“I-I don’t think I could do that.”“Karen, it might be more of a challenge than you are prepared to take yet. However, there will come a day wh...n you will do that. I would like to announce it in early church, have you in the class for the Sunday school hour, and then announce it again in the later service.”I said, “Okay. Should we come to the early service, too.”Pastor Jim sounded a little surprised. “I would be thrilled for you to do that but it’s not necessary.”I looked at Karen, who nodded,. Now, it wasn’t that I felt all that uncomfortable, it was just strange to be watched all of the time. I’m ok with the way I look and if she’d ask me, I’d show her the goods. It was the peeping that I didn’t understand. One day I was mowing my lawn, when I noticed a knot had come out of the wooden fence in the back yard. Not a big deal you say, but I do know something about wood. If the wood is very dry then these chunks will occasionally pop out. If the wood is well treated then it doest happen. ..Without hesitation I bent down and kissed her tenderly, my heart brimmingwith all the pent up repressed love and emotion that had built up whilstshe'd been gone.I can't remember anything after that as we were much too absorbed in eachother, finally waking up in my bedroom with Siobhan thankfully sleepingquietly close beside me once more....As the afternoon was still warm and knowing I desperately needed timealone to think, I quietly got up and went downstairs into the lounge andpouring myself. " I adopted the same term for it, although neither of us knew what had killed off most of the people in North America, and, perhaps, the world. "The Virus" sounded better, somehow, than "Death Ray" or some other pseudo-scientific term. It was also perhaps more likely, as an explanation.We would, perhaps, never know.Ingmar drove up beside us in an RV not that dissimilar to our own at around 11 a.m., almost two full days after we'd arrived in Minneapolis.He turned out to look not at all similar.