In the Shadows

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.”