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“What do you mean conforming to the cross?” Katie asked. “As in one should want to be crucified? That would please God?”

Miles could tell that Reverend McCamy wanted to lay his hands on Katie. To bless her or to punish her because he thought she was blaspheming? He couldn’t tell.

Reverend McCamy said, all patience, so patronizing that Miles imagined Katie standing up and smacking him in the jaw if she weren’t so focused on what she was doing, “We must embrace suffering to lead us ever closer to God, and in this suffering, there is greatness and submission. No, God does not wish us to be crucified like him. That is shallow and blind, meaning nothing. It is far more than that, far deeper, far more enveloping. Very rarely God’s grace is bestowed on a living creature and is manifested in the imitation of Christ’s travails on the cross.”

Katie said, never looking away from Reverend McCamy’s face, “You said that God doesn’t want us to nail ourselves to a cross in imitation of the crucifixion. What then is this gift bestowed on so very few?”

Reverend McCamy said, “How long does it take for the brownies to bake, Elsbeth?”

“Thirty minutes,” Elsbeth said. She never looked her husband in the face, nor did she look at Miles or Katie. She slipped the glass dish inside the oven, then turned to the sink to run water in the batter bowl.

Too bad, Katie had really wanted a taste of that batter. It was time to push again, time to maneuver him where she wanted him to go. She said, “These individuals who imitate Christ’s suffering, who and what are they? How are they selected? And by whom?”

Elsbeth whispered, “Don’t you understand? Reverend McCamy is one of the very few blessed by God’s grace, who is blessed by God’s ecstasy in suffering.”

Reverend McCamy looked like he wanted to slap her, but he didn’t move, just fisted his hands at his sides.

Katie said, ever so gently, her eyes as intense as Reverend McCamy’s, “You’re speaking of Christ’s wounds appearing on a mortal’s body. You’re saying that Reverend McCamy is a—what are they called?”

“Stigmatist,” said Reverend McCamy.

“And you’re a stigmatist, aren’t you, sir?”

He looked furious that she’d pushed him to this, and Miles realized in that instant that she indeed had, and she’d done it very well. For a moment Reverend McCamy didn’t say anything. Katie knew he was trying to get himself under control and it was difficult for him.

Katie said, “Homer Bean, one of your former parishioners, told us that you’d told a small group of men one evening about being a victim of God’s love, about being a stigmatist.”

Reverend McCamy said without looking up, “Since they have told you, then I will not deny it. Once in my life I was blessed to have the suffering of ecstasy with blood flowing from my hands in imitation of the nails driven through our Lord’s palms.”

Katie said, “You’re saying that blood flowed from your palms? That you have actually experienced this?”

“Yes, I have been blessed. God granted me this passionate and tender gift. The pain and the ecstasy—the two together provide incalculable profit to the soul. I have kept this private, all except for those few men in whom I once confided.”

Katie said, “And how is it you were chosen for this, Reverend?”

“You must recognize and accept the divine presence, Katie. You must believe that it is too overwhelming for mankind to fathom, that it must be the expression of ultimate faith. Thus the godless have sought to belittle this divine ecstasy, to trivialize it, to turn it into some sort of freak show. But it isn’t, for I have had my blood flow from my own palms.”

Miles said, fed up with this fanatic, his strange wife, and the damned brownies in the oven, “This is all very fascinating, McCamy, but can you tell me why Clancy and Beau kidnapped my son?”

It was as if someone flipped off the light switch. Reverend McCamy’s eyes became even darker, as if a black tide was roiling up through his body. He shuddered, as if bringing himself out of someplace