The Leftovers

incision. Both the man and the sheep gazed at Nora with startled, unhappy expressions, as if she’d caught them in an act they would have preferred to remain private.
    *   *   *
    MOST EVENINGS she ate dinner at her sister’s house. It got a little tedious sometimes, being a perpetual appendage to someone else’s family, having to play the role of Aunt Nora, pretending to be interested in her nephews’ inane banter, but she was grateful nonetheless for a few hours of low-stress human contact, a respite from what would otherwise start to feel like a long and very lonely day.
    Afternoons remained her biggest problem, a dull, amorphous chunk of solitude. That’s why she’d been so upset about losing the day care job—it filled the empty hours so perfectly. She ran errands when she was lucky enough to have some—they weren’t nearly as plentiful or pressing as they used to be—and occasionally cracked open a book she’d borrowed from her sister: one of the Shopaholics, Mr. Right, Good in Bed, the kind of fun, frothy stuff she used to enjoy. But these days reading just made her sleepy, especially after a long ride, and the one thing she couldn’t afford to do was nap, not if she didn’t want to find herself wide-awake in the dark at three in the morning, with nothing but the inside of her own head to keep her company.
    Today, though, Nora had an unexpected visitor, the first in a long time. Reverend Jamison pulled up in his Volvo just as she was wheeling her bike into the garage, and she was surprised by how pleased she was to see him. People used to drop by all the time, just to check up on her, but some sort of statute of limitations seemed to have kicked in about six months ago. Apparently even the most awful tragedies, and the people they’d ruined, got a little stale after a while.
    “Hey, there,” she called out, pressing the button that lowered the automatic door, and then heading down the driveway to meet him, moving with the stiff-legged waddle of a newly dismounted cyclist, the cleats of her bike shoes clicking against the pavement. “How are you?”
    “Okay.” The Reverend smiled unconvincingly. He was a lanky, troubled-looking man in jeans and a partially untucked white Oxford shirt, tapping a manila envelope against the side of his leg. “Yourself?”
    “Not bad.” She brushed some hair out of her eyes, then immediately regretted the gesture, which revealed the decorative pattern of pink dents her helmet left in the tender skin of her forehead. “All things considered.”
    Reverend Jamison nodded somberly, as if to acknowledge all the things that needed to be considered.
    “You have a few minutes?” he asked.
    “Now?” she said, feeling suddenly self-conscious about her spandex tights and sweaty face, the yeasty odor of exertion that was undoubtedly trapped beneath her Gore-Tex windbreaker. “I’m kind of a mess.”
    Even as she said this, she took a moment to marvel at the persistence of her own vanity. She’d thought she was through with all that—what use could she possibly have for it anymore?—but apparently it was too deep a reflex to ever really go away.
    “Take your time,” he said. “I can wait out here while you get cleaned up.”
    Nora couldn’t help smiling at the absurdity of the offer. Reverend Jamison had sat up with her on nights when she was out of her mind with grief, and had cooked her breakfast when she woke up wild-haired and drooling on the living room couch, still in yesterday’s clothes. It was a little late in the day to get all girly and modest on him.
    “Come on in,” she said. “I’ll just be a minute.”
    *   *   *
    UNDER OTHER circumstances, Nora might have found it vaguely exciting, stepping into a steamy shower while a reasonably handsome man who wasn’t her husband waited patiently downstairs. But Reverend Jamison was too grim and preoccupied, too wrapped up in his own bitter obsessions to be conscripted into even the flimsiest romantic scenario.
    Actually, Nora wasn’t even sure if Matt Jamison on was a Reverend anymore. He no longer preached at the Zion Bible Church, no longer seemed to do much of anything except research and distribute that horrible newsletter, the one that had turned him into a pariah. From what she’d heard, his wife and kids had abandoned him, his friends no longer spoke to him, and total strangers sometimes found it necessary to punch him in the face.
    She was pretty sure he deserved whatever he