Strangers

diced onions, cubed bread, and grated cabbage, Ned occasionally wondered if what they were cooking was not only a family feast but also the last hearty meal of the condemned. Each time that morbid thought rose, he chased it away by pausing to watch Sandy as she worked. She smiled almost constantly, and sometimes softly hummed a song. Surely, an event that had induced this radical and wonderful change in Sandy could not ultimately culminate in their deaths. Surely, they had nothing to worry about. Surely.
        

        
        After three hours at the Elko Sentinel, Ginger and Dom ate a light lunch - chef's salads - at a restaurant on Idaho Street, then returned to the Tranquility Motel at two-thirty. Faye and Ernie were still in the office, which was filled with appetizing aromas drifting down from the apartment upstairs: pumpkin, cinnamon, nutmeg, onions fried lightly in butter, the yeasty odor of baking bread dough.
        "And you can't smell the turkey yet," Faye said. "Ned just put that in the oven half an hour ago."
        "He says dinner's at eight," Ernie told them, "but I suspect the odors'll drive us mad and force us to storm the kitchen before then."
        Faye said, "Learn anything at the Sentinel?"
        Before Ginger could tell them what she and Dom had uncovered, the front door of the motel office opened, and a slightly pudgy man entered in a burst of cold whirling wind. He had hurried from his car without bothering to put on a topcoat; although he wore gray slacks, a dark blue blazer, a light blue sweater, and an ordinary white shirt, rather than a black suit and Roman collar, his identity was not for a moment in doubt. He was the auburn-haired, green-eyed, round-faced young priest in the Polaroid snapshot that the unknown correspondent had sent to Dom.
        "Father Cronin," Ginger said.
        She was as immediately and powerfully drawn to him as she'd been to Dominick Corvaisis. With the priest as with Dom, Ginger sensed a shared experience even more shattering than the one which she had shared with the Blocks and Servers. Within The Event that they had all witnessed that Friday in July, there had been a Second Event experienced by only some of them. Although it was a frightfully improper way to greet a man who was a virtual stranger and a priest, Ginger rushed to Father Cronin and threw her arms around him.
        But apologies were not required, for Father Cronin evidently sensed the same thing she did. Without hesitation, he returned her hug, and for a moment they clung to each other, not as if they were strangers but brother and sister greeting each other after a long separation.
        Then Ginger stepped back as Dom said, "Father Cronin," and came forward to embrace the priest.
        "There's no need to call me 'Father." At the moment I neither want nor deserve to be considered a priest. Please just call me Brendan."
        Ernie shouted upstairs to Ned and Sandy, then followed Faye out from behind the check-in counter. Brendan shook Ernie's hand and embraced Faye, obviously feeling great affection for them, though not a closeness as powerful and inexplicable as the tremendous emotional magnetism that pulled him toward Dom and Ginger. When Ned and Sandy came downstairs, he greeted them the same as he had Ernie and Faye.
        Just as Ginger had done last night,- Brendan said, "I have a truly wonderful sense of… being among family. You all feel it, don't you? As if we've shared the most important moments of our lives… went through something that'll always make us different from everyone else."
        In spite of his insistence that he did not deserve the deference accorded a priest, Brendan Cronin had a profoundly spiritual air about him. His somewhat pudgy face, sparkling eyes, and broad warm smile conveyed joy; and he moved among them, touched them, and spoke with an ebullience that was infectious and that somehow lifted Ginger's soul.
        Brendan said, "What I feel in this room only reassures me that I've made the right decision in coming. I'm meant to be with you. Something will happen here that'll transform us, that's already begun to transform us. Do you feel it? Do you feel it?"
        The priest's soft voice sent a pleasant shiver up Ginger's spine, filled her with an indescribable sense of wonder reminiscent of what she'd felt the first time that, as a medical student, she had stood in an operating room and had seen a patient's thorax held