She hadn’t taken the usual route but instead wound her way along a network of tar-drizzled, sun-dazzled rural roads—ranch roads—that uncurled through the woods. She marked the little church from the corner of her eye as she passed it, and stopping, she backed up some fifty feet to have a longer look, feeling somehow drawn to the place. In retrospect it would seem eerie, given all the church would take from her. But the day she found it, she was intrigued. It was close to the road’s edge and surrounded by a crooked lacework of wrought-iron fence. The gnarled canopy of an ancient live oak bowed over the small building, as if it meant to lift it into its embrace. The effect was magical, a habitation for fairies despite the evidence of dilapidation: white clapboard that was rotting, a roof that sagged. The four Queen Anne–style windows Lauren could see were cracked and broken, puzzles rendered in jeweled colors of stained glass. What a shame, her mind whispered.
