phone. Mum sat the boy at the kitchen counter and made him hold a washcloth of crushed ice against his chin while she fixed a meat loaf sandwich. The boy bowed his head before he took a single bite. Janey fingered her cross; it was still warm, though not the way it had been. God can do anything if you believe. “Tell me,” she begged him. “Why were you out in the field with those boys?”

The boy shrugged. He seemed quite content now, the half-eaten sandwich in his hand. “They said I could see the river angel there.”

“Oh, honey,” Mum said.

“They said that when the water freezes, the angel comes up on land.”

“But the river angel is a story,” Mum said. “Like the Easter bunny.”

“How do you know?” Janey said. “What about what happened to that kid last summer? Davey Otto?”

His picture had run in the Ambient Weekly under the caption “Believe It or Not!” He’d fallen off the Cradle Park footbridge and said that an angel, small and white as a paper plate, had pushed him back to the surface.

“Some people will say anything to get attention,” Mum said.

“Some people aren’t afraid to bear witness to the truth.”

“Don’t get upset,” Mum said, and she gestured at the boy with her chin. “I just don’t think you should encourage him, that’s all.”

“I’ve seen the angel twice,” the boy said. “Maybe three times. The last time, I wasn’t sure.”

“You probably saw it,” Janey told him when Mum turned back to the sink. The boy smiled at her gratefully. And Janey dared to believe he was the sign from God she’d longed for.

Daddy came back into the kitchen then, laid a hand on Janey’s shoulder. “Apparently,” he said, “the police know our visitor pretty well.”

“Who is he?” Mum said.

“His real name is Gabriel,” Daddy said. “Shawn Carpenter’s son.” Mum’s face grew soft with sympathy, but Janey blushed hard, first with disappointment, then again with anger at her own stupidity. She stood up and walked over to the kitchen sink and stared out the small, square window at their neighbors’ backyard, where two little girls were making a snowman. Gabriel Carpenter—it was only the child Anna Grey had talked about the first time she came to the Circle.

“Stan Pranke’s on his way with a squad car,” Daddy said. “I guess this is the fourth or fifth time the kid’s run off.”

The girls had finished the snowman’s base; now they began his round white abdomen. How easily these might have been her own daughters. Janey could feel their small hands clutching her fingers. She smelled the backs of their necks, heard their squeals as she tickled them. She tasted their skin as she kissed them good night, tucked them into bed. But no, that wasn’t true. What she really tasted was the emptiness of her mouth, the sourness working its way up from her stomach. Mum was right—she was getting too religious. Crazy, even. How could she ever have thought that the boy was anything more than he appeared to be? She pressed her index finger just above her upper lip to keep herself from crying.

Shawn Carpenter’s son. It was adding insult to injury. She’d been one year behind him in high school and she’d had a terrible crush on him, just like all the girls. Once, he offered her a ride home from school, but he drove her down to Cradle Park instead. He lifted her skirt, put his hand underneath, all the while talking about classes and teachers and everyday things. She was fourteen, and she didn’t understand what was happening. That’s how in nocent she’d been. Oddly, she couldn’t remember what had happened next. Did he just take her home? Did she accept another ride from him after that? Maybe there was something wrong with her memory. Maybe she was getting old-timer’s disease. Yet there were some things she remembered in such detail that they seemed more real than anything in the present. Like the time, just after her third and final miscarriage, when she woke up to see a little boy at the foot of her bed. Clearly, he was as curious about her as she was about him. He raised one hand, and she raised one hand back. She tilted her head; he tilted his. She stuck out her tongue and he grinned, mischievous, flicked his like a snake. Then Harper moaned in his sleep; the boy took a step back and disappeared. Janey could still see him in perfect detail—the broad, slightly flattened shape of his nose, so much like Daddy’s; Harp’s high cheekbones; her own soft brown eyes.

Gabriel had started to sniffle, and Mum said, “There, sweetheart, it’s OK. Tell you what—I’ll make you up a little care package.” Without looking, Janey knew Mum was filling a Baggie with oatmeal cookies from the cookie jar.

“We shouldn’t reward him for this,” Daddy said, though his voice wasn’t as stern as his words. “Looks like he’s got the system down. You know where they picked him up last time, Mother? Kimmeldorf’s, having a piece of Lucy’s raisin-and-sour-cream pie.”

There was a heavy knock at the door. Rusty rolled over, gave his single deep woof.

“Here you go, hon,” Mum said, and she handed Gabriel his cookies. Janey did not turn around to see him go. She went over to the kitchen table, sat down, and stroked Rusty’s smooth, broad forehead. There was something so steadfast and simple about the way Rusty looked at you. Rusty had no doubts about anything. Rusty just knew what he knew.

“You did a kind thing,” Daddy said, “stopping to help that boy.” He took a six-pack of Miller from the fridge, started collecting bags of pretzels and chips to take along to the Hopes’.

Janey was too miserable to answer.

“Imagine,” Mum said, coming back into the kitchen. “Stan says the boy’s been chasing the river angel all over the country.”

“Poor little guy,” Dad said. “It’ll take more than an angel to solve all his problems.” Then he rattled the chips like tambourines. “All set?” he asked Mum. “Party started at six.”

Mum sighed. “You sure you won’t come along?” she said to Janey.

“I’m sure.” Janey tried to keep her voice steady. “I’m just going to watch TV.”

After they’d gone, she opened the refrigerator and stared at what was in there without really seeing any of it. Her stomach felt funny, and she decided to skip dinner altogether. Instead, she went downstairs to the den and turned on the TV. She settled herself on the couch, closed one hand over her gold Faith cross, and laid the other on her flat, soft belly. Time passed. Her mood blistered into despair. She knelt down beside the couch and imagined three white candles burning. Ruthie had promised her that, someday, all of this would pass, that there would come a time when she’d awaken every morning with her heart singing God’s praises. “Sometimes I miss Tom so terribly,” Ruthie said, “and when I think of taxes coming due, and how hard it’s getting to rent the fields, and the money I’m losing on the sheep, and all the repairs that need to be done, my head gets racing and my heart gets pounding and I lose my way completely. It is then I remember God’s love for me. I remember that when a child asks for bread, the father won’t hand her a stone. I remember that faith the size of a mustard seed is all God asks of me, and from that place of calm I say, Not my will but Thine be done.”

How long Janey knelt there she did not know, but when she opened her eyes, she felt as if something inside her had eased. Not my will but Thine be done, she whispered, and she realized that, for the first time, she truly meant those words. Slowly, she got to her feet. She finally understood. No matter what happened, she would be OK. Her purpose in the world was to do God’s will, whatever that might be. And if she never had a child of her own, so be it. Thy will be done.

It was a strange place for a revelation, the TV humming in the background. “God is never dull,” Ruthie liked to say, and it was certainly true. Janey went to the bathroom, splashed her face with cold water. She could barely contain her joy. And it was no more than a few days later when she discovered the blood she’d prayed for, staining her white cotton underwear, beautiful as a rose.