Julian laid out the meal, canned stew warmed on the stove. Evan's wife made a three bean salad with tomatoes. Soon he would have his own tomatoes, and zucchini and carrots. Cabbage, green beans, beets, lettuce. Green and red peppers. He had planted quite a garden and, had the blistered hands to prove it. Though he had imagined spending the summer out here alone, not feeding guests. He was planning to be a hermit in the hills, thinking, writing, experiencing and explaining the glow of the universe. He hadn't thought he would have to share his vegetables with anyone, certainly not Evan and … what was her name.…?

So, Julian said, sitting and then putting a forkful of the cold bean salad in his mouth. Very happy to meet you. Very happy. When did you get married?

He looked up from his plate to see Evan and the wife both with clasped hands under their chins, eyes closed. Were they praying? Was Evan praying before eating? Yes, indeed he was.

Evan nodded, and raised his eyes. Julian tried to avert his gaze, to avoid getting caught staring, but he was too slow and Evan gave him an unexpected look of defiance, of pride, of warning. Tread carefully, the look said. I am not the brother you think I am. I am not the brother I once was.

And rather than challenge this small demonstration of independence from his younger sibling, as he might have done even a week ago, rather saying or doing something that would assert his dominance, Julian instead felt a flood of unexpected emotion. He had a sudden urge to get up and hug Evan, something he could not recall ever having done before (though surely he must have), and he felt a welling of tears in his eyes, a swelling in his throat. I do not know this man, he thought, this brother of mine. He looked down at his meal and struggled to contain his emotion, to swallow the bean salad along with the water he used to get the mouthful down. What is wrong with me, Julian wondered to himself, concerned that the waver in his chin might be visible to these two others. He shoveled another forkful of cold beans into his mouth and held it there on his tongue, counting each individual bean, each one perfect and rounded, heavy, a whole future bean plant, that could sprout the seeds of yet another generation of beans, a universe of beans, contained in a mouth. A perfect capsule, the size of a small elongated marble. Life. Sustenance. A possible future given over, instead, to his own future, his own sustenance, sacrificed to his hunger.

Keep yourself together, he thought.

The wife spoke into the thick silence that floated above the teak table: We met at church, Evan and me, she said, perhaps to stake her claim on Evan, to stake God's claim on Evan, on their union. She had a high-pitched voice, flat, saw-like, ugly, dull. American. Julian found her strangely distracting from this something … what? … that was revealing itself between his brother and him, this brother who had failed the family so many times in the past, who had disappointed Julian with every decision he had made, who had come back now that there was really no family to speak of, no one except Julian. At a Church barbecue, she continued, pulling Julian's attention back in her direction. Her head bobbed in a precise, truncated motion, reminding Julian for some reason of the typebars on his typewriter. She reached out across the table and took Evan's hand in hers. She watched him expectantly for his reaction. We met just after Evan was called to the faith.

Really? Julian said, looking over at Evan. He was at a loss for what to say. Evan at church, he thought to himself. Called. A new wrinkle, an unexpected wrinkle, perhaps this was the new look in Evan's eyes. Poor Evan.

The last time he had spoken to Evan for any length of time, he was telling his brother about their mother's death and funeral, doing his best to forgive Evan for being drunk and stoned in some beach hut in Mexico instead of coming for the funeral. Such an irresponsible, selfish boy he was, or used to be. It had sounded to Julian like Evan didn't care one way or another that he had missed his own mother's funeral, though surely that wasn't fair, how did Julian know what Evan felt? He must have been upset that she died. He had offered to come up to Canada, but what for? What would have been the use? The funeral was over, and Julian had all the paperwork underway. The estate was simple enough – most of the work had been done and agreed to when their father died. There was a big check for Evan right away, there would be another one soon; no need to come up if he didn't want to. So Julian had said then, and Evan had agreed, and hung up the phone, and as far as Julian knew, had gone back to his hash pipe to forget it all.

But here was Evan, prodigal, reborn. With his blond wife. Imagine Evan married. Evan married to a woman whom he had met at church. He didn't look much different, not really, his hair was a little shorter, maybe, and he stood straighter, Julian supposed, but it was those eyes that had something new in them. Not evasive and shifting the way Julian remembered, not submissive and always searching for some excuse. They were, he guessed, the eyes of a man now, not a boy, a man who seemed to have some purpose. How old was Evan now? Twenty-four? Twenty-five?

What do you do? The wife asked suddenly, again breaking into the silence with her rodent's voice. What do you do, for a living?

Julian turned his attention back to the girl. The woman. The wife. If she was married he supposed she was a woman, though she looked like a girl, moved and spoke much like the vapid undereducated, uninterested girls in Julian's undergrad courses. She was small, but wound tight, he could see the internal energy bubbling below the surface in her. She held his gaze with steady blue eyes and a sunburned nose, well-groomed eyebrows. He supposed she was one of those avid joggers, one of those well-equipped women with hear-rate monitors and electric paraphernalia strapped to their bodies as they ran in the morning light before most people even woke. She was a list-maker, he was willing to wager, a buyer of energy supplements, a supporter of the troops, a fan of Disney movies and FM radio. One of the famous American Christians.

He smiled at her, felt the smile forced and unnatural, so he stopped.

I am, he said, and paused. How to answer that? He wondered. How to answer now that everything had changed? A child of the universe? A mystic? A prophet of God? No … he didn't feel like talking about all that now, with these strangers. These church-going intruders. There would be too many questions to answer and he had work to do. A professor, he said, of geology.

Oh, she said. A scientist?

She was a puzzling catch for Evan. Evan had never done much with his life, but there seemed an endless supply of pretty young women who liked that sort of man. The ones that Julian had met were all charming in their way: sexpots, hippies, artists of one kind or another. But this one was ... what? She was, he supposed, pretty enough with her flat blond hair and makeup, but it was the sort of pretty that he saw nothing in: a generic, dull, packaged pretty that made him think of the Gap and American sitcoms and young teen pop singers he could never keep track of. The sort of pretty that did nothing at all for him. She was talking now about Tigris, California, about meeting Evan at a church barbecue. She had taken full control of the conversation now that it was clear that neither brother, elder or younger, was going to do so. She spoke of Evan's "plans" -- to which Evan said, We can talk about that later, making Julian wonder whether this prayer-making and grace-saying and church talk was just a cover for a drug smuggling operation, which wouldn’t surprise Julian. He wouldn't put it past Evan, and there was enough of that business in the area, less than an hour from the US border, and rumours of hidden marijuana plantations in the forests and fields within walking distance of this very house.

The wife kept talking, but Julian couldn't keep track of what she was saying. He stared down at his stew and bean salad. That accent, he thought. He didn't know that actual adults used the word "like" so prolifically, every third or forth word, he estimated, and worse, she had a cloying, bossy and domineering tone, a sort of suburban valley girl, that Julian didn't even realize existed outside of film parodies and television. Every statement ended with the inflection of a question. The drive was really really long? Evan and I love mountain biking? Getting closer to God?

Evan barely spoke. He fidgeted with a dark, clamped look on his face. It wasn't until halfway through the meal that he asked Julian, So what exactly are you doing out here? With an edge in his voice that Julian didn't much care for, not at all. You told me, Evan continued, that you never came out here.

The droning of the wife, and the tone in Evan's voice dissolved Julian's first, fragile response to his brother. He felt an old familiar temper: He wouldn't be talked to like that, not by his little brother, not here in his own house. That, Julian answered, was six months ago. I had no idea that you were coming. And I already told you, I'm writing. That is why I am here. He paused, considered going on the attack, but then suddenly felt guilty and uncertain. He was not being charitable. After all this was his brother, his blood, whom he hadn't seen in years, who had as much right to be here as Julian did, even if he had missed their mother's funeral, and hadn't been in Canada (to Julian's knowledge anyway) in five years, in the five years since he almost missed their father's funeral. Though if he was planning some sort of import-export business here … but why should Julian suspect such a thing? He's your brother, he thought, be kind.

Julian realized he had insulted Evan and ... Tinkerbell? Surely that's not her name? ... He maneuvered to make amends.

I'm sorry, he said, standing, clearing his plate, trying to sound soft and accommodating. He'd finished the bean salad, but hadn't touched the canned stew. I've been a bit of a hermit up here and I'm not used to company, I wasn't expecting company, and look, he said, it's just I wasn't expecting anyone. Let's unpack your car, you guys have had a long trip, do you want coffee? How long, exactly, he asked, are you planning to stay?

That depends on a few things, Evan answered curtly. How long are you planning to stay?

Julian didn't answer, and as he prepared the coffee he considered what to do next.

The house was big, it was surrounded by forest, mountains, solitude, kilometres of solitude in every direction. If Evan and ... Allison? … installed themselves downstairs for a few weeks while he worked upstairs, maybe it wouldn't be so bad. Maybe the best thing was to just let them get installed. How long could a honeymoon last after all?

He was exhausted by this contact with people. He wanted to get back to his writing. The pages were flowing out of him in ways his academic work never had, and though he wasn't sure whether he had written anything right yet, and in fact had yet to read over a page he had written (very odd, he remarked for the first time, considering his usual fiddling and tinkering over every last word of a paragraph before moving on to the next), he was certain he would be able to demonstrate to the world, soon, he wasn't quite sure when, just what the universe was like, just what was really going on, the true nature of God, he would explain it to all of them, to everyone. Even these two, these poor fools who were hoodwinked by charlatans who couldn't know the things he knew about the world. But not yet, he wasn't finished, not anywhere near it. He imagined millions, perhaps billions of readers finally understanding, as he did now, understanding that all shall be well, all shall be well. He was but the conduit. And he had work to do.

As he walked up the stairs to his room where his typewriter waited, he heard Evan say to his wife, or maybe it was meant for Julian directly: Asshole.

Julian sat in front of his typewriter without writing a word. Whatever it was that he had meant to write had disappeared by the time he sat down at the little desk. The anticipation of inspiration had been a mistake. What was Evan doing here? He should just go downstairs and ask him, shouldn't he? Work this out. How long did they plan to stay, what did they want? Julian sat for an hour like this. Maybe I should go out to the garden, he thought, but he stayed where he was, listening to the clatter of the couple downstairs, their whispers, their tense voices carrying up to him, audible, but incomprehensible, like some kind of dream language. He heard them moving things around downstairs, boxes, bags, drawers opening and closing, the metal scrape of hangers on their racks. He listened as they settled themselves in the master bedroom on the ground floor. His dead parents' bedroom. Their dead parents bedroom. All was quiet below for fifteen minutes or so, and Julian thought that perhaps some words were about to spill forth from his fingers through the typewriter and onto the page. He held his hands above the keys and waited. But his thoughts, as they were forming in his mind, were stopped dead by the sound of creaking, which took his mind some time to identify as the sound of the newlyweds below doing what married couples got married to do.

He pushed his typewriter forward on his desk and rested his head on the cool wood, and waited for the couple below to finish.

Twenty minutes later, not long after a high-pitched, muffled cry had passed secretly through the wooden walls of the cottage, a coded message not meant for Julian's ears, Evan called up to Julian: We're going for a bike ride, he said, to which Julian shouted an acknowledgement, punctuated by an internal, Thank God. He heard shuffling down below, then the sound of the French doors opening and sliding shut. More distant voices trickled in through the window, the language of planning and decision-making, then the clatter of wheels on the gravel of the driveway. And then finally, the rich, full silence of the countryside, late afternoon, in the summer.

Still, he could not write.

For the first time since he had arrived at the cottage, just three days ago now, the typewriter would not invite him in. His masterwork, the only work that ever mattered, had slipped away and he looked at the blank page with a sort of terror. Surely it is not gone, he thought of the great work for mankind that he had only just started to see clearly, surely I have more in me? Yes, I have more to say. Much more. I have seen God. I have seen God, I have experienced God. I have experienced God that I might communicate to the world.

He wondered for the first time what Dominique might think of his text. She would come out here eventually, he realized, and he would have to explain all this to her. Or he could just give her the text, let her read it and understand. Like everyone else. It was very important, he realized, that she should understand what he was writing.

But he'd have to finish it first, and he was making no progress now.

And so he sought the source of comfort, the solid rock that had always been there for him in all his times of uncertainty, times of fear, times of darkness. He left his type-writer and went outside.

He remembered the first terror that had come to him, age four or maybe five, walking out here with his father, tall and grey-haired even then, strolling through the woods. He remembered the feel of his father's hand, and the sound of his voice explaining the emptiness of the universe. From Julian's earliest memories, his father had treated him no differently than he would a curious undergrad in one of his courses. He accorded the young Julian the same respect, the same assumption that he could digest complicated ideas; but there was also the same kind of distance.

The conversation had started simply enough: How big is the earth? Julian had asked. Before the walk was done, his father had described the earth, the solar-system, and the universe to Julian. As well as the concept of the infinite. And its corollary: the infinitesimal smallness of Julian, his life, his place in the universe. The cold dark expanse of space, and time also, that long stretch that went back beyond his father's birth, beyond, his grandfather, not hundreds, not thousands or even millions, but billions of years. He learned of the big bang, the creation of matter, of the expanding universe, that grew beyond its infinite size. The speed of light, the flash of life that was here now and would be gone soon enough into nothing. His father gave him his first taste of perspective: that there are 100 times more stars in the universe than there are grains of sand on earth; each star might have other planets like ours, we will probably never know. And if one imagined that the earth was a grain, one grain in all the grains of sand in the world, and Julian was just one of 4 billion people on that grain, a tiny unimaginably small microscopic speck on one grain of sand. More, Julian would be here for just a flicker of time: in the long history of the planet, human life had been around for only a couple of million years. If all the history of the earth was contained in 24 hours, that was the equivalent of twenty seconds. (Here Cedric Hand counted out loud to twenty). And you, he said, squeezing Julian's hand, if you are lucky you'll be here for one one thousanth of a second. He brought his fingers to his mouth, and then blew on them. Gone! He said, his eyes twinkling at Julian. It was as if his tall wise father was telling him a secret, a secret only a select few could hear.

Julian walked in silence with his father, and then asked: What is heaven? And his father had replied: A fairy tale. What happens when you die? Nothing, his father told him, nothing happens. You die and then you are gone. Forever. You have a short time on earth Julian, so use it well.

Cedric Hand was not one for protecting his children from the cold realities of life. Julian remembered the conversation as if it were a recording, he could hear his father's voice, his careful stammering, high-pitch, the measured, hesitant but sure expression of the words, its warm timbre. He could see himself, Julian, small, frightened but immensely proud that his father was spending so much time with him, confiding these secrets of existence, of the universe. And he clearly remembered his father picking up a rock and showing it to Julian.

This, he said, is a bit of granite from the Canadian Shield, carried here during the last Ice Age, and it’s the oldest thing in the world. Two billion years old, he had said. The working man's stone, the hard unglamourous stuff our world rests on. If you want to build something to last, he said, you want to build it on granite. Better yet, build it out of granite. This rock will still be here, somewhere, long after we are dead and buried. This rock was here billions of years before humans appeared on the earth, and it will be here billions of years after we are gone.

In the end, his father said, it always comes down to stone. And then he handed the rock, the size of a tennis ball, to Julian. It was cold and heavy and smooth and almost unbearably important.

Trees, flowers, grass; all new, young, fleeting; Julian, Evan, his dead father, dead mother, fleeting. Mosquitoes lasted a few days, the mice that infested the cottage, a few years at best; and us: Dominique, Annabel, all of them, just temporary rearrangements of molecules, carbon and water. But the stuff of rocks, stones, that is where the earth stops and starts.

In the end, it always comes down to stone.

One summer, a half-hour walk into the marshy forest behind the cottage Julian had found a clearing, surrounded by dense evergreens and a number of stately maples, smooth and powerful. The tree limbs reminded him of some strong grey bulls or creatures of myth, protecting this place. At the centre of the clearing was a roundish outcropping of grey-green schist, thirty feet long and fifteen wide, covered in parts with a thick carpet of green moss, growing in crevices where the shallowest cover of soil had found its way over the years. Patches of green, yellow and white lichen grew too, where no soil was to be found, where moisture and the minerals of the rock were enough to let this combination of fungus and algae sustain its life.

Julian's old rock collection was still here. The original stone of granite his father had placed in his had thirty years ago, and another forty stones: a hunk of white quartz crystal; a rounded piece of limestone, with a corner of iron pyrite, and many more. They were organized by composition and size, and he could identify each of them by minerals and age, by their genesis in the various grinding, melting pressure-cookers, the crucible that was the centre of our earth. And somewhere in his office in Montreal, he still had his first notebook, with sketches and notes, describing each of these rocks in case he ever lost his memory.

Here, beside these stones, Julian had ejaculated for the first time, thirteen years old, staring up at the sky, alone on the moss carpet that still filled a crevice in the outcropping like a cradle. Where he was shocked by a tingling in his toes, a feeling of beautiful panic, then the convulsions that surprised him with their violence, almost-pain, the thundering, shaking in his gut, and the feeling of intense calm when it was over. He had closed his eyes, his pants still down, enveloped by the rock, wondering at the universe, at stones and orgasms, wondering if the big bang that he had read about voraciously, was something like an ejaculation, a convulsion that had brought forth the universe, just as he had produced the miraculous white, creamy spurt of liquid from deep within his own being.

But if the universe had been an ejaculation, where did the ejaculation come from? He fell asleep puzzling over this never-ending question. For if the universe began as an ejaculation, then that too came from something else, which also might be an ejaculation, which itself must have come from an ejaculation … and so on until he fell asleep.

He held, now, the stone his father had given him, felt its hard smoothness, studied the pinkish feldspar crystals, the black mica, the white quartz, all fused together in a solid lattice, this two-billion-year-old piece of stone, the hard lasting stuff of the earth. Eventually even this stone would get swallowed by the tectonic earth, sucked down, ground, pressed, melted, transformed, recycled, eventually, in a new form, a new mineral with new components added, some taken away, different configurations, different conditions of birth. And then again. And again. And again. For billions of years yet to come.

He lay down on the cool moss and closed his eyes.

A flash came to him, white and intense, complete, and Julian was part of that light. After some time, it receded, and he fell asleep again with an intimate and direct knowledge of the universe. Again.

It was dusk already, the lights were on in the cottage, and through the big picture window he could see the young newlyweds. At first he thought they were laughing, but then he saw the wife pointing at Evan, stabbing her finger towards him like a rapier. Evan turned, and threw his hands up above his head. Fine, he seemed to say. Fine, fine, fine. Or, Julain thought calmly, perhaps he said, Fuck.

He wondered what the two were fighting about. What does anyone fight about?

I didn't welcome them, he thought, as I should have welcomed them. I didn't welcome Annabel to the family. I let my self get in the way, this temporary arrangement of molecules, this hunk of carbon storage. How could I do that now, now that I know? He felt a pang of real sadness at his own failings, as he watched the pantomime fight continue, a sadness that came with the joy of understanding what things were really like. He walked up to the house, slid the French door back and stepped in. The house felt warm, comforting.

Hullo! he called out, Hullo! And the voices stopped. I'm back. How was your bike ride?

He strode into the living room.

How was your bike ride? He repeated.

Excuse me, Annabel said. I have some things to do. She disappeared down the dark hallway, leaving Evan and Julian together.

He does look unhappy, Julian thought, he seems so drawn. I wonder what they were fighting about. Have you eaten? He asked.

We need to talk, Evan answered.

That sounds fine, Julian said, but I was thinking this afternoon, you are a half-owner of this house. It's as much yours as it is mine, and I don't know if I welcomed you properly when you arrived, but I want to do that now, Evan. Welcome home. To you and Annabel. You own this house as much as I do, and I hope you'll stay as long as you like. There's room enough for both of us, all of us, and I hope you two can settle in all right. I won't be in your way.

Evan had the look of a hungry wild animal, as Julian spoke, eager to eat what was on offer, but not fully trusting of what was laid in front of him. He watched Julian out of the side of his eyes, half of him moving towards his brother, the other half pulling away. He's still a frightened boy, Julian thought.

I have work to do too, Evan said. Important work. His words came quickly, rushing out as if he only had a short time to say them before they might disappear completely. We're launching a project, Annabel and I. Launching it here. It's a big project. He shifted on his feet, but kept his eyes steady, at once defiant and nervous.

Julian nodded. That must be exciting, he said.

Clearly, Evan had expected a big argument and was shocked to find no opponent in the ring.

Come here, Julian said, come here. He opened his arms wide. Evan stared at him incredulously. Come here, Julian persisted, taking a step towards his brother. Evan stood motionless as Julian advanced on him, took him in his arms, hugged him tight. It's good to see you little brother. Good to see you all grown up. Julian groaned as he squeezed his younger brother in his arms.

Evan tapped his brother's back with his palms in a half-hearted sort of way and moved to break the embrace, but Julian held him tighter than ever. My little brother, Julian said, I've never known you, never got to know you. My little brother. He clasped Evan by the back of the neck, and pulled away. It's wonderful that you are here, Evan, he said.

Good to see you too, Julian. You understand we're planning to be here indefinitely, right? That this will be our base of operations? An office in the basement, Internet, phone lines, photocopier. This is going to be our headquarters.

Yes, yes. Julian smiled at his brother, and nodded. That's fine, Evan. That'll be fine.

Are you OK?

Julian answered, I am more wonderful than you could ever imagine. He realized there were tears on his cheeks. He wiped them away, and smiled again.

They stepped back from each other. Evan looked as if he were about to say something, when the bedroom door slammed and Annabel came storming into the room. Her blond hair was pulled into a tight ponytail, her movements deliberate.

Look, she said, addressing Julian. Evan has as much right to this place as you do.

Its OK Annabel, Evan said.

Evan is half-owner of this house, she continued, and you told him you never even came out here any more, so if anyone should be –

--Sweetheart –

--should be explaining what they are doing –

--Sweetheart –

-- here, I mean we have as much right, we drove all the way from California --

-- darling it's OK –

-- and we have a job to do here, we are starting –

Annabel! Evan barked, then softened: It's OK. He took her hands in his. We've discussed it. It's taken care of.

The look on her face indicated that they may have discussed it, but she did not trust the discussions, did not trust, nor like, Julian, and did not trust her husband's management of the situation.

Julian understood all this. The last thing he wanted was to come between his brother and his wife, to add to their tensions. He told Annabel what he had told Evan, that he was writing, and spent almost all his time either in his room upstairs, or outside, that there were enough rooms in the house for everyone, there was the office in the basement if they needed it.

They did make a fine couple, Julian thought. She had shown some character here, with her strong cheek bones, firey eyes. And with Evan's new maturity, his curly locks, his good looks seemed less obnoxious than they used to. He was no longer the unruly ten-year-old late-arrival with a dirty mouth and a penchant for temper tantrums, the little boy who seemed to always worry their poor mother, and now, Julian realized, worried him. Julian was his only real family left; Evan his only family.

He thought about the conversation they had had, more than a year ago, on the telephone when Julian had informed Evan of their mother's death. He had been unfair with his brother, he realized now. He had been so distant. Why? Why this fear of trying to forge a connection with his brother? Perhaps, he thought, he had even been cruel. What he thought of as practical might have been something else altogether: he had told Evan that there was no need to come to Canada, had told him, in effect that he did not want to see him. Even if that wasn't what he intended to say. But when they spoke, mother freshly dead, freshly buried, what he had said was: There's no need for you to come up unless you really want to. How did Evan react to that, he wondered now? Well he did not come. Until now. He was here now – perhaps they would finally become true brothers.

I think I'd better go to bed, Evan said. It's been a long day.

Annabel had disappeared, and Julian wondered how long this silence had lasted between them.

What, he asked, is this project you are working on?

Evan blushed, stared down at his feet.

Evan! … Annabel called out from the bedroom.

Evan straightened his back. The eyes from lunch were back, defiant and challenging. Prepared for a fight. We are here, he said, to build a congregation. A new Church.

Julian studied his brother for some time, not sure what to say beyond repeating the words he had just heard: A church? A congregation?

We are going to build a new kind of church here, he repeated, and then he excused himself, and disappeared down the dark hallway.