"So like a free-spirit? Is that what you're saying?" I frowned.

"I believe in the word of God. I believe the place I choose to worship shouldn't need a donation plate, or murals, or stained-glass windows. I don't like the mockery of it all. I don't like turning faith into a social event. If I choose to hold "church" at your family's dinner table, or on a train ride, or right here in this Chevy, what should it matter?"

I grinned. "Might I point out you have mocked my doctor-hood since the day 'twas revealed."

She shrugged. "I'm younger than you, so I get to make more mistakes. It's written."

I stared in the rear-view because if I looked at her I would have kissed her. "It's written," I echoed. "Forty-eight."

"What?"

"Keeping count."

"Whatever," she sighed, "I'll do my best to knock off mocking your career as a doctor, if you don't mock my faith."

"With the small exception of trying not to kill Logan, I haven't uttered a single prayer since I was twelve years old, Everly Anne. You might want to sit a little farther away if you don't want God to see you are friends with such a sinner."

"Or maybe God wanted me to bring a little faith into your life."

I pulled into the diner and parked. "I'm not a big fan of Bible-thumpers. Believe whatever you'd like about God or Buddha or whoever, but just don't go preaching to me. I got enough of that shit from Marta growing up. I don't have a desire to get right with God when he's decided to get so very wrong with me, Everly Anne."

"Has he wronged you?" she doubted.

"Hasn't he? And hasn't he wronged you? What? You're accepting of being born motherless? You can still pray and believe an all-loving, all-seeing God is looking after you? You-the girl who can't have more than one free day to live like she desires-you believe in a just God?"

Everly Anne put her hand on my cheek. "I believe you're a privileged man who was given a gift for caring for those who need it most, Callum Andrew. What has been done to your heart is not in vein. Tell me, if you grew up without the harsh, inconvenient reality of your beloved mother's death-would you have the same tenderness in your heart as you do today? Would you even see a girl like me and wonder about my quietness? Or would you be too busy being too privileged, too gifted, too doted upon, and only find yourself alongside the glory of a woman who can satisfy your momentary hunger, but never quench your infinite thirst?"

She took a breath. "I am a girl who would have grown up just as privileged as you, had I been born with a mother, and without this condition, my father would have most definitely encouraged me to focus on nothing but school. I would have been pushed into becoming a doctor like him. I would have been denied the normal things children growing up doing; dating, slumber parties, trouble. I might have had Christmases and birthdays due to that mother, but I would have led a life just as controlled and orchestrated as the one I live now. The mercy of all of that is this moment right now. I am here with you, singing my rebel song, doing my very best to quench you when you are thirsty, because this God I believe in, that I have faith in, has bestowed me this one beautiful thing, amid all the heartache. And best of all, He has given me the eyes to see its glory."

I took her hand into mine. "You think I'm blind about how lucky I am to have found you?"

"I think you're foolish if you believe you're the one who found me, or orchestrated your life in some manner that led up to this. If you honestly believe all of this rests on your shoulders, Callum Andrew, I am sad for you."

"You don't understand," I said, "I watched Julep die. She was faithful. She was good. She never harmed anyone. Where was her moment of beauty, Everly Anne? Where was her glory?"

She took her hand from mine and palmed my chest. "You have a song in your heart, too, yes? What does it sing? You told me once, remember?"

"I've told you many things."

She nodded and removed her hand. "Your denial is in yourself, Callum Andrew, not with God. He's given you a song. You have chosen not to sing."

I nodded, feeling bristled by her words. "Well, I am an academic scholar, not fuckin' Pavarotti."

Everly shook her head, as she reached for the door handle. "You wanna look into your academic world and only see God in yourself, fine, that's your choice. But I'm going to keep believing in this great somethingness, because there is already too much in my life that amounts to nothing."

The hostess shoved a gnawed No.2 pencil through her hair before she asked, "How many?"

"Just the two of us, please," I replied. But Everly corrected me, "three." The hostess paused mid-reach for menus. "Oh, two menus will be fine," she told her. "The third person is his alter ego, and they can share a menu." Everly whispered, "He thinks he's God."

I resisted the urge to smile. "Fifty."

The hostess glanced between us, but I shook my head leaving the woman to declare New York was home to two more nut-jobs. Well . . . three.

"Lynne will be ya servah," she told us as we huddled into a rose-colored booth covered in thick clear plastic. "I'll get ya drink ordah, if ya ready." She tapped her order pad.

Everly looked over the menu as she asked, "Did you bring your God-complex Visa?"

I tried not to smile at her. Tried. "I never leave home without it."

Her face soured. "So I feared." Everly looked at the hostess who was growing more annoyed by the minute. "I'll have two vanilla milkshakes."

"And fah you, handsome?"

"I'll have orange juice. God will have coffee."