The Leftovers

but there were times when Laurie forgot her purpose and began to enjoy herself, culling juicy tidbits of local gossip from the logs, or simply renewing her connection to the sinful but colorful world she was supposed to have renounced. She felt herself falling into this temptation as she read the file of Alice Souderman, her old friend from the Bailey Elementary School PTA. The two of them had cochaired the auction committee for three years in a row and had remained close, even during the turbulent period that preceded Laurie’s conversion. She couldn’t help but be intrigued by the news that, just last week, Alice had been observed having dinner at Trattoria Giovanni with Miranda Abbott, another of Laurie’s good friends, a harried mother of four with a great sense of humor and a wicked talent for mimickry. Laurie hadn’t known that Alice and Miranda were friends, and felt pretty sure that they must have spent a good part of the meal talking about her and how much they missed her company. Probably they were mystified by her decision to withdraw from their world and scornful of the community in which she now lived, but Laurie chose not to think about that. She focused instead on the vegetarian lasagna at Giovanni’s—it was the specialty of the house, the cream sauce luscious but not too rich, the carrots and zucchini sliced to an almost translucent thinness—and on an image of herself as the third person at the table, drinking wine and laughing with her old friends. She felt an urge to smile, and had to consciously tighten her mouth against it.
    Please help Alice and Miranda, she prayed as she closed the folder. They’re good people. Have mercy on them.
    What mostly struck her, reading the files, was how deceptively normal things seemed in Mapleton. Most people just put on blinders and went about their trivial business, as if the Rapture had never even happened, as if they expected the world to last forever. Tina Green, age nine, attended her weekly piano lesson. Martha Cohen, twenty-three, spent two hours at the gym, then stopped at CVS on the way home for a box of tampons and a copy of US Weekly . Henry Foster, fifty-nine, walked his West Highland terrier around the path at Fielding Lake, stopping frequently so the dog could interact with its peers. Lance Mikulski, thirty-seven, was seen entering the Victoria’s Secret store at Two Rivers Mall, where he purchased several unspecified items of lingerie. This was an awkward revelation, given that Lance’s wife, Patty, happened to be sitting across the room from Laurie at that very moment and would soon have a chance to review the file for herself. Patty seemed like a nice enough woman—of course, most people seemed nice enough when they weren’t allowed to talk—and Laurie’s heart went out to her. She knew exactly how it felt, reading embarrassing revelations about your husband while a roomful of people who’d read the same information pretended not to notice. But you knew they were looking, wondering if you’d be able to maintain your composure, to detach yourself from petty emotions like jealousy and anger and keep your mind where it belonged, firmly fixed on the world to come.
    Unlike Patty Mikulski, Laurie hadn’t made a Formal Request for surveillance of her husband; the only request she’d made was for her daughter. As far as she was concerned, Kevin was on his own: He was a grown man and could make his own decisions. It just so happened that those decisions included going home with two different women whose files she’d had the bad luck to review, and whose souls she was supposed to pray for, like that was ever gonna happen.
    It had hurt more than she expected to imagine her husband kissing a strange woman, undressing her in an unfamiliar bedroom, lying peacefully beside her after they’d finished making love. But she hadn’t cried, hadn’t betrayed an iota of the pain she was feeling. That had only happened once since she’d come to live here, the day she opened her daughter’s file and discovered that the familiar photo on the inside cover—a soulful school portrait of a long-haired, sweetly smiling sophomore—had been replaced by what looked to her like a mug shot of a teenage criminal with big dead eyes and a shaved head, a girl in desperate need of a mother’s love.
    *   *   *
    THEY CROUCHED behind some bushes on Russell Road, peering through the foliage at the front door of a white colonial with a brick sunporch that