It would be no surprise to anyone, not even Matthew, that he considered himself to be a spiritual man. The act of prayer, however, was not one he participated in to any great degree. The momentary ones, yes, of course: please just let me make it through this snowstorm without putting the car in the ditch; please forgive me for looking at that teenager’s ass; please let my mother’s blood tests come back okay. Everyone did those; at least Matthew was pretty sure they did.
That afternoon, though, in the O’Connell/Connor living room with cloudy sunlight sloughing lazily through the windows and Isaac sitting on the floor beside the coffee table, writing in a spiral notebook in the painstakingly-slow, overly cautious way that kids do, with Hannah slumped in a chair across from him with headphon
