It still had that smell, like a mixture of new carpet and old lady.
Maria and I looked at each other as we stood in this familiar foyer. It was the first place we’d ever seen each other—standing right here, as I ran in from the rain and she was folding up a drenched umbrella. I’d walked in this door thousands of times. My parents carried me in these doors a few weeks after my birth. I’d walked through them every Sunday morning of my childhood, with a Bible and an offering envelope in hand. Every summer I marched through these doors—carrying a flag or a Bible for the round of Vacation Bible School pledges, the closest things we had to a liturgy or a calendar of the Christian year. I looked at the window, right next to the big glass doors. That was the one the preacher’s son had smashed with a rock, and we’d all scattered, knowing he was going to get it. This was my home church. It’d been a long time since we’d walked into this foyer, and now we had two little hands gripping our fingers.
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