Matters of Faith Read Free Page A

on the dresser and the religion books on the shelf above his bed, it was practically monklike.
    I gave the room one last glance as I backed out the door. The sun winked off a crystal pendant, throwing prisms across the otherwise bare walls, dagger-shaped rainbows as beautiful as any painting.
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CAL had watched our preparations throughout the week with a bemused smile, but the day before they were due he came home with a fresh haircut and offered to make whole grain bread, something he hadn’t done in years. The three of us worked in the kitchen together, music floating in from the living room, the windows open and the smell of the Gulf of Mexico and the bay filling the house, as soft as hope.
    A rush of affection for Cal, something I hadn’t felt in a long time, hit me when I saw him bent over the counter, kneading dough. He and Meghan were talking about fishing, and I studied him, seeing the young man I’d met when I was younger than Marshall was now.
    He’d come out of the backwoods of middle Florida, land weary and religion exhausted, running from his mother, the reputation of his brother, the memory of his father. We’d met when my boyfriend, a fellow art major, took me on an airboat tour of the Everglades. Cal had been our boat captain, silent while our guide yelled over the engine, staring at me while everyone else stared at ospreys on their massive nests and alligators slipping into the grassy water.
    I’d felt his eyes on me the whole time, and when I finally got off the boat, my knees weak, ears ringing, shaking wind-flattened bugs out of my clothes and hair, I was flush with more than sunburn. He handed me a phone number along with a warm can of Coke, and I’d slipped it into my pocket with a breathless glance at my boyfriend.
    I called him that night and he picked me up at my dorm. We’d only spent a handful of nights apart since. He got me through college, he got me through the disappearance of my parents—on sabbatical in the Galápagos the year after we married when their boat went down—and he got me through the births of Marshall and Meghan.
    And then somewhere along the line, he—the determined man who wouldn’t take his eyes off me—had slowly disappeared, into work, into his workshop to tinker with engines and fishing gear, into the Gulf and the Everglades. Or perhaps I’d simply lost sight of him. Who knows how a marriage disintegrates, by what degrees, what its half-life is?
    Now, as he shaped the dough into a ball and gently slipped it into an oiled bowl, I thought I saw him again. He looked up, and I didn’t look away but smiled at him, feeling a laugh bubble up in my throat when he did a double take. He grinned and winked at me while our daughter’s sweet voice splashed through the kitchen in bright, happy colors. And for a moment we were back, and I couldn’t wait for Marshall and his first girlfriend to walk through that door and remind us of ourselves.

MARSHALL
    He was letting Ada drive the last half. He was exhausted with the telling of Ira’s story. He’d never told anyone at college about it before; he’d never wanted to take the chance that he would break down, maybe cry in front of people who had not known Ira, could not understand how close they had been.
    But Ada was different. She was so very different. And she had been rapt as he’d told the story, gasping when he told her about the train, how massive it had seemed, how close, how fast. She placed her hand on his leg, rubbing his thigh sympathetically. To his surprise, he hadn’t cried. Just her presence, just her listening to the most pivotal moment of his life, was enough to comfort him, and when they’d stopped to gas up the car and change places, she’d held him and kissed him right there in front of truckers and everyone.
    And he’d let her drive, not just because he was tired, but because she’d asked so—there was no