Chapter 27

It might have been easier and faster to just take a cab, but Jesse appreciated the walk. It gave him time to think, though he had been thinking much too much lately. A line from a poem flashed into his mind—he needed time to prepare a face to meet the faces he would meet. He was standing in front of the church much sooner than he expected. Was it still standing in his world, in his dimension? Or had it been knocked down to make room for the mega-churches that seemed to be popping up everywhere? Jesse couldn’t even guess. He wasn’t a very religious man.

Hoping that the door would be locked—though not knowing why a church would be locked at all—he marched up the steps. But the knob turned easily in his hand, and he slipped out of the noon sun and into the church’s cool recesses, the door shutting softly behind him. At first, he thought he was alone, but as his eyes began to adjust, he saw the figure of a woman standing near the altar.