of shy around strangers—” I wince at the sting of it; to be closer to Emmy by blood than Foster is, and be the one who is the stranger. “Once she gets past it, she’s a fireball. I can barely keep up. She’s a lot like Bea. Busy-Bea.”
I’ve never heard anyone outside our family call her that.
“Must’ve really hurt Emmy when Bea left.”
Foster smiles sadly at the ground.
“She’ll come back.”
He sounds so sure, it gives me pause.
“How do you know that?”
His eyes catch something—someone—behind me.
“Should we talk out here?”
I turn. Lev stands at the barn’s entrance but I’m not sure how long he’s been there. He’s in an olive-green winter army coat, black jeans and boots. He leans against the doorframe.
“Makes no difference to me.”
Lev’s eyes flicker from me to Foster.
“Foster,” he says. “Go on up to the house.”
Foster does as he’s told. Lev and I watch him cross the barn and slip outside.
“I was just admiring your car,” Lev says. “You drove here.”
“It’s a thing I do.”
“It seems I misread you.”
I dig into my bag to pull out the recorder. I hold it up, make sure Lev sees it. I don’t want to miss a moment of this. He nods his consent.
“If I had my way,” he tells me, as soon as it’s recording, “I’d live on the farm.”
“Why don’t you?”
“People would come here between sermons seeking my counsel and I could never refuse them. I was stretching myself too thin. Casey noticed and she made some executive decisions to protect my energy.” He smiles slightly. “The Unity Project runs on faith—and her.”
“What happened to the Garretts?”
“They live in town now. They prefer it.”
He steps farther into the barn, nostalgia lacing his voice as he continues to talk. “You should have seen it then. I imagine the sermon in the tent came across as a bit of a spectacle to you.”
“If it doesn’t have to be a spectacle, why make it one?”
“I didn’t say it was a spectacle, I said it was a spectacle to you. Faith is an expression and some people find certain types of expressions more resonant than others.”
“People who attend your sermons—some of them believe you can see the future,” I say, and Lev inclines his head. “That you predicted the outcome of the election. Is that true?”
“I’m not interested in indulging that kind of speculation because—”
“Because it detracts from the work,” I finish. “But this question has dogged The Project for years and I think the public deserves an answer: did you see the future or didn’t you?”
“I spoke what God told me to speak. Some of his messages are easier to discern than others.” He pauses. “The 2014 sermon was a mirror. We see in a mirror dimly, and then face-to-face. That’s what happened.”
“Do you consider yourself a prophet?”
“A prophet is only a messenger.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the one you get.”
“You do consider yourself God’s redeemer.”
“Yes.”
“Or do you just have a really healthy ego?”
He pauses. “I was long ago stripped of my ego.”
“Did you bring a girl back from the dead?”
He smiles at the rapid-firing of questions, immediately understands I’m trying to trip him up. My fingers ache from holding the recorder so tightly. It’s chilly in the barn, but I don’t want to go up to the house because when I think of writing this moment as it happened, it reads better here; dust motes floating in the air, Lev’s face tinged with the cold. The way our voices echo slightly as they play off each other. The sound of his boots as he paces the floor.
“In God, anything is possible,” he tells me.
“That’s not an answer either.”
“It’s still the one you get.” He pauses. “I was going to be a priest.”
“I know.”
“I thought that was what God meant for me. Well, it was, actually. I hadn’t correctly discerned His calling. God connected me with the church not to bring me to it, but to bring me through it. To walk me through its corruption, to bring me lower than I’d ever been in my life so he could show me a better way, so I, in turn, could show others.”
“How low?”
He comes to a gentle halt in front of me, contemplating.
“When I walked into church the first time, a boy, God’s love was everywhere,” Lev says. “And I had never known love. And when I knew His love, I stopped knowing fear because God’s perfect love casts out fear. Are you afraid, Lo?”
“Of what?” I ask.
“Anything.” His eyes search my face