And this, Annabel said tracing her finger a few inches down and to the right from Montreal, is Knowlton.

The National Geographic atlas lay open on their kitchen table, and her mother twisted the big book towards her, saying helpfully, They used to have a baseball team in Montreal.

This wasn't so much a point of information – everyone at the table knew the make-up of the majors – as it was a point of reference, an attempt to shed some positive light on the mysterious black dot on the map, with its red veins bleeding in all directions, spilling south onto a more comfortable side of the border. Marjorie Detwiler, perhaps embarrassed Montreal had let the Expos leave for Washington, said cheerfully that Toronto had won a couple of championships as well. Back to back, in the nineties.

Everyone knew that too.

Jake Detwiler was silent at his wife's unhelpful helpful comments. He knew where Montreal was, and where Toronto was. He knew about the Expos and the Blue Jays, thought Gary Carter was a hell of a player in his day and Tim Raines would have been if he'd kept off the damn drugs. And he admired Philippe Alou for the great things he'd done with that second-rate team year after year. As for Toronto, he'd been there a decade ago and thought it a fine city. Clean and friendly and polite, though what Toronto had to do with anything he sure didn't know. Montreal he'd never visited, and didn't they speak French there?

The date for the wedding was set, the plans for the move were set, and Jake Detwiler got up from the kitchen table to investigate the air conditioner, which had not been working since Tuesday. He had acquiesced to Annabel's marriage, had agreed, approved, but this business of moving to Canada right away, this was something he hadn't counted on, not so soon, and there was a distrust that Annabel could detect from the slump in his back, the way he poked at the air conditioner without even asking her to get his screwdriver.

You didn't mind when I went to Bolivia, she said. And you encouraged me to apply for the Mission to Indonesia. You were proud of me. Those were the most exciting experiences of my life. I learned more in those two months than in all my schooling. What is it about Canada all of a sudden?

She waited for him to answer, but instead he did ask for his screwdriver. Annabel got it for him, the old Philips with the green plastic handle, she felt a silly pride at knowing just which screwdriver he wanted, her mother would have brought the wrong one. He took the screwdriver without a word, without even looking at his daughter. He tapped at the aircon casing, took out the screws, and pried the plastic off the front of the unit, to reveal the mundane mechanics of the thing: compressor, metal coils, fan. Annabel waited beside her father for a moment, expecting a word, an acknowledgement, but none came. She sat down again at the table, pleading with her eyes at her mother for some intervention.

Jake, honey, Marjorie called softly, five minutes later.

And then he appeared again in the kitchen, screw-driver still in hand.

I don't want to see you move away, Jake Detwiler said, pointing the tip of the screwdriver north, jabbing it in the direction of that other country. You're my little girl. I don't want to see you go. There's plenty to do here in California. Why do you have to go all the way up there?

Annabel's father actually cried that night, a big fat tear rolled down his cheek. That was all – there were no sobs, no chokes, no sputtering, but there was that one big tear. He laid his big hands flat on the kitchen table, pursing his lips and tilting his head the way he did when he was thinking hard, and ignored the tear. Annabel felt an almost frantic excitement when that tear appeared at the corner of her father's glistening eye, and then made its way, slowly, from behind his square, wire-framed glasses, along the curve of his cheekbone, and then crossed the border into his stubble-marked jowl. It was big enough and wet enough that he was forced to wipe it away with the back of his hand with a sort of angry violence, and then he took his glasses off and wiped both eyes with his thumb and forefinger. That was all. There was only one tear. But it was enough to make Annabel cry too, to see her big, hard father, with a tear on his cheek. She felt her sinuses block up suddenly, and then tears came. She sobbed alone and apart for a moment, felt her shoulders shaking. And then her father said, Oh, now, and then he pulled her over to his chair, onto his lap, hugged her to him, almost squeezing the breath out of her. He cupped her head in his palm, an embrace she hadn't felt for a very long time, and she bawled, she wasn't sure why, into his shoulder, shaking and shuddering.

Oh, now, her father said, disarmed by this show (and perhaps Annabel knew he would be), Now, now darling, he said, baffled but somehow pleased by his daughter. And they both started laughing, her father chuckling softly, saying, Now, now, over and over, to the sound of Annabel sobbing and laughing at once.

Marjorie, seeing daughter and husband in this happy-sad embrace, started crying too, and the three of them sat around the table, father smiling now, and the two women crying and laughing at the same time, Marjorie dabbing carefully at her thick mascara with a Kleenex she had produced from the sleeve of her sweater.

The community of Tigris, California, in the Central Valley, was built around the tenets of Jesus Christ, Our Saviour, and though the junior high school Annabel attended was open to all faiths, and indeed populated by atheists, nihilists, ten Catholics (not counting the Mexicans), a number of Mormons and a scattering of Hindus and other dark-skinned folk, the people who ran the place were most definitely Christian. The teachers and administration, as well as the young self-selected arbiters of pre-teen policy, the athletic boys and clear-skinned girls were certain that the path to salvation was through Jesus. Outside of school, it was the New Hope Church of Christ that provided the organizing force behind Annabel's life, and the central focus around which the Detwiler family revolved.

So when Annabel, aged twelve, lost her faith in God, she told no one.

She feared her parents' reaction to the announcement of her rejection of Our Lord, Creator of the Universe. And she was terrified of what would happen if Pastor Dawes found out, Pastor Dawes who took a personal interest in the youth wing of the Church, who had encouraged Annabel to join the Young Faithful Organizing Committee in a one-on-one meeting that had left her euphoric with excitement.

She realized that she might no longer qualify for the Young Faithful Organizing Committee. The summer retreat camping trip was only three weeks away, and she was in charge of the song book. What would they sing if she was … what ? … ex-communicated? What would her friends say if they found out she was an atheist? Her friends who prayed for the right Christmas presents, the President and the troops. What would her fellow-cheerleaders say? The boys on the basketball and football teams? What would those boys say if she announced her new atheism before their pre-game prayers?

Not that there was no questioning of the Church in her world. Sin was all around her. The Lord's name was taken in vain, and her friends occasionally stole things, defied their parents, and lied. Her classmates coveted possessions all the time, and Annabel Detwiler herself did her homework on the Sabbath. There were rumours of other, deeper sins in high school, of drugs and alcohol and gambling and even sex. All kinds of sin happened in Tigris.

Even Pastor Dawes was a sinner, he said so himself almost every week, they had Eve to thank for that. But sinning was one thing, rejecting the Lord Our God outright was something else. There was a big difference between breaking the rules, and not believing in rules at all.

A month after Annabel's twelfth birthday, several things happened in succession: Nathaniel, the boy she thought she loved, had kissed Wendy Legget, and then chose Wendy over Annabel. Two weeks later her grandfather died of a heart attack, something not unexpected, but devastating nonetheless. And then Rebecca Miller, a girl she had met numerous times at gymnastics tournaments in other towns, a girl who might have become a best friend, had the tricks of geography been different, was badly injured in a car accident. Both the girl's parents were killed, and Rebecca's spine was broken. She would be in a wheelchair, probably for the rest of her life.

At first Rebecca's predicament seemed so outrageous, so unlikely, so distant that it was overshadowed by Annabel's other concerns, her grandfather and especially Nathaniel.

In a tearful session with her best friend, Samantha Stutz, sitting under the stands at the stadium, smoking the third cigarette of her life (a Marlboro red, stolen from Samantha's older brother), she confessed that she was thinking of suicide. Her grandfather's death had already made her so sad, and seeing Nathaniel kissing Wendy was close to as much as her young soul could bear. And though she sobbed and cursed -- and asked God Why me? Why me? -- it was Samatha's sage words that stopped her tears and forced Annabel to re-examine the universe.

What Samantha said was a variation on a theme that has been expressed countless times to every individual in the history of the human race, a theme reworked and modified slightly as tonic for those in existential or physical pain of one kind or another. Here is what wise Samantha said:

Just be glad you aren't Rebecca Miller. She's a quadriplegic now, and her parents are dead. Count your blessings.

And as Annabel counted, she did indeed feel better. She still felt miserable. She missed her grandfather, and she hated Nathaniel and Wendy, though she was ready to forgive Nathaniel if push came to shove. But Rebecca's predicament put things in a new context.

Samantha was right. Annabel had lots to be thankful for. She was healthy. Her mother and father and brother all loved her, she was near the top of her class in school, she was very pretty, even if Nathaniel didn’t think so, the Cheerleading squad was heading to the regional championships, and she was not a quadriplegic. It wasn't quite the deep tonic she needed, not Nathaniel's hand in hers, but it helped her try to look at things differently, and see that she was a lucky girl, who had just had some bad luck recently, and nothing as bad as some others.

But the comfort this brought came at a price.

As she thought about it later that night, sitting on her bed, rearranging her teddy bears, she considered poor Rebecca, and she faced an old metaphysical conundrum. It was the corollary to the solace of counting one's blessings, and winding up solidly positive on the balance sheet. It was the inevitable consequence: a conundrum faced by all men and women of faith, and those who wonder about things like fairness and the universe and evil. Why would God take care of me, yet allow terrible things to befall others? Why is God so unfair? How can the universe be so cruel? How could He do such things to people?

Why Rebecca and not me?

Annabel forgot about Nathaniel, and even her grandfather slipped to another, sweeter part of her mind. Her focus was now shifted totally to Rebecca Miller, orphaned, in a wheelchair for the rest of her life. The scale of this horror was beyond Annabel's capacity to understand. She had spent many nights tossing in bed, imagining terrors of one kind or another, and how she would try to cope with them. She had imagined going blind, deaf, blind and deaf; she had imagined having her face melted in a fire. She had imagined suffering amnesia; her parents murdered; and she had imagined her older brother suffering from some awful disease, and Annabel dedicating her life to caring for him.

But this, this was something else altogether, something more terrible than anything she had imagined. Not only had Rebecca's parents died in a car crash, but she couldn't move her arms or her legs. She would probably never get married, and never have babies. And this was not imagining, it was realer than real, and for all that, more dreamlike, and Annabel kept asking herself: why Rebecca and not me?

This question, more than Rebecca's actual tragedy, was what kept her from sleeping that night. This was the source of her real terror.

She went through all the mental hoops that the challenged faithful are forced to jump through, as she tossed and turned trying to sleep, too afraid to cry now, moving frantically from one unsatisfactory solution to the next. She strained to remember the things John Dawes said in Church, but none of it seemed good enough.

Maybe God could not interfere in individual events because of Free Will? She didn't really know what that meant, so that answer didn't help much. Maybe God works in mysterious ways, and we humans cannot see the infinite wisdom of his plan, even if it seems unjust to us now. Which was all well and good, but Rebecca would be stuck in a wheelchair for the rest of her life, with no parents, and as wise as God might be, and as infinite, that seemed a pretty crappy state of affairs for Rebecca to suffer, in the good name of infinite wisdom or anything else.

Or maybe God's will just could not be questioned, as Pastor Dawes said over and over in his sermons, which worried Annabel even more, since here she was tossing and turning, and she'd spent at least the last six hours questioning God's will. Maybe this was all a test, a test of Annabel's soul and faith, after all look what happened to Job. Still, it seemed unfair that one person would be turned into a quadriplegic in order to test someone else. Maybe, she thought, maybe God protects only the truly holy. Annabel was not sure about Rebecca's holiness, and as she continued to question God, she realized her own holiness was pretty suspect. Maybe the world was just sin and misery, maybe this world was just a mirage, on our road to the afterlife, where the holy and faithful would experience the true blessings of the Lord. But that didn't help Rebecca much.

But were these arguments enough? No.

And then it occurred to her: maybe God isn't so kind and good after all. Maybe God was cruel and mean. Or maybe He was just not as powerful as we like to think, but a God who makes mistakes, who does his best but can't keep track, can't keep up, can't make everything good in the universe, can't help people like Rebecca, and instead He kills her parents and breaks her back and ruins her life.

Or perhaps He was not at all.

Maybe, she thought finally, sometime before dawn, maybe God just doesn’t exist and there's nothing but people and the world and the cold, dark, infinite universe, with no divine wisdom at all.

The next day she woke up expecting to be cured of her blasphemy. Instead, she felt more alone and more cold and more tiny than she ever had before in her life. She thought of asking her father for guidance but was frightened of how he might react. She couldn't tell her best friend Samantha, nor her mother that she didn't believe in God anymore, and her brother was out of the question. And so she suffered on, mulling over and over this terrifying revelation.

Her mother hovered over her at breakfast, asking, Are you OK, honey? when she didn't finish her cereal, and she just nodded, said, I'm fine, and got up to get on the school bus. Her mother retreated to her cupboards which she banged gently when she wanted the world to know she was upset.

Of all the options Annabel pondered, the only one that seemed to make any sense, that might allow her to keep her faith, was this: maybe Rebecca was not holy enough.

That Sunday, it seemed as if Pastor Dawes's sermon was directed at her. This, he said holding up the Bible, this is the Word of God, this is what God commands you, His Will is found in these pages, this is his covenant with you, what Jesus teaches, and it is not up to us, us men and women and children, we children, to question. Does it seem hard to you? Does it seem unfair? You bet it's hard. And I don't know what fair means, but I can tell you what is Just. Read this and you will know what is Just.

Annabel, still reeling from her week of crisis, thought, it's a book. Maybe someone wrote it down wrong. People make mistakes all the time. And what if everyone was making a big mistake now about God?

She cried herself to sleep those nights praying, praying for a sign, for some clarity, that her lack of faith might be erased, praying for some help in figuring all this out. Despite her loss of faith, she prayed to Jesus that He might enter her heart. But he didn't; or if He did she didn't notice.

Annabel had won third prize in Math the year before, and she had won an honourable mention at the state science fair for a solar cell that she built with help from her father. She was good at science class, and so it was to Empirical Science that Annabel turned to solve her problem of faith. She built an Excel spreadsheet to see what she could add to the experimental evidence that God did indeed exist. She wondered if she could find a correlation between her faith and the universe.

She alternated days of letting Jesus into her heart and not letting him in. For a whole month, thirty days, minus Sundays, which seemed too risky.

She told no one, and kept a secret diary, specially coded lest anyone discover her scientific analysis of the presence and lack of presence of Him in her heart. She noted the day (J for "Jesus"; NJ for "No Jesus") and noted the most important 5 experiences that day, ranking them on a scale of 1-5 (one being bad, 5 being good). She put all the data into a spreadsheet and graphed it out in various ways, and at the end of the month she found that her Jesus days were on average 7% better than her non-Jesus days, which seemed to her within an error expectation for such scientific study. She thought that 7% was better, but it seemed a small increase in daily goodness compared with what was promised, then again there was eternity to consider and she supposed that skewed the results significantly in Jesus' favour. It was an inconclusive study, and she asked Jesus for clarification as soon as possible.

The funny thing was, she wasn't sure what answer she wanted. She told herself over and over that she wanted Jesus to be real, she wanted the Lord to guide her life. But she had the awful thought a few times – one she could not banish -- that if God could be so unfair as to make Rebecca a quadriplegic, maybe Annabel didn't want to have anything to do with Him. Maybe believing in him was wrong.

Maybe she should believe in something that actually helped people like Rebecca, instead of making her have a car crash that killed her parents.

Three weeks after her Jesus modeling study, she had her first period, an event followed by such intense relief that she cried with joy and phoned Samantha and said: It happened!

And months later, after her worries disappeared, she laughed to herself when she thought of that silly young girl who had questioned Jesus, the Church, and the Almighty Lord Himself. She had done a fine job on the song book for the Young Faithful Camping Retreat, and Pastor Dawes asked her personally whether she was interested in running for Vice President of the group next year when she turned thirteen.

Everyone on her trip to Indonesia – West (not East) Timor -- expected that Annabel would marry Trevor Rice. He was a good-natured recent graduate of Tennessee State, with ambitions of a career in broadcast journalism, an important front in the battle for the spiritual future of America.

He was more interested in the business side, he confessed as they walked along the deserted beach after a Mission pig roast and bonfire, he didn't want to be in front of the camera, but instead making decisions about the direction of news itself. They stopped and listened to the surf, while Trevor continued cataloging his past and future achievements: his internship with the cable news company, the offer of a full-time position with them, his plans to do a part-time business degree, his target of reaching vice-president by the time he was 35. He laid all this out in minute detail, the cities where he would live, the jobs he planned to have, the progression he envisioned for his career. He listed off, too, his student achievements: Varsity Lacross Division II semi-finals; Treasurer for the Campus Carolers for Christ; Deputy Vice-Editor of the University Gazette; Young Entrepreneur's Club Secretary. He laid these bona fides out on display, Annabel thought, like some herdsman listing his camels and sheep in preparation of more serious dowry negotiations with her father.

And he peppered his resume with compliments, of Annabel's hair, her eyes, her intelligence.

On paper he was everything she thought she wanted in a man. But she couldn't stand him.

She didn't want to marry Trevor, and she told him that before he asked, or before he thought of asking.

You know, she said as she and Trevor walked from chapel to the dining hall, I don't think I'll get married for a few years. I'm not ready.

She meant it just as a marker to Trevor, that she was not suitable prey, and by the outrage in his response, it was clear he understood. He defended the institution, talking about commitment and love and family. The sanctity of union, our moral and religious duty to find the partner God had chosen for us. To choose a partner, and do God's will. He knew he had just been spurned.

Annabel wasn't sure what she wanted, even if she was sure she didn't want Trevor. None of the other boys on the Mission appealed to her either. She had no specific plans, no particular objectives in mind. But she wanted to do something big with her life, something exciting, something with significance. Trevor's plans for broadcast journalism seemed somehow dirty to her, or maybe it was Trevor's focus that turned her off. She didn't want to be eclipsed by someone else's ambition, maybe that was the problem with Trevor, he was too sure of his own route, there would be no deviations, and he seemed only to be seeking a lieutenant, an aide-de-camp who could take care of the home front and the bills while he charged to the future. A strong driven man was something she respected, and she agreed a woman's role was to support her husband, to follow his lead, she had no qualms with that, but Annabel wasn't ready to play second-fiddle to someone so … boring.

Her rejection of Trevor upset the ecosystem of the Mission, and for a while no one quite knew how to approach her. So she kept to herself, and concentrated on the tasks of the Mission, tending the vegetable garden, teaching in the little school.

Her isolation from the others attracted the attention of Reverend Burnside who took her aside one day, and said, I'm afraid you are working too much, Annabel. God loves faith and dedication, but have you considered spending more time with your peers? There is no greater sign of God's love than the bonds between people, between friends, between young men and women of faith. A young woman, he said, and a young man.

She nodded, slightly embarrassed by this talk and its implication, embarrassed too by Burnside's discomfort at the words he said. But she agreed with him when he asked if that made sense to her, and agreed to try to spend more time with the others.

Trevor, for his part, quickly set things right in the Mission again: he and a perky gymnast from Colorado could be seen holding hands all over the campus and discussing the Bible.

As Annabel watched the pairing of her co-missionaries, she realized one of the prime objectives, purposeful or not, of these Missions was to mate young Christians together. That, she reflected, was what Reverend Burnside was trying to tell her. Put young Christians in a harsh situation -- hot, unfamiliar, in a foreign land, doing the work of God - and test them. They'll seek out a protector, a companion, a husband, a wife. And why not? Everything was monitored, they were doing good work, but in the end a man wants a woman, a woman wants a man, and being fruitful and multiplying is what it's all about. But Annabel, despite attention from any number of earnest young men after Trevor's change of heart, wasn't ready. Or at least wasn't ready for them.

A week before the end of the Mission, she and Beth Ludwig were sent into town for supplies with the Mission SUV. Beth, who had been battling the Indonesian flu for a few days, made Annabel stop the truck twice within ten minutes of departure, and so Annabel just turned around and took her back to the Mission. The thankful girl did not say a word of thanks, but opened the door of the truck while they were still moving and bolted towards the barracks. Annabel killed the engine, and sat in the little courtyard of the Mission, built in familiar Spanish style, with white stuccoed archways and clay tiled roofs. The little fountain in the centre of the courtyard dribbled water into the afternoon heat, while Annabel wondered what to do next. The heat seeped into the SUV just seconds after the air-conditioner had been turned off. It was definitely forbidden for her to go into town alone, but her partner was gone, they needed supplies and there was no one else around.

With a flutter of excitement, she started the engine, pulled onto the bumpy road, and drove the 15 minutes into town.

She was thrilled to be on her own in the town, freed from the companionship of the group, feeling an electric charge of solitude in such a strange place, with its little Chinese businesses, musty stationary stores, plumbing supply shops with every manner of pipe and joint and tool jumbled in a heap outside. There were little restaurants, food stalls and textile shops in the main square of town, and for the first time, she really felt she was somewhere she knew nothing about, without a guide, without an intermediary, with no one to tell her where to go or what to do, no one to protect her from trouble, no one to interpret the strange languages she heard and saw on the shop signs. As she walked through the main square, she thought that she had never really been in Indonesia before this moment.

She was stared at and ignored. Such a weird thing to get pleasure from, she thought, as she wandered the market district, browsing through shops under the curious, smiling and sometimes scowling gaze of the local Chinese and Javanese shop owners.

She bought the provisions on her list, put them in the SUV, locked the door, and returned to a little traveler's hostel she had passed several times. She knew the café was off limits. Other travelers were regarded with skepticism among the missionary crowd. They were heathens mostly, drug-users, sinners, sex tourists. To be saved maybe, but not to be trusted. She walked by the café's ratty little terrace – two empty tables with ashtrays and mismatched wicker chairs under a ripped red awning – several times before she finally ducked in past the awning to the dark inside.

The place was small and clean, with white tile floors, a few more tables and a variety of chairs -- rattan, wicker, plastic, and a couple of folding deck chairs leaning against the wall. A lone computer sat at the back of the room, and a dented Coca Cola cold box rattled in the heat. A fan clicked slowly overhead, while two floor fans strategically placed at either corner of the room hummed and blew a gentle, but hot breeze through the place. Reggae music played on a little tape player at the empty counter.

She sat down at a table by an wooden bookshelf, piled with National Geographics, People magazine, The Economist, Danielle Steele and a host of science fiction books, and a Gideon Bible.

A tall Australian took her order, returning quickly with a cold Coca Cola in a little glass bottle, so quaint, so beautiful, with a straw bobbing in the dark liquid. She flipped through the magazines, and felt happier than she had since she had arrived in Indonesia. Happier maybe than she had ever felt. She picked up a Ray Bradbury book, and put it down, and then picked another. The book was Lolita.

Ninety minutes later she realized she was very late. But she couldn't stop reading this story of the old man and the young girl he loved, a young girl who was as hungry for the attention of the man as he was for her. The language was unlike anything she had ever read, except maybe the King James. It was so beautiful. And raw, and dirty, and wrong. But she kept reading.

What would Pastor John Dawes think of this book, she wondered. Surely he would punish her for reading it. She decided to buy it.

When she presented it to the Australian, he asked if she was from the mission. She said, Yes, she was, and he laughed at her in a nice enough way, and said, What's a godly girl like you doing reading a dirty book like that, which made her blush, but instead of leaving as she thought she ought to, she leaned on the counter and said, And how does a big illiterate like you know anything about a book like this? At which the Aussie too laughed and offered her a beer – I'm buying. She refused.

How did you know I was from the Mission? She asked.

You all might as well have it tattooed on your forehead.

She hid Lolita deep within her luggage, and spent the last few days of the trip secretly devouring the book, and thinking about the big Australian in the café, imagining what he would be like, imagining all sorts of things about him that made her very nervous about her soul indeed. But she never went back to see him; she finished her stay at the Mission, and returned to California.

Annabel met Evan at the New Hope International Outreaches BarBQ fundraiser, an event that she had organized as one of her last duties as outgoing president of the I.O. coordinating committee. The party was held on the back lawn of the church, tucked between the high school football stadium and one of Tigris' newer subdivisions, with a crowd made mostly of familiar faces, young soon-to-be teen missionaries, older graduates of the program, family, friends and financial supporters.

She did not recognize the young man with the shaggy hair and faded blue golf shirt, who stood alone on the fringes, without a drink, without a hot dog. He needed a welcome to the community, she thought, and she searched the crowd to see if she could find Bradley, or Mike, both of whom she thought would be his type, mountain bikers, outdoorsmen. She did not see them, and so went to welcome him herself.

I'm Annabel, she said. And you are? Would you like some punch?

He wore a loose pair of khaki shorts, beaten up running shoes. My name is Evan, he said. Annabel gripped his hand firmly, looked into his blue eyes. And in those eyes Annabel saw something beautiful. It was as if in those eyes she saw a block of granite, solid, noble, strong; a block of granite in need of a sculptor, a project in need of a director, a man in need of a woman like her.

It's possible that she did not decide just then. But when she told her friend Maria about him three weeks later she said that when Evan stood there, enunciating the word: Canada, holding a hot dog in one hand and a red plastic glass of lemonade in the other, shy eyes glancing at her then away, she knew he would be her husband.

They talked all night, and Evan told her things she didn't expect to hear from a stranger: about drugs, about sex, about his mother's death, about religion.

I've never really been to church before, he said. A couple of times around Christmas and stuff, but that's it.

She listened, touched his arm with her finger tips.

What's Canada like? She asked.

He shrugged and laughed, said something about William Faulkner.

I thought he was from the South, she said, skeptical, but ready to believe she was wrong. I'm pretty sure he's not Canadian.

Shatner, Evan laughed. Shatner.

He seemed more at ease now, and he told her how he had left everything he owned back in Dana Point, except his truck, his bike, a backpack, and a tent. He wasn't sure where he was going.

Strange that we call our things belongings, he said almost to himself.

Hmm…? she asked.

I was just saying it's strange that we call them belongings. I have a belonging. These are my belongings. You know, these things that belong to me… It's not like saying my things. It's … like the things are part of you and you are part of the things. Like it's a two way street. I don't feel like I have any belongings at all. Not even my bike. I don’t feel like I belong to anything.

He had finished his hot dog, his lemonade, and they were sitting on a grassy bank away from the dwindling crowd still lit up by patio lanterns. It was dark now, the sky was speckled with stars, and the evening air was cooling. The occasional burst of laughter came from the BarBQ, but clean-up had begun, and the sound of car ignitions filled the air. She thought of saying something, but instead waited, there was more to come, she was sure, and the sound of the far-away conversation, the sound of the night – grasshoppers, crickets, the hum of air conditioners -- was soothing. She was happy just to be quiet with this stranger, to let him talk. He was telling her things he would have told no other person, she was sure, about his failures and disappointments, about his weakness.

He wouldn't have said these things alone either, wouldn't have said them except because of her, her encouragement, her kindness, the welcome she gave to this man. She reached for his hand and took it in hers. He accepted her touch almost absent-mindedly, but again Annabel was moved by this absent-mindedness. It proved to her the comfort that he felt with her, and the comfort she felt with him.

She traced a finger along his knuckles.

I've never really belonged to anything, he went on. School, work, people, even my family. I never felt like I … I was supposed to be there. My whole life, you know— he was caressing her knuckles with his thumb— just going from place to place, not even searching for anything. It was more like I was just trying to forget everything, forget that I didn't have a place.

You must think I'm crazy, he said suddenly, stiffening, squeezing Annabel's hand. Jesus, talking away like that I sound like a nut. Sorry, I didn't mean to swear. He withdrew his hand, and Annabel straightened as well, the moment broken but not gone.

Oh don't worry about that. Don't worry about anything. You just lost your mom. What would I babble about if I was in your shoes?

There were only a few left milling about at the BarBQ and someone, they couldn't see who, called for Annabel.

I don't really know what to do now, Evan confessed, locking Annabel's eyes for a thrilling five seconds, or maybe more. She thought he might kiss her right there, and she felt her breath short – what would she do? Would she let him kiss her? What would she let him do? What wouldn't she let him do? She wasn't sure. His eyes broke away, and he looked down at his feet.

In a previous life I would have invited you back to my tent, he said. I hope that doesn't offend you.

Annabel tried to look mad, but she didn't think she succeeded. She probably just looked like an idiot. She was about to say something, but couldn't think what to say, and she thought her words might be even stupider than the face she was making.

Oh, shit, Evan said. Shoot, he corrected. I'm sorry I shouldn't have said that. I know that … I know we're …

She grabbed his hand and squeezed. He squeezed back and then let go.

I'm a mess, he told her, and laughed little, quiet sort of laugh. He whispered: I didn't mean to offend you.

I'm not offended.

That's a relief. This was a wonderful evening. I had a wonderful time. You are a wonderful girl. I'd like to see you again.

Well, you'll be at church on Sunday, won't you?

She was teasing. Not at church, he said. I'd like to see you somewhere else. To talk to you again.

Well…

Alone, you know. A date or something.

Annabel said that would be very nice, and then stood up, straightening her shorts. Evan stood too. Time to clean up, she said. She turned towards the party, turned back and kissed him on the cheek. Evan touched her waist as she did so, and he did it with such strength, such tenderness, actually gripping her whole body, it seemed, holding her body in that one hand. She felt his thumb press into her hip bone, and she wanted more than anything ever in her life just to squeeze him to her, to squeeze the breath out of him, to squeeze him right into her life.

I'll see you at church, she said, her throat constricting, feeling the blush in her cheeks and her ears burning red (thank the Lord it was dark). She stepped away. Maybe by then you'll think of something we could do together.

I've already thought of a couple of things, he said.

She mustered a cross look again – it wasn't easy – and Evan apologized. He looked so sad when he said his sorries.

I'm so very sorry, I'm such an …

Boy. You are a boy, Annabel told him. And then she put her hand on his chest, and pushed him gently away, but what she was really doing, even Annabel realized, was pulling him towards her with all her strength.

I will see you on Sunday, she said. She turned and walked away, into the centre of the clean-up effort, and felt him watching her as she went.

Evan was infuriating on the way up to Canada. He dismissed everything Annabel said. He didn't want her suggestions about what routes to take, though she had been studying the map almost the entire trip; he disagreed with her choice of restaurants, he ignored her when she suggested they stop for gas, he kept going through the towns where she thought they ought to stop for the night, and she wondered if their life together would be as annoying as the trip was. What had she done, marrying this man? Why had they gotten married if every little thing either of them did or said could be so …opposite. She made her pledge under God, OK, but God wasn't being very helpful now, and was it possible He had let her make a mistake? Everything she did seemed to start a fight of one kind.

Somewhere in Pennsylvania, Evan shouted, out of nowhere: Why does everything have to be so hard for you?

And the answer she kept repeating her head, over and over, was: Because you make it hard. But she didn't say that, in fact they did not say another word for the rest of the day, not until the hotel and there she said she was sorry, hoping he might say the same, and though he didn't, he did touch her leg which was a sort of apology, a physical apology not the verbal one she wanted, but an apology anyway. They had quick, disappointing sex and then she fell asleep as Evan flipped through the television stations, each channel getting one, maybe two seconds of viewing until he moved on to the next.

Things were no better in the morning.

Their last day of travel, for reasons Annabel couldn’t understand, Evan had hidden the map away, and she didn't even have the simple pleasure of following their progress. And when she asked where it was he at first ignored her, and then finally snapped: I know where we're going.

He ignored her when she said, Well, I don't, know. And I want to.

But she didn't ask again.

For the next 100 miles, Evan drove too fast, with one hand on the wheel, and the other on the search button of the radio: five to ten seconds of every FM radio station, and then on to the next. Country music, rock music, news, commercials. Sound. Static. Sound. Static. Male voice. Female voice. Static. On and on and on. She couldn't stand it.

What about a CD? Annabel said, as they crossed the border into Vermont.

And Evan ignored her and changed the station again.

She tried to sleep, resting her forehead against the window, feeling her skull bounce against the cool glass, trying to think good thoughts about this trip. Her marriage. Her future.

Evan touched her hand once. It was a pathetic attempt at truce, why couldn't he just say something? He stroked her fingers, playing with her wedding band, but she didn't move, didn't respond. If he was going to be such a jerk, he was going to have to do more than touch their wedding band to make up for his behaviour. His hand left hers and went back to the radio.

They stopped for gas just before Burlington. Evan went into the store to pay and get fresh supplies, while Annabel stood outside the car playing with her hair, feeling miserable. When he came back he rummaged around in the back seat and pulled out the map. Where had he hidden that? she wondered. Then: why had he hidden that?

Here, he said, softly, in a voice she hadn't heard since a few hundred miles outside of Tigris. He took her by the hand, and squeezed. Let me show you the route.

He spread the map out on the hood of the car, and pulled her close to him, nuzzling into her neck. They leaned over the map together. We're here, he said, pointing. His other hand dropped from her shoulders to the small of her back. Finally, she thought, this is my husband. Now I remember. He traced his index finger along the highway. Here is Burlington… his other index finger was now inside the waistband of her underwear. And here is the border, she touched the dashed line herself, scratched at it lightly with her red-painted nail, as if to reveal the hidden differences between the two countries. This is Montreal over here, he said. And Knowlton is somewhere in here. Right here.

His whole hand was now in her pants, cupping her buttock, but she struggled free, and wrapped her arms around his neck, kissing him on the cheek.

I can't wait, she said. This is so exciting. Then she whispered, I need to pee. And she skipped away towards the gas station bathroom, imagining that Evan was staring at her bum.

The rest of the trip was wonderful, and she quickly forgot the previous few days.

Why do you think we were so mad at each other? she asked. It's so weird.

I'm just nervous about going home, nervous about all this. I'm excited. But …

Me too, she answered. I think I'm pretty scared.

They were on the last leg, only a few miles from their final destination, the cottage in the mountains, where they were about to start their new life. Annabel, still thinking, two hours later, about the feeling of having Evan's hand somewhere it should not have been in public, decided to do something she had never done before. She thought about it gleefully for five minutes, debating in her mind whether she should or shouldn't, but she knew she would, knew she wanted to. She reached over to Evan, and undid his zipper, and slipped her hands into his pants.

Stop it, he barked.

She pulled her hand away, and pushed herself as close as she could towards the door of the car. She thought she might be sick. It was as if there wasn't enough air in the car.

Evan tried to touch her on the neck, but she batted his hand away.

Silence filled the truck.

And then Evan said something to her that he had never, ever said in a moment like this: I'm sorry.

She looked over at her husband, and thought: maybe this will be wonderful.

I'm sorry, he said again, let's just wait till we get to the cottage. He smiled. I'll take care of you once we get there.

With all the stress and fighting and anger and resentment and happiness and exhaustion from this long trip, she laughed, and cried, and wiped her tears away. She didn't remember ever wanting to be taken care of as much as she wanted to be taken care of right then, by Evan Hand, her husband, in their new home, new country, their new bed, the place where she finally would feel like she was building a future.

They pulled into the driveway to find another car parked there.

Evan turned off the engine and sat studying the other car. Annabel could sense danger, but said nothing, waited for Evan's lead. They should just get out and see who it was, shouldn't they?

Who the hell is that? Evan asked no one. He hopped out of the car, leaving the driver door open, the keys in the ignition, the car beeping. Annabel, not quite sure what to do, but feeling like doing something useful, opened the trunk, and took out her bag and Evan's, the contents of their new life.

Chapter Five: Dominique

Nick looked as if he had just woken up. On the coffee table in front of the TV sat a pair of ear rings, which Dominique studied as if there were some answer hidden in the metal loops and colourful beads. His windows were all open, his houseplants all looked healthy and vibrant, green and growing, and his cat slept on the floor, curled in a square of sunlight that streamed in from the window opening onto the neighbourhood commerce of St-Viateur Street. Dominique walked over to the cat, gently touched its head. The little tabby barely stirred, tried to open its eyes, failed, and went back to sleep.

Here you go, Nick said, handing Dominique a fresh coffee. He dropped heavily into his sofa, lit a cigarette in his charming absent way, and watched Dominique who continued caressing the cat. What’s up? He asked.

Dominique signaled for him to pass her a cigarette. He threw her one, and the lighter, she lit her smoke, coughed, and sipped her coffee. I don’t know, she said. I don't really feel like talking about it right now. Can we put some music on? She went over to the wooden milk crates of albums and flipped through the collection of beaten-up vinyl. She chose an old Cockburn LP, put it on the machine, pushed buttons and twirled knobs until the music came on.

Nick watched her, quiet and undemanding. Probably the reason she was here.

Do you have any pot? she asked. Nick shook his head, asked if he should call for delivery.

No, no, she answered. No. Yes.

He made the call, then flipped through a magazine, Vogue, left by the owner of the earrings, she imagined, as Dominique continued her perusal of his record collection. She pulled out a Peter Tosh album and inspected the cover.

Julian thinks he's seen God, Dominique said. He's quit his job and plans to write about his religious conversion full-time.

Nick dropped the magazine in his lap. She replaced the Tosh and continued her examination of his record collection, feeling Nick watching her.

He took a deep drag on his cigarette, nodding gently, exhaling through his nose.

Really? he asked finally.

He's out in the country, doesn’t want to see me, or talk to me. Out at his parents' place, writing a mystic masterpiece. He says he understands the universe. I think he's had a nervous breakdown. I think he went totally nuts.

The sound of a group of children laughing and screaming on the street below overpowered Bruce Cockburn's scratchy guitar, then faded as the kids continued on their way.

That, Nick admitted, isn't what I thought you came here to tell me.

Nick's pot delivery man arrived, he got up to complete the transaction, out of sight, at the front door of the little apartment. It sounded to Dominique like a jovial sort of deal, filled with guffaws and dudes and inside jokes that she resented vaguely, as she stood at the window smoking and sipping her coffee, wondering what she wanted from Nick. Why she had chosen him above all others to talk to about this new development in her marriage with Julian? She didn't know, not really, except he was the only person, besides Julian, who she had slept with in the past year, and there was a certain comfort that arose between people once they had slept together, a certain understanding that was impossible for anyone except those who had shared orgasms. And Nick knew Julian probably better than anyone besides her. Maybe he could give her some guidance. Maybe Nick would take care of her tonight.

Do you believe in God? she asked, sitting on the couch after dinner, watching Nick roll another joint. Nick laughed, but she sat up now, No no no, I'm deadly serious, do you believe in some kind of God? In a greater power? In … anything? Do you believe in anything, you know, beyond what we see here? Some kind of cosmic consciousness?

Do you think an alligator believes in God? Nick asked in response. That would make as much sense, an alligator believing in God. Alligators made in God's image. Why humans? Why are we so lucky to be made in God's image? Of course I don't believe in God. Do you?

I'm not saying necessarily a big white-bearded man in robes up in the clouds, but something else, something more than us.

Why? Nick asked, getting annoyed. Why? What's the purpose of believing in something more than what's here? What does it do for you? Religion is helpful for running successful human civilizations, maybe. It keeps popping up so it must do something useful. It helps you make laws, and helps you justify slaughtering the other guys, it helps you organize who gets to sleep with who, but beyond that I can't see a shred of evidence of God or gods, and even more I can't see how anyone who's got half a rational brain could see otherwise. Look at the universe, does that look like something a cuddly God would have made?

Why cuddly? Dominique asked.

Have you even read the Bible? It's instructive. Read it and see what the almighty was like in the early days, he was just a two-bit god hustling the Israelites, worried someone else, some other better god, might get them first, steal them away. Like some cheap politician trying to convince them he could deliver the best construction contracts. Like a neighbourhood hustler running a protection racket. Do such and such and don't do such and such or blights and locusts will befall you. Wink. Wouldn't want no blights and locusts befalling you, now would we? No one took him seriously, except the Israelites, this roving band of nobodies, and even then he had to pull all sorts of gimmicks to keep them on board. He couldn't even get them out of Egypt, without conjuring all sorts of tricks – pests and boils and death and floods, and even the Egyptians weren't impressed till Moses called in the frogs. That's what got the Egyptians' attention. Cheap daredevil magician stuff.

Dominique had been trying to interrupt, but Nick ignored her until he got to the frogs, which amused him so much that he started laughing.

I don't mean religion, she said, annoyed that Nick found this so funny. I mean God, the Universe. Do you really think we’re all alone with the universe, just sitting here with no purpose, nothing guiding the way?

If God exists, he's a shit head of a frat boy who takes care of his friends and makes everyone else miserable. Forget the alligator. Go ask the kids who live in the dumps in Rio de Janeiro if they believe in God. Go ask the ten-year-old glue sniffers in Johannesburg. You work with refugees. You know what the world looks like. You think the old guy is looking out for those women getting raped in the Congo? You think they get to talk to God like Julian, out there strolling in the mountains with the Big Guy.

How many times had she thought just the same thing, reading those reports on what happened in Darfur and Burma, the things that happened right here in Montreal. Her job was to try to make things better because whoever was running the universe was doing a pretty terrible job of it for some people, the forgotten, the meek, the ones Jesus was supposed to take care of. If there was a God maybe He should be working more on human rights and protecting orphans and less on earthquakes and tornados.

She closed her eyes, feeling very sleepy now. I meant, she said … but she trailed off. She didn't know what she meant, didn't know what else she expected from Nick, didn't know what she wanted. What would make her feel better? Did she want Nick to affirm for her that a part of him that did believe, that maybe Julian could have seen God?

No, what she wanted was for things to be back to normal. To have Julian at home where he should be, with her, working into the night on another paper while she slept, Julian making her an Indian curry and talking to her about a book he'd just read, about a movie they should see, Julian holding her late at night when she felt scared of unknown terrors, monsters, robbers, death, her death, her father's, Julian holding her to remind her that he was not dead, would not die, would stay alive forever and take care of her, minister to her in times of need and weakness, that he would identify problems and solve them, that he was still here, would stay here, beside her, her husband, who would love her forever and ever, as sure and steady as any God worth his salt, surer maybe because God wouldn't have stubble for her to feel against her cheek, because no God could make her feel the way she felt when Julian, her man, her husband, his strong hands, held her late at night when she woke up from a nightmare.

Nick seemed to be still talking, or maybe it was the radio, maybe the television, she couldn't be sure, but the voice, maybe God's, was still talking when she fell asleep on the couch.

A week later, she stepped out into the morning. It was just after six a.m., earlier than she was used to being up, and the city was quiet and calm, her street deserted, almost eerie. It reminded her for some reason of childhood, a vague feeling she couldn't place, of uncertainty, newness possibility. She thought of the time when she was twelve, when she and a friend had snuck into a closed theatre in the country, and wandered around the stage, the props all in place for the production that evening, the set, a city street much like this one, waiting for its actors, waiting for the sounds that would bring it to life. But empty of players and audience it was something different. The qualities of those plywood set façades, their flimsiness and artifice were echoed in the street here. She imagined Montreal after some disaster, as empty as it was now, but with nothing else, nothing but emptiness, no promise of life a little later. No promise of voices and shouts, no sound of crying children and barking dogs. Yet this morning there were humans everywhere, piled into their beds, in their showers maybe, having sex, snoring, packed into the apartments that lined the streets. They would be out soon, going about their lives, just as they had yesterday, and as they would tomorrow. But for now she had the city to herself, something she liked, as long as she knew all those people would be there to share it with her later.

The pavement was already radiating heat – it would be a scorching day – but the temperature was still reasonable, and she found herself not smiling exactly but not frowning, either. Her rental was parked on Villeneuve by the coffee shop, and she walked slowly down the street, surprised at her calm, contemplating the homes here, the children and music and sound that would appear, soon enough, the love, the fun … the hate, the boredom, the disappointment. The sickness. The psychosis that might be hiding behind these doors. She stopped to look at a little garden, chaotic, shaded and beautiful: a big bush of tiger lilies floated by the wrought-iron fence, a lush, decadent rhodadendron, and another half-dozen species of flowers that she couldn’t name (Julian could have), all blooming under the shade of a little tree of some. A cat appeared, similar to Nick's but bigger, and meowed at her from underneath a hanging branch of … what was that? gardenia? … and then lazily stood and walked towards her along a flagstone path. Hello kitty, she said. Hello puss. But the cat kept its distance, friendly but not interested in the intimate exchange of contact. The cat followed her to the vehicle and she waved at it before she pulled into the street and pointed her car towards the Eastern Townships.

She drove down St-Urbain street into the blinding sun of the morning. She drove quickly, and it seemed that the whole city had been cleared for her. It was early, but still uncharacteristically quiet, not another vehicle on the road, not a transport truck, not a bus, not a taxi. Almost as if the city had been closed down for the weekend, closed down so that she could more quickly get out to see Julian.

At the Champlain bridge there was still only a few other cars, and she crossed the span in a sort of a daze, listening to the thud-pause-thud as the car bounced over the sections of the bridge. Thud, one two three, thud. The river was huge below her. She thought, for some reason, of her first trans-Atlantic flight, staring out the window at the grey-blue of the water below, hours and hours of it, a quantity of water, of space, of distance she couldn’t quite believe. She kept thinking there would be islands somewhere, ships. But there weren't. There was nothing but grey until the captain announced that they were passing over Ireland.

Dominique had never really considered what she thought of God, never tried to articulate any principle of faith. She supposed she maintained some affinity for the Catholic Church where she went on occasion with her father, and even more rarely with her mother when she was home from Mexico, or Nepal, or Tanzania. But her father, an immigrant Pole who mistrusted his fellow immigrants and disliked any kind of community had only ever said things like: it's Easter, and we'd better go or we'll get sent to hell.

She had had her first communion and been confirmed, but had not been to mass since, or at least not more than a handful of times. And all that church-going was never more to her than tradition, a certain set of rituals that she found some comfort in remembering, like rock song she had liked as a teen, and forgotten about until now. Mostly it was images of her father in an ill-fitting suit, squirming on the pew. Her memories had nothing to do with God.

But she didn't like Nick's take on things either, his cold, dismissive universe. Was that enough? Nothing but Darwin and natural selection. No, she wanted more. Some force, some God of some kind, somewhere beyond what humans could ever know.

Not enough data, as the old Julian would have said. Nick was right about the misery in the world, no doubt, but then theologians had pondered misery since theologians were invented, and still they kept at it. If there was something else, something back there, she thought, maybe human misery wouldn’t be of much concern to it, such brief temporal things in the grand scale of the cosmos.

She knew about human misery, it was her profession, foreign misery and our supposed attempts to alleviate it. She had piles of documents on her desk, interviews and first hand accounts from women who were raped by militiamen, militiaboys, and then beaten and exiled by their families for the offense of getting raped; women whose insides had been torn apart with tree branches and bayonets; women with faces melted with acid for offending their brothers' honour; little girls who were sold into slavery, into prostitution. She knew all about the AIDS patients, the modern lepers. This was her expertise, the lives of the forsaken, lives she studied, mostly from her comfortable office in Montreal.

But among these women, among lives more horrific than even she, with all the reports and testimony, could imagine, even among all these gruesome details, there was still belief, almost everywhere. Belief in something else, something greater. Was that just ignorance, just habit? Incredibly, there was joy, too, even for these miserables, happiness at times. We are amazing, we can adapt to anything. Almost.

And yet what sort of God made sense from her comfortable apartment in Mile End? Maybe the Greeks had it right with their band of jealous, vindictive gods; or the Amazonian tribes with their great twisting snakes. She wanted it though. She wanted something to be there, something else to be there, because if there wasn't ... it was Sunday at dusk again, with homework to do and her father still not home.

What she wanted was her husband back. That was what she wanted.

Whether or not he had seen God, she didn’t care one bit. Even if she granted Julian a true congress with God she didn't care, she was married to Julian, God wasn't, Julian had never made a pledge to God, in fact if God wanted to get technical about things, then Julian had pledged to be her husband for life, in God's name. And here was God coming down and interfering with everything, throwing everything out of whack, sending Julian off to do non-husbandly things when what he should be doing was sitting by Dominique's side, making her a curry, and running out to Boite Noir to get them a good film to watch with a bottle of Côtes du Rhône. That was Julian's job, and he had agreed to it and God had agreed to it, and now God was fucking everything up.

What have you done with my husband? What have you done with Julian Hand, why him? Why not someone else? Why not Nick, for Christ sake, she thought. It would serve him right. Why not reveal yourself to fucking Nick instead of my fucking husband?

Everything will be fine before you know it, Dr. Delbecque had said to her. He'll be fine, and the country is the best thing for him. Give him some time to relax and then go out and see him, and you'll see, he'll be back to normal soon. If he's not, we'll decide what to do.

Mount Echo loomed ahead, Mount Echo where Julian had taken her a week after they made love the first time, in the winter, when he had laid out a blanket in front of the roaring fire and made her drink scotch whisky with no ice, and she decided definitively to break things off with Paulo, three hundred years ago, and see where all this would lead with this nice, strong Canadian geophysicist.

As she rolled down that extraordinary hill, the steepest hill she had ever seen, just a half-mile before the house, she thought: I don't want an abortion. I'm going to keep this baby.