Mercy. Because there is an end to justice and to fairness, when everything is paid out, and all accounts are settled: but there's no end to mercy.

"You okay?"

"Yes. Yes. So. I'll bring you this."

"Okay."

"A couple more weeks. Spring break is over soon, I have to go home, go to work. But I'll keep at this."

"Okay. Come over when you want. Bring the family. What's-their-names."

"Vita and Mary."

"We'll have a day. The daffodils will be out up on Mount Randa. They're kind of famous. We can walk up to the Welkin Monument."

"Oh yes."

"You've been there?"

"I've never seen it. I've gone up the mountain. I never got that far."

"Hurd Hope Welkin,” she said. “The Educated Shoemaker. The monument's really something. A surprise, when you finally get there. I won't tell you."

"Rosie,” Pierce said. “I want to thank you."

"For what? You haven't even got the check yet."

"For making me do this. To find the way to finish it. I never would have, and it would have followed me to the other side, undone."

"The other side?” Rosie asked drily.

"Anyway, thanks,” Pierce said. “It was just in the nickel-dime."

* * * *

On the various occasions he had walked the halls of the Retreat House, going to and from the abbey church and the refectory, Pierce had passed the door of the retreat master's office, and noticed, when the door was open, the immobile figure of a white-haired monk within. The door said Welcome. Pierce had not responded; one of the things he had ascertained about visits here before he signed up was that the monks asked nothing of retreatants except reverence and silence—beyond that, your experience was your own. He had spoken to no one, and no one had spoken to him. Returning from the phone now, though, he paused there, surprised to find the office open for business, and in that moment the brother within saw him there, and raised his eyebrows and smiled. Rather than spurn the evident invitation in his look, too late to merely amble on, Pierce entered.

"Would you like to sit?” the man said. No tonsure nowadays; an ordinary businessman's haircut. He was older than Pierce had at first thought; maybe very old. “You might shut the door."

Pierce sat.

"I'm Brother Lewis."

"Pierce Moffett."

"Have you come with the CFM group?"

"No. I'm a singleton."

"Ah.” Brother Lewis had a soft, unblinking gaze, and his head hung a little forward on the skinny bent neck that emerged from his robe's wide folds, so he looked a little like a kindly vulture. “You're making a personal retreat?"

"In a way. I mean yes, that's how I'd describe it."

"Are there any particular concerns you're thinking about?"

"I don't think there are any I can discuss, really."

"Are you a practicing Catholic? I only ask for information's sake."

"Actually no.” He should by now be feeling very uncomfortable, but he didn't. An odd sweetness was within him. “I was raised Catholic but don't practice now much. At all."

Brother Lewis had not ceased to gaze upon him compassionately. The Trappists were known for the welcome they extended to all forms of religious rapture, and invited Zen monks and Sufis to speak; at their silent meals Rumi as well as Julian of Norwich and Böhme were read aloud. “But you haven't ceased seeking,” he said.

"I don't know,” Pierce said. “I'm not sure I know what that means. I know that I don't consider myself to be a believer. I don't think I believe in God. If I'm a seeker then what I've sought—or anyway what I've been gladdest to find—is evidence that God doesn't probably exist."

Brother Lewis blinked slowly. “Well, you can't mean that you can conceive of no creator of the universe."

No answer.

"I mean how does all this come to be? Just chance?"

"I don't know,” Pierce said. “I don't know anything about how the universe came to be."

Brother Lewis closed his hands together before him with great slow care, and for a moment Pierce thought he might pray. But he still only looked at Pierce, maybe a shade more interrogatively.

"It's when I seem to myself to find some clear reason—in biology, or history, or psychology, or language—for why a religious belief, or a notion about God, might be pervasive, or convincing to people, even though it's really insupportable, or even dumb—that's when I feel I've hit the truth. That I'm on the path. Mostly."

This felt like a great relief to say, here, and Pierce even fetched a sigh when he had done. Brother Lewis nodded, then propped his cheek on his fist, which seemed a very unmonklike, or lay, gesture.

"Has it occurred to you that this might be work toward God as well?” he asked.

Pierce said nothing.

"I mean the discreating of false creations about God? Refuting false statements, rumors you might say, skeptically? It is, in fact, a way toward God, or it can be. Many mystics have understood this. Saint Thomas himself said that it is proper and right to say that God is not: not good, not big, not wise, not loving. Because these things limit God to the definitions of those words. And God is beyond all definitions."

"The via negativa,” Pierce said.

"You've heard of it.” Brother Lewis said this indulgently, as you might to someone who had tossed out extravehicular activity or death row or cast away. So that Pierce made no nod in return. “I wonder if you have thought how hard a way it is, though. Very lonely, for a long time, as God loses his familiarity. Not loving, not good. Maybe you know."

No answer.

"In our spiritual practice,” Brother Lewis said, “we sometimes are filled with sensations, of love, of goodness, of sweetness. Of rightness. All problems seem resolved, all matters clear. Tears of joy. God's love for you. And a spiritual director might say to you then, well you're very fortunate to have these moments, and you should be grateful for them. But the goal lies farther on, and has little to do with any of this. And when it's reached there will be nothing at all to say."

No answer. Either (Pierce thought) this is so, and I have gone partway without knowing it, and will never truly rest till I go on, or I'm not doing anything like the thing these guys do, whatever exactly that is, and never have.

God.

"Well, tell me,” Brother Lewis said, and crossed one leg over the other, which made his beads rattle, “tell me a little of yourself. Your circumstances."

"Ah. Well. I'm, a teacher. History and literature. In a community college. And."

"Are you married?"

"Yes. I have two daughters. Adopted."

Brother Lewis seemed neither to approve nor disapprove.

"I am actually my wife's second husband,” Pierce said. “She was married once before. Very briefly and unfortunately."

"Oh?” Brother Lewis's attention was caught. His vulture's head bent closer to Pierce. “So you weren't married in the church."

"Well, no. She's divorced, and..."

"You aren't then truly married. You're living in sin."

Hard to tell if Brother Lewis was shocked, but it was evident he was certain.

"Um,” Pierce said, and lifted his hands in a miniature got-me-there gesture.

"You can't continue to live with her,” Brother Lewis said. “You can urge her to return to her former husband, to whom, of course, she's still married. I don't need to quote Scripture to you. In any case you are doing her a great wrong."