“I just wanted to say her name out loud,” Olive added softly.
“At least you got to fall in love,” Wren whispered.
“Isn’t that why you’re here?”
Wren ducked her head. “I don’t know. If I do survive, after this, I mayneverhave sex.”
Olive grinned. “If I survive,” she replied, “it’sallI’m going to do.”
—
GEORGE ANSWERED THE PHONE ONthe second ring. “You know,” Hugh began, as if George had not hung up on him before, “I used to go to church with my kid. Not every week—I wasn’t as good a Christian as I could have been. But always Easter services and Christmas Eve.”
George snorted. “That’s like putting gravy on Skittles and saying you made Thanksgiving dinner.”
“Yeah, I know. It was my fault. I have a hard time sitting still. And I couldn’t handle the holier-than-thous. You know, the guys who sit right up front in the pews and act like they’ve got some special VIP pass to God?”
“It don’t work that way,” George said.
“Hell, no,” Hugh said. “Anyway, it must drive you crazy when you see people acting like that, too. People taking liberties that belong to a greater power.”
“I don’t follow.”
Hugh looked down at the slip of paper one of the detectives had given him. “The Lord brings death and makes alive.”
“Samuel 2:6,” George said.
“Is that why you came here today? Because you felt people in this clinic didn’t have the right to end a life?”
There was silence on the line.
“Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord,”Hugh said softly. “Not yours. The Lord’s.”
“That’s not why I came,” George said. “It’s whyyoucame.”
“I came to talk to you—”
“You came,” George interrupted, “to decide who lives today, and who dies. So, tell me…which one of us is playing God?”
—
GEORGE WAS SIX YEARS OLDwhen he learned how fine the line was between life and death. It had been one of those beautiful fall days in Mississippi. The colors had peaked, and the trees were a jeweled necklace wrapped around the lake. He was walking through the woods, liking the crunch of the red maple and hickory and bur oak leaves under his sneakers. He was kicking an acorn when he found the bird.
It was not a baby, but some kind of sparrow that had broken its wing. It hopped in small circles on the ground.
He picked it up as if it were made of glass and carried it all the way back to his home. There, he found a cigar box and lined it with Kleenex. For three days, he hid the little bird under his bed, trying to give it water, and bringing it leaves and grubs and anything else he thought might be appetizing.
The bird did not improve. It barely moved. He could hardly see the rise and fall of its breast.
He needed help, so he went to his father.
What he hadn’t known, at the time, was that his daddy was in one of his moods, sleeping off last night’s excesses.
It’s not getting any better,he explained.Can you fix it?
You bet. His father lifted the bird with the gentlest of touches. One long finger stroked from the crown of the bird’s head to its crooked tail. And then he snapped its neck.
You killed it!George cried.
