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After most people had cleared out of the auditorium, Suzi and Nance made their way through the lobby.

“Hope you don’t mind that I told people you’re my granddaughter. I’m sure that Helen would’ve been just like you.” Nance’s eyes had gotten watery.

Don’t cry, lady; that’s all I ask. “It’s fine,” Suzi said, pausing to rest.

They approached the reverend, who was shaking hands with people leaving the church. “This is my adopted granddaughter,” Nance told him, after he’d greeted her profusely, clasping both her hands in his. “Suzi, this is Reverend Coffey, our neighbor in Canterbury Hills.”

Reverend Coffey was even taller than he’d looked onstage and built like a football player. “Just call me Buff,” he said. He had longish, wavy brown hair and looked like Orlando Bloom, with the same jutting chin and thinnish lips. And those eyes! He turned to Nance. “This girl is a true gift from God,” he said, about Suzi. Then he said to Suzi, “Hope you’ll be back next week. And come to youth group. I’m the leader.” He looked intently into her eyes, as if there was more going on at youth group than just your standard Bible-related activities.

Nance offered to take Suzi to Dunkin’ Donuts after church, somewhere Suzi hadn’t been since she was eight.

“Let’s bring your grandfather with us next week!” Nance said in the car.

Suzi, sprawled out in the backseat, was surprised that Nance was just assuming she’d be going back to Genesis Church, and she was even more surprised to discover that she was actually considering it.

“Your granddad doesn’t get out much,” Nance said. “I think he’d enjoy it. Don’t you?”

“Maybe.” Suzi had never thought about her granddad being lonely, but she supposed he must be. “I thought you said today was Grandparents’ Day.”

“I just made that up,” Nance said. Her eyes met Suzi’s in the rearview mirror and then slid quickly away. “I wanted you to come with me. I shouldn’t have lied, though. I’m sorry.”

That was strange. A church lady telling a lie like it was no big deal.

“I would’ve gone anyway,” Suzi said, but that might have been a lie also.

As soon as Nance got Suzi settled at a table in Dunkin’ Donuts with a few cream-filled delicacies, surrounded by glum-looking people getting their sugar fixes, Nance announced that while Suzi was eating her first donut, she’d drive down the road and fill the car up with gas and be back in two shakes of a jiffy jack’s tail. “Save me the biggest one,” she told Suzi, pointing at the donuts.

Suzi watched her drive off, pulling into the traffic on Monroe in her oddly aggressive manner. Why couldn’t she have waited to get gas? Why the urgency? She drove right on by the Shell station on the corner. But maybe she had a particular brand of gas in mind. The thing was, after Suzi had eaten all the donuts but one, she sat there and sat there. She looked at her watch. Nance had been gone for half an hour. Suzi’s braced knee, propped up on a red vinyl chair, was throbbing. It was time for more pain meds. They were a few miles from Canterbury Hills or she might’ve set off walking—if she hadn’t been injured.

Should she call someone? Nance herself didn’t have a cell phone. She’d have to call home and ask one of her parents or Otis to come and get her. Otis would be mean about it. And she didn’t want to get Nance in trouble, make her look like a flake. But where the hell was she? Suzi called Mykaila and chatted awhile, told her about the church service, about the fetching Reverend Coffey, told her she was stranded at Dunkin’ Donuts. Not a bad place, Mykaila observed. If you have to be stranded. Maybe Nance was in an accident! Mykaila suggested hopefully.

Suzi ate the last donut, then waited another half an hour, then another fifteen minutes, then, finally, called her mother. She’d thought her mother might be angry at having to come get her, but she wasn’t. No, instead of being angry or feeling bad about Suzi getting stranded, her mother was worried about what had happened