and religion. I had run my fingers along their spines for a few minutes, reading titles and noting authors: David Hume, Immanuel Kant, C. S. Lewis, Friedrich Nietzsche. After a moment, I’d found myself stepping back and staring up at the stacks, centuries’ worth of human thought devoted to understanding God and the world and how to live in it. I had wondered how we at Westboro could have ever believed that we alone had discovered the one true answer to it all. I had flushed with embarrassment at our arrogance, and at my own ignorance. What did I know of these philosophers and their ideas? Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the traditions of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ. It was a catchall verse that had kept me from ever venturing too far off the beaten path, allowing me to dismiss out of hand any challenges to the most fundamental premises of our beliefs: Did God exist? And was the Bible His infallible Word? I had been taught that these were the questions of fools, but now I felt foolish for all the years I had failed to ask them.
I knew that I would read the Bible on this trip, but at Newbery’s suggestion, I had also brought along books by Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, and Richard Dawkins: God Is Not Great, The End of Faith, and The God Delusion. Their presence felt illicit, so I decided to ease into the journey with a short book by Hemingway, whom I had also never read. Lying prone on the hardwood floor with my elbows propped up on a pillow, I picked up Newbery’s copy of The Old Man and the Sea and began. My phone sat nearby, ready and waiting for me to record any lines I found particularly moving. I needed wisdom and direction, and I intended to cull as much of it as I could from as many places as I could find it.
Dec. 18, 2012—Day 1
THE OLD MAN & THE SEA
Now is no time to think of what you do not have. Think of what you can do with what there is.
* * *
Despite our best intentions to read uninterrupted for hours on end, Grace and I didn’t make it too long before we decided it was time for lunch. Grace sat at the kitchen table and read Anna Karenina aloud to me as I assembled peanut butter sandwiches, and then continued as I cleaned up the kitchen after lunch—washing pans, loading and unloading the dishwasher, sweeping the floor. Most of the mess didn’t belong to us, but compared to the nightly hurricane that constituted dinner in the Phelps-Roper home, this was nothing.
And in any case, I was always happiest being useful.
A door slammed and we both froze, my eyes snapping up to Grace’s. I peeked out the kitchen threshold, past the dining room and the entryway, and saw Laura coming through the front door, followed closely by a tall man with dark sideburns looking smart in a black peacoat and thick-rimmed glasses. Damn, I thought. Too late to hide now. I tiptoed back to the sink.
“I’ve never seen the kitchen so clean!” the man said. “I’m Dustin. You must be…” His finger wavered back and forth between my sister and me. “Megan?” he asked, pointing at me. “And Grace?”
I grabbed a towel to dry my hands and then shook his. He explained that since the offices for TDG, the marketing firm I’d read about, were just down the hill and around the corner, he and Laura often made the ten-minute walk home for lunch. I looked at the clock and made a mental note to stay away from the first floor during any hour that could plausibly be considered lunchtime. With three people now milling about, the kitchen had become uncomfortably full, so I stepped out of the main area and sat down with Grace at the table. I watched the couple as they raided the refrigerator for leftover pizza and some sort of rice dish, surreptitiously studying them for signs of latent psychopathy.
“So what are you guys up to today? Is there anything specific you’re interested in doing while you’re here?” Dustin’s tone was friendly and helpful, and I sensed that he was in the habit of acting as tour guide.
“Is there anything you’d recommend?” I asked. He rattled off a list of local attractions, most of which I didn’t recognize, but he