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Carly like she’d known her forever. She shook my hand, told me where the pickup location was, and returned her attention to the kids clamoring around her. Carly gave me a quick kiss good-bye and began chattering with the other kids.
    I worked my way back through the crowd, toward the table and Pink Cross Hat. She was making notations on the list.
    “Excuse me,” I said. “I’m sorry to bother you again.”
    She lit up with a megawatt smile. “It’s never a bother when you’re serving the Lord. And that’s exactly what I’m doing with all these wonderful little people!”
    “Right, absolutely,” I said, biting my tongue and swallowing the thirty-seven sarcastic answers that formed in my narrow-minded brain. “Was wondering if you might be able to help me find someone who works here at the church.”
    The smile grew impossibly larger. “Sir, I know everyone that works here. Would you like to speak to someone in ministry? There is always someone here to speak with regarding ministry or finding the Lord.”
    “No, no,” I said, holding her off before she had me baptized. “Someone specific.”
    “Who?”
    “Moises Huber.”
    Her smile flickered. If I hadn’t been looking for it, I might have missed it. But the name surprised her, and the reaction wasn’t a positive one.
    She shuffled the papers on the table and stood. “Let me see what I can do. I’ll be right back. Mr. Winters, correct?”
    I nodded.
    She whispered something to one of the women at the table next to hers, and the woman nodded and slid over to take over Pink Cross Hat’s chair and check-in duties. She smiled at me but said nothing.
    I stepped to the side and watched families roll in and out for a few minutes. If the day camp was any indicator, the church’s membership was thriving. At a time when many religious communities were struggling to survive, this one seemed to be doing just fine. People knew one another, hugged, shook hands, seemed happy to see one another. If they were all showing up on weekends and dropping money in the baskets, New Spirit was more than flush.
    Pink Cross Hat returned, the bright smile back on her face. The momentary tick that I’d seen before she left was nowhere to be found.
    “Mr. Winters,” she said, clapping her hands together. “You are in for such a special treat.”
    For a moment, I thought I’d hit the jackpot. “Mr. Huber is here?”
    “Better!” she said.
    “Better?”
    “If you’ll follow me, please.”
    “Where are we going?”
    She smiled and clapped her hands again. “You’ll see.”

11
    Along our walk out of the church to one of the smaller outer buildings, I learned Pink Cross Hat’s name was Marie and she’d been a member of New Spirit since it formed. And it had saved her life.
    “Your life?” I asked as we walked.
    She nodded enthusiastically. “Yes, sir. I was wandering down the wrong path, and New Spirit swooped in and pointed me down the right one.”
    “Ah.” What else was there to say to that?
    “Where do you attend?”
    And there it was. In Texas it was as commonplace a question as “Where do you work?” or “Where were you born?” or “How’d you meet your spouse?” “Where do you attend?” Meaning, what church?
    “Uh, we don’t.”
    She stopped dead in her tracks. “Excuse me?”
    “We don’t attend anywhere,” I said. “We sleep in on Sunday mornings.”
    “We have Saturday evening services,” she said, completely missing my weak attempt at humor.
    “Sure,” I said. “It’s just not our thing.”
    She kept her eyes on me, studying me like she’d just found a rare insect in her shoe. “So you don’t attend . . . anywhere?”
    “Nope.”
    She blinked several times, trying to process my answer. “Well, that’s . . . interesting.”
    We crossed a massive courtyard, at the center of which stood a fountain, and she punched a code on a panel next to a door to gain entrance to a smaller, more generic-looking building. We went up a short