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couldn’t.
    “I would be scared to hear God talk out loud,” I said finally.
    “There was only that one time,” said Jonathan. “But sometimes I’ll read something in the Bible, and it will jump out at me, and I know that’s God trying to tell me something.”
    “You still read the Bible?” I asked. “Even though you know all the stories?”
    “I do. And sometimes,” he continued, “someone will say something to me, and I’ll have this…feeling. Like, ‘yes, that’s true.’ Like God is saying something to me through that person. It makes sense but I can’t explain it.”
    “I had that feeling,” I burst out. “When you explained Solomon and the baby to me. You said God cared what happened to the baby, so he would be okay. And the mom knew God cared what happened to the baby, so she was okay.”
    He grinned at me. “She knew God was paying attention. See? I told you it answers every question.”
    Maybe.
    “I still would rather ask you, Jonathan.”
    “So ask. But I won’t always be around, Frannie. And what will you do if you ever have a question about me?”
    “I would ask you!”
    “Or we have a fight and you’re mad at me?”
    “ Wh —what?” That wasn’t possible.
    “Well—” he shrugged. “Never mind. I’ll always do my best to answer, if I’m around. But keep God in your back pocket, just in case.”
    This conversation took place shortly after Jonathan’s thirteenth birthday. I remember because bouquets of helium balloons lingered on the grass, the breeze occasionally bouncing them in slow motion. Enrique the gardener would dispose of them when he came on Friday.
    If Jonathan was thirteen, I was seven-and-a-half. The thought of not being able to talk to him filled me with dismay, even if it was only hypothetical. I had no intention of giving up my flesh-and-blood confidant for One who might scare me out of closets with a booming voice or chant at me through Bible verses or inhabit the mouth of Tom or my aunt Terri. No. Jonathan knew everything, but on this he was wrong.
    So I thought then.
    Out of obedience to my cousin, I began talking to God. More like you would include a stranger in your conversation from politeness, rather than a desire to get acquainted. God was the friend of a friend; if Jonathan found him worthwhile, I would like him for Jonathan’s sake. God rarely answered that I could hear, but perhaps that was the fault of my listening. He seemed talkative enough in the Bible. In my life, though, I pictured him as an amiable Uncle Roger, never saying much, but a comforting presence.
    Obedience became habit. Habit became necessity. As Jonathan got older and busier with high school sports and studies and activities, I either had to share my thoughts and feelings with God or keep them to myself for days on end.
    But I still preferred Jonathan.

Chapter 4
     
    Eric and Caroline Grant were not Tom’s first questionable friends.
    He had been partying for years. Since the time he traded bedrooms with me. When his parents dropped him off for youth group at the church, he would wait for their car to pull away before leaping in the waiting vehicle of a friend. He kept spare clothes and a bottle of shampoo tucked in Rachel’s choir room cubby, and I more than once found him outside the house, washing the odors of cigarettes and pot away with the hose. He would put a playful finger to his lips and squirt the hose at my feet to make me jump.
    “When’s the fall retreat going to be this year, in case Aunt Terror asks me?” Tom demanded of Jonathan one afternoon. Jonathan was reading on the porch. I was in the treehouse , long abandoned by the other Beresfords, struggling over fractions and decimals.
    “Are you coming?” his brother responded.
    “Not a chance.” Tom leaned against the railing. “But I am thinking of taking some friends up to the cabin while I’m supposed to be retreating.” The Beresfords’ cabin at Lake Tahoe was more of a big vacation home which Aunt