I’ll be right back.” Oh, God, please, please, please let me get off this time. I promise I’ll stop speeding, and I’ll go to church every Sund...y and, and.. But she didn’t get a chance to finish her prayer. The cop was back. “Ma’am, is this your vehicle?” “Um, actually it’s not, officer. It belongs to a friend of mine, Dr. David Fletcher.” She emphasized the Doctor to show that she had important friends. “And did Dr. Fletcher give you permission to drive his car?” “Well, not exactly. But I. I'm not sure the exact route we took from Baghdad to Kabul, but since we're not on good terms with Iran, I doubt that we took the most direct route. The last thing we needed was to have hostile fire that we couldn't return. I know that I'm prejudiced, but I wondered why so many people for so many years had killed each other to own what appears to be a God-forsaken desert. By now, the hours seem endless, the seats were cramped, and I was badly in need of sleep — real sleep. I felt the pilot. Wilson! She was wearing a big straw hat, sunglasses, a terry cloth robe like thing that was lime green and some flip flops. I could see the outline of her bikini under the lime gree fabric. I stood there with my hand on the doorknob, my mouth open and my heart about to explode from fear.Finally, I squeaked out, "Uh my Mom and Dad aren't home today. Did you need to talk to them or something?"She smiled at me, lowering her sunglasses and gave me an appraising look. "I'm not here to see or talk. She’d put a good deal of care into the sermon. It was the only sermon of hers that her grandmother or Rachel would ever hear, one of the very few that her parents would ever hear. Hell! It was one of the few that some of the parishioners present today would hear. Not that anybody would remember it.David might. She looked fondly at her fiancé during one of the hymns. He remembered the oddest things, and he did pay attention to her.When the service was over, she headed back to her office. Her mom.