Prayer by Philip Kerr Page A

“You have to leave,” she said.
    Still kneeling in front of her, I glanced at my watch. “No, it’s okay, honey. I’m still early. Besides, this is much more important than opening a new case.”
    “No, Gil. You don’t understand.”
    “Come on, honey, I’m trying to say sorry.”
    “I mean you have to leave this house. For good.”
    “What?”
    “You heard me.”
    Suddenly, I felt like I had stepped off the top of the J.P.Morgan building without an elevator. Like one of those jumpers from the WTC on 9/11. There was nothing underneath me except hundreds of feet of empty air.
    I stood up. “What the hell are you talking about, Ruth?”
    “I didn’t want this,” she said. “I tried. I really did. But you have to leave this house, Gil.”
    “You’re shitting me.”
    I don’t know why I said that because Ruth wasn’t the type to say anything like that lightly. I grabbed her by the arm and pulled her toward me, but already it felt like she wasn’t my wife anymore and that love and understanding were behind us and that even now we were each returning to our separate pasts and who we had been before we ever met and that what we were to each other for more than eight years was gone.
    She shook her head, firmly. “No,” she said. “I am not.”
    “What, are you crazy?”
    “I’m not crazy, no. But I will be if I continue living with you, Gil. The fact is, I can’t believe in something I hold to be important and still be around someone who doesn’t believe it at all.”
    “Nobody dumps their husband because he’s no longer a fucking Christian. It’s positively medieval.”
    “Well, there you go again. Nobody, huh? ‘Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers. For what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness?’”
    “Ruth? You sound like a fanatic. The sort of people who come out with this kind of thing? We call them Christianists at the Bureau. They’re just as crazy as Islamists only they sing cheesier songs. I can’t believe that’s you, Ruth. Listen to yourself.”
    Ruth closed her eyes. “Listen to myself, he says. Nobody else talks to me. Not you. Not anymore. You tiptoe around me like I’m some kind of minefield.”
    “This isn’t about God or my loss of faith, is it?” I said.
    “Well, that certainly doesn’t help.”
    “It’s about her, isn’t it?”
    “Why don’t you say her name? I’m sure you can’t have forgotten it, Gil.”
    “I thought we were over all that.”
    “And with God’s help, I really think we might have been. But that’s not to be, I can see that now.”
    “God’s got nothing to do with what happened in Washington.”
    “With what happened? No, you’re right about that much, Gil. But I really thought he might help us to shape a future for ourselves. I need God and Lakewood Church because I really can’t do this by myself. I’m not strong enough. And you don’t help, Gil. You’re so detached from me—from me
and
Danny. Well, you have your work to think about, of course. And I don’t deny that yours is important work. You are helping to keep our country safe. It’s work anyone can be proud of. But with you, it’s more than just work—it’s a refuge, a sanctuary, a compulsion. You come back and you’re all closed up and neat and tight and secure, like a gun safe. But what have I got? Where else can I take refuge but in God and Lakewood? I’d like to know. And don’t say the club. I’m not like those other Houston women who spend all day in the spa having their nails done and reading
H Texas
.”
    “You were a fine lawyer. You could go back to work, Ruth.”
    She shook her head.
    “You were good at it.”
    “Only you thought so. But I didn’t have the teeth for it. I was too forgiving to be a decent prosecutor. That’s what the DA said.”
    “You could get a job in private practice.”
    “It wasn’t all right for you, but it might be all right for me, is that what you’re saying? You’re joking, of course. People in law