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“So you’re a romantic too”

“What happened with the dancer?”

“Oh, he got a job with a ballet company in Texas and went away I sent him these e-mails, like, ‘I love you’, ‘I miss you’, ‘I think about you all the time’—pretty much every day, but he never wrote back Then finally, on my birthday, I called him I couldn’t wait to hear his voice He was just completely cold He said, ‘You’re not relevant to my life anymore You should cool it with the e-mail’”

“Wow, that’s… Wow”

“Yeah”

“Well, it’s his loss”

“Uh-huh They always say that”

“You’re only twenty-four I can’t believe how much you’ve experienced”

“I haven’t experienced anything Nothing worth experiencing, anyway What about you? Do you think you’ll fall in love again?”

“You know, I couldn’t i ti to feel like I’ain”

“Happily ever after?”

“Maybe, with the right person”

Holy Communion

In 1916, the historian and critic John Charles Van Dyke wrote a book devoted to thein the presence of the great ele in the throat!” he wrote “The high-blown pride of the human breaks under hiion of the Garden coh mountains, which were God’s first teets to pray for himself, but has rapturous praise for the Power that planned and the Hand that wrought He is back to a primitive faith from which he never should have wandered”

Paul held out the silver tray with the little cups full of grape juice and the plate with bite-sized chunks of Selma Mead’s home-baked bread The parishioners inched up the aisle, each silently taking a sa back to the pews As the members in the middle pews filed into the aisle, Ian stood and walked with them, two places in line behind Frank the usher