Summary

On “Thursday,” Mr. Kercher, a man from the community who requested a meeting with Pew, took Pew on a walk through the woods. Mr. Kercher admitted to Pew that he had moved to that town because his daughter, Ava, lived there with her husband and their children. He believed people there treated Ava’s family with reverence because they were wealthy.

Mr. Kercher admitted to Pew that he had trouble making peace with Ava joining the church that the Hindman family attended. Mr. Kercher explained that before Ava joined the church, she studied philosophy and wanted to reason through everything. She had claimed to be an atheist. After she started attending the church, she stopped questioning and reading. When Mr. Kercher asked Ava about the changes he had noticed, she told him that God had spoken to her. She had not questioned anything after...