town but lovingly maintained. Its steeple, domed and adorned
with a simple iron cross, had been saved when the previous chapel
burned down nearly a century ago. Rising two stories above the
single-story building, it was a landmark everyone used to navigate
around the flat seaside curve of the town center. There was
nowhere worth going that couldn’t be found via the cross, as Mrs.
Johnson was fond of saying.
Charles found the interior to be like the inside of most houses
of worship — dark and smelling of age, the pews worn with the
weight of desperate faith and tedious complacence. He’d often
wondered how, exactly, one’s prayers were supposed to make it
through so much dim, dusty space between the heart and the
ceiling.
Many people invoked God when finding out about his condi-
tion, but Charles didn’t much care either way. If God wanted to
cut his life short, God would have to worry about what to do with
him afterward. It wasn’t any of Charles’s concern. When he was
younger he had figured out that there was no way to fit faith into
the workings of his everyday life in a way that made sense, and so
he had shifted religion to the side as a useless extra part.
Thom walked in past the pews and straight to the small organ,
tucked into the wall beneath a carved arch. Cora sat at the edge of
a pew with her hands folded sedately in her lap, while Minnie
prowled up and down the center aisle before noticing Thom sit
down on the organ bench and run his fingers lovingly along
the keys.
“Can you play?” she asked.
Thom sighed, silently fingering notes. “Mostly the piano,
though I can play the organ, too. I miss it like breathing.”
“So that’s what you’re always doing with your fingers.”