to be hard.”

As she listened to Kyle’s prayer, Megan felt a little stronger, a little closer to God. Some of her uncertainty about what she was doing seemed to pass, but there were still so many things she was unsure of.

Shackleton Heights

Marbury, Alabama

Local Time 0940 Hours

“You’ve got no right to do this,” Delroy told Deputy Walter Purcell. In the passenger seat of the car, the navy chaplain watched as the streets became more and more disturbingly familiar.

Less and less of this area had changed, but those changes had definitely been for the worse. What had once been streets lined with wellkept houses were now potholed thoroughfares punching a thin layer of civilization between decrepit dwellings. Screens still covered a few of the verandas and front porches, but rust clung to the mesh like cancer. Litter lined the cracked and peeling white picket fences that leaned first one direction then the other like drunks too far gone to make it home. Several of the homes were obviously abandoned, marked with broken windows, broken doors, and graffiti.

God, Delroy wondered, drawn into the hypnotic spell of the oncefamiliar territory so far removed from everything he had known, how bad can this be?

Walter didn’t look at the chaplain, just kept driving. “I don’t know what else to do, Delroy. Honest to God, I don’t. Now I was never much of a praying man before all this happened. I guess maybe I kind of got away from that when that drunk driver killed my boy. And truth to tell, I didn’t really think that much about praying even after all them people disappeared. But when I found you the night before last lying at your boy’s grave and next to your daddy’s, why I prayed that you’d be okay. Surprised the tarnation out of me, I have to tell you. Didn’t even know who you were then, and there I was praying for you. Didn’t even think about it. Just up and did it. Me, who ain’t been big on praying for a lotta years. I thought that was strange. Yes, sir, I truly did.”

Delroy sat back and tried to relax. A thousand memories spun through his mind, and he tried to avoid every one of them. “What you’re doing isn’t fair, Deputy.”

Walter sighed heavily. “No, sir, I suppose not. But when I got up this morning after listening to you and Clarice all night, this was the only thing on my mind. Tell you the truth, I thought it was plumb stupid, too. Knew it was unfair. But I figured that was the only way I could get your attention.” He paused. “More’n that, I’m halfway convinced this ain’t even my idea. As crass and forward as I am, I generally don’t take such liberties with another man and his problems. I figure it’s well enough to give that man room to sort ‘em out by himself. Only I seen you working at yours, and I know you’re stuck. That decision you’ve made about getting back to your ship? That’s a good call. But I listen to you, and I know you’re doing it for the wrong reasons.”

Less than two minutes later, Walter pulled the cruiser to a stop in front of the old church. Seventy years ago, it had been built on an acreage at the end of a dead-end street. The bell tower stood high with an iron cross atop it that had sometimes drawn down lightning but had never caught the roof on fire even before lightning rods were put in. Two parking areas had been cut out of the trees on either side of the church. Both had cracked asphalt and weeds that had somehow made it through the winter, and enough old cars to make them look like car lots.

Seeing the abandoned church sitting there as it was now—peeling paint and broken windows, missing shingles, and empty bell tower—almost broke Delroy’s heart. Multicolored, spray-paint graffiti marred the walls, much of it ugly and profane. The white picket fence that ran around the main building and the two outer buildings where Sunday school had been taught was missing planks, had broken planks, and needed paint.

The flower beds his father had put in and his mother had tended with love and tenderness lay choked with weeds. Tall weeds and lightning-blasted trees grew in back of the church where Josiah had always kept a truck garden to help keep food on the Harte table and give away to the needy in the congregation. They’d kept chickens and a milk cow back there as well.

A faded sign hung by one chain in front of the picket fence. Time and neglect had faded the letters but Delroy knew what they said: Church of the Word. A Gathering Place of God’s Faithful.

Despite the fact that he truly believed all he wanted to do was leave, Delroy reached for the door release and stepped out of the cruiser. “What happened? There was a minister who took over after my father was killed.”

“Reverend Stamp,” Walter agreed, getting out of the car. “He was the one who lasted the longest, though he never even came close to how long your daddy stayed. There were nineteen preachers that followed him. None of them stayed like your daddy did. None of them made this place a home. I asked around yesterday while you were sleeping. Don’t know what made me do it. I just did. I already knew the church was closed down.”

“When?” Drawn to the unbelievable sight before him, Delroy walked toward the church. Daddy, can you see what’s become of our church? Can you see what’s happened to it? How could anyone let this happen after everything you did for it?

“Four years ago,” Walter answered, hitching up his gun belt and following. “The last preacher got beat up by a group of gangbanger wannabes. Put the minister in the hospital for a few days with a cracked skull. He was young, and they

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