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that’s not what Emilie needs. I mean, we could just leave and—”
    “ No, ” Emilie emphatically interrupted, surprising them all. “I want to stay here. I don’t want to go home! I can’t walk back into the house just yet …” She caught her breath, stopped. And then the tears came.
    As if on cue, everyone reached for Emilie’s hands, arms, anything to touch her, reassure her. Emilie began openly weeping, the other three tearing up also, feeling the heartache along with her.
    But then, as suddenly as the tears had arrived, Emilie pleaded, “Um, we’ve got to get ourselves together.” Flustered, she grabbed for the rumpled tissue again. “I don’t want anyone else to know about this yet. It’s been hard enough telling you all, and …” she paused, swallowing, “well, I’m not ready for this to get out. And then there’s the kids. Oh, God, how am I ever going to tell the kids? ” Despite her resolve, she had to wipe away more tears.
    “Em, are you positive this isn’t just some huge misunderstanding?” Maureen asked. “Or maybe … maybe we need to look at this from God’s perspective, like Joseph. You know, he meant it for evil, but God meant if for good?”
    Sherry’s intensity pulled her toward Maureen, and though she whispered, her words came out like a snarled hiss, “Maureen, listen to me. Shut up. It doesn’t work that way in the real world, and you know that.” Seeing Maureen’s hurt response, Sherry purposefully eased herself backward, resettled, closed her eyes a moment, and then took a deep breath. “Look, Maureen, I think I understand what you’re trying to say. But the idea that if we can only figure it all out, then God will simply make it vanish—”
    “I’m so sorry.” Maureen’s eyes darted from Sherry to Emilie. “I didn’t mean … I’m only trying to help Em see, to help us all see, that sometimes there’s a blessing underneath. That good can come of the worst. Isn’t that right?” She searched Emilie’s face for answers, but it was Sherry who spoke into the tense atmosphere again.
    “Quite frankly, I don’t think it’s time yet to search for the good in this mess. Because there’s not one thing good about this!” A pained look covered Sherry’s features, telltale remnants of her own past. “And if God really is God, then I wish he would skip the heartbreaking life lessons for the children’s sake, and stop Ed in his tracks right now.”
    Maureen instinctively jerked backward. And then she looked to Emilie, fully expecting her to vehemently disagree. Yet Maureen watched in absolute amazement as Emilie nodded her head, and then added, “Oh, Sherry. That’s exactly what my heart has been crying out. That God would … be God. And do something!”
    Never before had Maureen heard any of these friends express such caustic cynicism, such blatant anger at God. Wasn’t that blasphemy? she asked herself, realizing that she was nearly frozen in fear, waiting for … What? Am I expecting God to strike us dead?
    “I think we need to let go of … I don’t know … searching for reasonable answers for any of it,” Vanessa said. “This is horrible, Em. And no amount of fanciful rationalizing of God’s part in this will ever make one bit of it acceptable. And it won’t make sense simply because we interpret this as ‘God’s will,’ the wonderful catchall that every one of us”—Vanessa looked from Maureen to Sherry and then to Emilie again as she emphasized her words—“has used way too often in the past.”
    Vanessa had spoken in such a rush that she had to pause to catch her breath. “Emilie’s hurting, and you know what? I think we should just … hurt with her.” Her eyes filled with tears as she stared into Emilie’s equally tear-filled eyes. “No explanations or answers. Just love. Loving her the best we can, in the way that she needs us most.”
    Sherry took charge then, as she usually did whenever a decision for the entire group needed to