The street followed the twisting, nonsensical pattern of the river into the heart of town where one of two stoplight glowed red in the dim daylight. I tapped the brakes and felt the car fishtail on bald tires. I tapped again and again, slowing my momentum until I sat still at the intersection. A semitruck rumbled past, followed by a black Jeep with massive tires that threw snow up in the car's wake. The storm had passed. I kid bundled so completely only his eyes showed walked a bulldog in a red and white sweater on a retractable leash. A shop keeper stepped out and fixed a sign that had blown over in the wind. No little midwestern town had ever looked more normal.

Green meant go, so I pressed the gas with the tip of my toes and accelerated slowly, just the way I'd been taught. LA was a city of jack rabbit starts and screeching stops and bumper to bumper snakes of traffic edging along a six-lane highway. Those people barely knew how to drive in the rain. They wouldn't last five minutes in Michigan weather.

Once I'd passed through the two block section that constituted the downtown area, I found myself along the riverbank again. With the sheet of snow blanketing the thin ice, it was almost possible to forget how brown and sludgy the water was, thanks to decades of industrial runoff upriver, compounded by the farm chemicals from closer regions. On my left, a row of near-identical two-story homes formed a wall of middle American normalcy. Lights glowed in the windows. Smoke curled from chimneys.

I'm not crazy.

I took a left on Sycamore Street and left the river behind me. My father was virtually a hermit. Even before my mother died, he had no friends. He didn't join the Rotary Club or golf with the other dads. He went out to the barn and he came in again. The only other place I ever saw him go with any kind of regularity was Holy Salvation Church.

My feelings about the church were mixed, to say the least. In that small brick building I had been told I was a precious creation of God, made in His image and meant to sit at his side for eternity. I had been told I was a sinner, a failure, a broken mass of flesh destined to do wrong every day of my miserable suffering existence. My Sunday School teachers taught me that every good gift comes from above. We are to be fruitful and multiply. Man was not meant to be alone, but to live in communion with woman. Then I got a little older and they told me sexual pleasures came from Satan. The urges I felt should be a source of shame and guilt. I should cover myself and let no man touch me.

Above all, it was impressed upon me that my father was the head of the household.

The rules did not apply to fathers.

There were no cars in the church parking lot, but that didn't mean anything. The pastor lived across the street, and the old ladies who cared for the building were all from the neighborhood. Even in a snow storm they were likely as not to trudge down the street on foot than waste gas driving a single block or two. I pulled in near the front without any clue as to whether or not I was actually in one of the designated spots.

Opening the church door and stepping inside was like stepping back in time. Nothing ever changed in this place. A fragrance of lemon polish and candle wax permeated the air. Thin, ugly, dark-green carpet stretched from wall-to-wall. Three red Bibles and four blue hymnals were stacked on a shelf over a coat rack, empty save for a dozen or so wire hangers. No speck of dust marred the covers of the books. Every week, for longer than I'd been alive, one of the old ladies picked each of those books up and wiped it clean before replacing it because that's what had always been done and there was no sense in changing things now.

I heard a rustling sound in the sanctuary and stepped through the wooden arch that separated the entrance area from the main part of the building.

Los Angeles boasted some extraordinary architecture, but not a single building in California could hold a candle to the beauty of this little country church. A vaulted ceiling soared overhead, painted to look like a summer sky with gilded beams crisscrossing. Each pew bore elaborate carvings on the ends—grapevines and flowers, angels, demons, saints and sinners. Rows of candles flickered in the back, and a fifteen foot tall golden cross dominated the front. Six apostles stood in an attitude of prayer on either side of the cross.

Reverend Hobbs sat in the shadows behind the piano and as I entered, he began playing What A Friend We Have In Jesus. As they always had, his fingers danced across the keys without missing a single note, though perhaps they moved a little slower now than they had twenty years ago.

He didn't speak until I was halfway up the aisle. "It's been a long time, my child."

I ran my hand over the ends of the pews as I walked. The wood was smooth as warm silk beneath my fingers. Exactly one half of me thought it had been far too long since I'd sat in these rows, offering up the Lord's Prayer and drinking grape juice from tiny plastic communion cups. Exactly one half of me though a lifetime away would not be long enough. "I'm looking for my father and Jake. Have you seen them?"

"Here?"

Where else? I bit my lip. "Yes. I thought maybe they'd come here for some reason."

"What business have you with your father and your brother?"

I stopped walking and held onto the third pew from the front. "What kind of question is that? They're my family and I'm looking for them."

He stopped playing and the last notes bounced around a bit in the high spaces above us before dying away to silence. "You were more polite before you moved to Sodom."

Why had I come to the church? I couldn't remember. I turned to leave.

"Don't turn your back on me, child." I heard the piano bench scrape against the carpet. Old floorboard creaked under the pastor's weight when he moved across the stage.

Without making a conscious decision to do so, I stopped and looked back at him.

"Your troubles surround you like a raging storm. Tell me what happened."

Compelled by the voice of the man I'd believed for years spoke for God Himself, I answered. "Jake and I agreed to come back for Dad's birthday. Everything was fine. We had dinner last night, but this afternoon I left to go to the market and when I got home there was blood." I swallowed hard and my throat made a queer clicking noise. "I called the police and a woman showed up and saw a gun on the table. I don't know where it came from, but she acted like she thought I'd done something horrible. Then she looked and said there was no blood in the hall and when I went, she was right. It was gone. She took me to the police station and they said my father's been dead for years. And I can't find Jake anywhere and," the rest of the story died in my mouth. Crazy Dan might be crazy, but he'd leant me his car and I wasn't about to rat out the truth about his secret hidey hole.

"You say your father's not dead."

"He can't be. I just saw him." How had I gotten back up to the front of the church? The pastor stood only a few paces away now, but his face remained in shadow. Some ancient part of my brain, the part that would wake in the night at the sound of a saber tooth stepping on dry leaves, came alive and told me to put space between the man and myself.

"If he's not dead, you won't find him here." He stepped forward and the watery sunlight fell across his face revealing solid obsidian eyes above the curve of his smile. "All the dead come to me."

From the corner of my eye, I saw an old woman in a floral print dress and then a powerful blow landed on the back of my head, knocking me to the floor. In the fall, the front of my head made contact with the hard wood, barely padded by the old carpet and the world slipped out from under me.