“She also said a preacher’s like a third mile,” Jesse said. “You know, the mile nobody walks unless they’ve already walked two.”

“No,” Jesse said. “But it’s true.”

By evening, seven people had come in. Cassidy brought coffee. Jesse brought his grandma. A farmer brought a bag of peaches. No one asked for answers. They just sat there, in the quiet, like people who had walked two miles and needed a place to rest before the third.

Now he drove a beat-up truck with a flatbed trailer, hauling other people’s junk to the landfill. It was honest work. Quiet. No one asked him to save their soul.

One Tuesday afternoon, his trailer got a flat on a back road outside a town called Mulberry. While he wrestled with the jack, a young woman with purple hair and a nose ring walked up carrying a gas can.

Over the next week, Eli found himself stuck in Mulberry. The town had no preacher—the last one had quit after a scandal involving the mayor’s wife and a collection plate. The little church was locked up, but the front steps were always full of people with nowhere else to sit.

“My grandma said you used to be a preacher.”

Eli frowned. “That’s not in the Bible.”