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Show and squinted his eyes, letting the pair of heads on the pew in front of him blur through yellow tears and the shadow of his eyelashes. He could barely make out the white oval face of the bishop's wife, sitting with the family on a pew off to the side, gripping her black beaded purse while their oldest son, a hulking fifteen-year-old who stole hubcaps, sat with an arm around her shoulders. Something like that blur was what you saw through the veil from the celestial kingdom the longer you were there. The bishop and his parents, watching her, were probably seeing her grow hazy and indistinct already. Would he like to see his brother? the bishop's father asked, to take his mind off his wife. Lorin knew the bishop's younger brother had been killed in the war. Yes, of course, the bishop said. Where was the pup? Smiling, they led him through a long maze of corridors, onto which spacious well-lighted rooms opened. People in white suits looked up from desks and smiled as they passed by. His mother told him how proud they were of him. He couldn't take credit for anything, he said. He had just done things the way they had raised him to do them. His father put an arm around his shoulders and told him not to contradict his mother and they'd get along fine. A man and a woman from the mortuary were singing "In the Garden." Lorin was sorry he had punched Stephen a few minutes ago, and put an arm around his shoulders, but his brother squirmed and pulled away. Lorin took his arm away and closed his eyes. A young man stepped out of a doorway just ahead of the bishop and his parents, turned back to say something to someone in the room he had just left, then came down the corridor with both arms extended. The bishop recognized his little brother, cuffed him affectionately on the side of the head. Where had he been keeping himself, runt? Cal took his big brother's hand in both of his. Made him a bishop, |