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or Ruth thought it was. Now, as she and Ray sit in front of their house, the truck idling beneath them, she realizes they have not come home to the same place they have lived for twenty years. They have come home to a worse place, a lonelier place, and Ruth is more afraid of Ray than ever.

Chapter 4
    Walking down St. Anthony’s stone steps for the first time, Celia pins her pillbox hat to her head with one white-gloved hand. In Detroit, all of the ladies wore gloves to church. Here, the women have bare hands and dirty nails. Midway down the stairs that widen as they near street level, Celia stops, the other parishioners filtering around her, and plucks a few cockleburs from the hem of her blue cotton skirt. She frowns at the brown oval smudges that stain each fingertip of her white Sunday gloves. Perhaps the reason none of the women wear them. Having lost Arthur in the crowd that filed out of the church following the end of service, she lets the flow of the other churchgoers lead her. All around, people talk in whispers even though church is over.
    “Didn’t you hear?” one woman asks another.
    “Such terrible news,” says a third. “Simply terrible.”
    Tugging off her stained gloves one finger at a time, Celia scans the crowd until she finds Ruth standing near the bottom of the stairs where everyone seems to be gathering. Her perfectly formed oval face wrapped in a blue and yellow print scarf is tilted up, smiling.
    While fending off houseflies with her church bulletin, Celia had spent her first Kansas sermon looking from one hometown parishioner to the next, noticing, as they shifted about on the pews and swatted at flies, that they all had the same overgrown ears and fleshy noses. There were a few, probably in-laws like herself, and the priest, Father Flannery, who hadn’t inherited the trait. And as she studied them, she felt them studying her. Her navy blue skirt was too proper with its sharp pleats and tailored waistband. The other women wore skirts that ballooned over their large hips. They wore floral scarves, not gossamer trimmed hats. Theirs were white cotton blouses, wrinkled and nearly gray. Hers was a silk print, hand washed and dried flat on a towel. By the end of the service, Celia even looked at Arthur, crossing and uncrossing her legs so she could turn unnoticed to study the size and shape of his ears and nose, but he looked like an outsider, and Ruth, too, with her delicate brow and graceful neck. Reesa, however, could have birthed the entire congregation.
    “Good morning,” Ruth says, clasping her hands together and stepping back when Celia reaches the bottom stair. Her eyelashes cast a feathery shadow on her cheeks and the silver and gray in her hair shimmers in the sunlight. “Lovely service.”
    “Yes,” Celia says. “A little warm though,” and she shields her eyes. No sign of Arthur, though she does spot Reesa standing with the three women who were whispering about the terrible news. She is shaking her head as the women talk. Feeling that she has spent the better part of her short time in Kansas swatting bugs, swallowing dust and searching for Arthur, Celia drops her hand and stops looking.
    Ruth smiles with closed lips. “There he is,” she says, pointing up at Arthur, who is standing at the top of the stairs among a group of men wearing short-sleeve dress shirts and thick black belts.
    Celia nods and gives a small wave when Arthur motions in her direction as if to point out his wife to his old friends. Elaine stands nearby at Jonathon’s side, both of them talking with the other young men who must, like Jonathon, work in the oil fields. Weeks of moaning and complaining and already Elaine is at home. Ray, who is also standing with Jonathon, seems to return Celia’s wave, which was meant for Elaine, but because of the way his left eye drifts off to the side, she’s not quite sure where he’s looking. She frowns anyway and after the group of men, all of whom have large ears and