He leaned forward and perched on the edge of the sofa, his hands extended outward, palms up. “Are you a praying woman, Ruth?”

Slowly, she said, “I guess so. I talk to God sometimes.”

That answer sounded inadequate. No one had ever asked her that before. Ruth lived a dual identity, raised up on religion but schooled in science. Experts drew a solid line between the two, their differences irreconcilable. She wasn’t sure what to believe. Still, she had prayed her entire life. She prayed for prom dates and promotions. She prayed for Papa to live. She prayed for green lights at intersections when she was running late. She prayed for the Bulls to make three-pointers in the final seconds on the shot clock. She prayed for lemon Bundt cakes to rise. She prayed for the pregnancy test she took at seventeen to be negative, negotiating with God that she wouldn’t be a repeat offender if He let her off one more time.

Sometimes she prayed for her son, that he was okay, that she hadn’t irreversibly damaged his future when she walked away like Joanna had when she left Ruth and Eli behind. God considered each petition on its merits, she figured, and sometimes ruled in her favor. Sometimes not.

She felt Pastor Bumpus’s eyes on her. He said, “We all fall short of the glory of God. Joanna did. I do. You, too. We all do. That’s why we have to pray for God to turn every wicked thing into something good. You think of Joanna leaving you and your brother behind as abandonment. Maybe it was. But God knew better. Her leaving allowed you to have a chance at a better life being raised by Hezekiah and Ernestine. Look at you now. An esteemed Yale graduate.”

His voice rang triumphant. Why was he even going there when she hadn’t mentioned her abandonment issues? Had Mama told him how resentful she’d been about Joanna’s disappearing act? Pastor Bumpus leaned back again as if to get a better view of her, admiring God’s handiwork.

On Sunday mornings when she was a girl, he would invite her and other star students to the pulpit for special recognition, reading to the congregation from their report cards, listing all their good grades and reciting teachers’ praise. The first time, it had embarrassed her, but then it became a motivator to earn nothing less than A’s in every subject.

Then the acceptance letter from Yale arrived, offering her a full scholarship. The church hosted a celebratory luncheon after service to honor her as well as a boy cellist in the congregation who got to play a concert with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. How would Pastor Bumpus look at her now if he knew her secret?

She couldn’t tell him her story, but she also couldn’t stand the way he’d elevated her undeservedly. “You don’t know my whole story. I’ve made mistakes. Big mistakes. There are things I can’t undo. I needed my mother.”

Her voice cracked around the edges. She thought of her Catholic friends at Yale who sat in little booths behind a curtain, confessing their sins to a priest, liberated by the anonymity of it all. But she couldn’t tell Pastor Bumpus everything. She wanted to say that if she’d been raised by her mother, maybe she wouldn’t have turned to Ronald for love. Maybe she wouldn’t have gotten pregnant.

Pastor Bumpus closed his eyes and lifted his hands above his head, reaching heavenward. “Listen to me carefully now. You thought you needed a mother. But the Bible says in Philippians, ‘My God shall supply all your needs according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus.’ The word of God is as real today as it was yesterday.”

The cadence of his voice rose and fell in a rhythm, and Ruth felt a sermon coming on. And as much as she had revered him since childhood, she remembered he had limitations, too, just like everybody else.

That time she came home from college for a brief visit, the church was in an uproar over his alleged mishandling of congregants’ tithes and offerings. Word in the pews had it that Pastor Bumpus had taken tens of thousands of dollars in donations earmarked for the church mortgage and used it as seed money to fund a children’s recreation center. Apparently, he hadn’t come clean with the members and some questioned his financial stewardship. We have to keep our children busy and off these streets, he’d said in his own defense. It was a worthy cause, and many in the church refused to condemn the pastor’s good work, while others blasted his dishonesty and dubious methods. She didn’t know which side to come down on and chose to stay neutral.

When he opened his eyes at the end of his prayer, Ruth was standing above him with his coat over her arm.

“It was wonderful seeing you again, Pastor. I’ll tell Mama you stopped by.”

She meant no disrespect, but she couldn’t pray away this problem. Not now. Not yet.

“I’m always here for you and your family. Remember that,” he said, rising and taking his coat. She walked him to the door.

With Pastor gone, Ruth sat alone with thoughts of Joanna. As a little girl, she would close her eyes as tight as she could and try to remember her mother—her eyes watching, her hands holding, her mouth kissing her. Now, as an adult, she grasped for bits of information and images floating past in the dust storm of memory. But that picture in her mind remained out of reach. Her mother had disappeared just after Ruth’s third birthday. She had missed so much. Ruth making honor roll every year. The science fair trophies in fifth and sixth grades. Perfect report cards all through junior high. Her induction into the National Honor Society. The birth of Joanna’s first grandchild.

Sometimes when Ruth tried to picture the woman raising her son, she pictured someone like Joanna: unrefined, irresponsible, and even uncouth. Thinking of her child’s mother as a villain made it easier to dislike this woman she’d never met, to dismiss her the way she had her biological mother. At the same time, this logic made her feel guilty for delighting in the idea of someone bad raising her son.