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be honest, she’d never found much spiritual value in fasting, at least not in the warm-fuzzies department. It wasn’t that she didn’t believe it worked for other people—she was willing to give any faith-promoting rumor the benefit of the doubt. And it wasn’t like she hadn’t given it her best shot. The first time the doctor had used the words cancer and Jennifer in the same sentence, she’d fasted every week until the bishop told her to cut it out.
    “I’m doing it for Jennifer,” she’d insisted.
    “You’re not exactly being spiritual about it.” He meant she was getting to be a real pain to be around. He was right. Low blood sugar made her grouchy and gave her migraines. Besides, she knew perfectly well what she was doing. If she couldn’t control the world, she’d settle for controlling herself. But God certainly knew the difference between faith and an obsessive-compulsive disorder.
    Herbal tea, she rationalized, didn’t have any calories.
    The bishop walked into the kitchen wearing a white shirt and tie, black pinstriped suit coat, and matching slacks. He hardly ever wore a suit to work, and once a week he really looked fine in one, the junior exec with the power marriage. Well, they could pretend.
    “Hi, handsome,” she said.
    He kissed her. “You taste nice.”
    “It’s the orange.” She put the mug down on the counter and straightened his tie. “By the way, Norma and DeMar are up in Pocatello today. Grandchild number three. So I’ll see you at PEC.”
    Since there was no breakfast to prepare, she held onto him a while longer. But they had their morning ritual to attend to. David fetched the scriptures from the hutch. They sat down at the kitchen table. Alternately, one read aloud from the New International Version while the other followed along in the official King James.
    It was a practice her husband had first observed when they visited her parents after getting engaged. He confessed to her later, “When I saw your mom reading out of that NIV Scofield Study Bible, making lengthy references to Dummelow, I thought I was marrying into one of those families of Mormon radicals. Next thing, you’d be trying to convince me that women ought to get the priesthood.”
    “That’s sweet,” Rachel replied. “Wait till you meet my brother Carl.”
    After meeting Carl once, David had done his level best to avoid ever meeting him again.
    They were presently working their way through Isaiah, dense going no matter what the translation. David glanced at the clock. “I’d better get going.” He got up from the table, leaned over, and kissed her forehead. “See you at church.”
    He picked up his briefcase and left. Rachel replaced the bookmarks and then flipped back through the pages to Job. She had developed an affinity for the last ten chapters of Job, even more so in the King James Version. Perhaps that was because the poetry of the language pretty much disguised the fact that for all the grief they give Job, Elihu and God don’t come up with much of a philosophy of suffering. She always imagined Robert De Niro as God, saying to Job at the beginning of chapter 38, “You talking to me, Job? Huh? Are you talking to me?”
    Basically, God’s philosophy was: “I’m God. You’re not. Trust me on this.”
    Nevertheless Job was somehow reassuring. No reasons, no answers, no profound philosophies of life. But Job gets his reward anyway. As if Job had his lawyers sue God and they settled out of court, big time. New house, new family, a whole bunch of sheep and camels to boot. Hey, sorry for the trouble. The moral of the story: complain hard and long enough and maybe the check won’t bounce.
    She closed the book and put the bibles back on the shelf.
    The bishop glanced at his itinerary, tugged at his necktie. With nine people stuffed into his office—his two counselors, the elders quorum president, high priest group leader, Young Men president, the ward clerk and executive secretary, and his wife