It was half past two in the night. Almost four hours after Grace had come to the Girardi's house, telling them that Adam had not come back from his hiking trip in the morning at Mount Nashman. Grace and Joan had immediately driven to the hiking trail with Mr. Girardi, Adam's dad and a small group of police officers. They had found and searched Adam's truck parked near the beginning of the trail, but it was empty. "No suicide note," the Ranger had stated matter-of-factly. Police officers and Rangers had started looking in the woods around the truck, but the pouring rain had been washing away some of the trail and was making it hard to make progress or climb higher up the mountain.

Joan had been standing at the starting point of the trail, screaming Adam's name at the top of her lungs, but there had been no answer. In the end, they had had no choice but to drive back to the Ranger's Station at the bottom of the mountain and wait. Grace and Joan were now sitting in the Ranger's Station, blankets over their shoulders. Joan was working on knitting that scarf that God had told her to finish.

She had told Grace about her clash with Adam in the bookshop earlier. Now, out of nowhere, she said to Grace, "The sick thing is, I wanted to hurt him. You know, when I cut him off, he had this expression on his face, like he was gonna crumble or something. For a second, it felt good."

Grace was staring at nothing in particular. "I've seen him like that. After his mom died. Totally shut down, stopped talking. I don't think I heard more than ten words out of him," Grace glanced at Joan, "Until you came along."

Joan looked at Grace, and just then thunder and lightning struck in the background. "Why did he have to hook up with Bonnie?"

"Dude, it's ... it's not just him."

Accusing, Joan looked at Grace, "So if I had slept with him, then he wouldn't be out there right now."

"It's not about sex. It's ... sometimes you're not the easiest person to connect with."

Frowning, Joan asked, "What do you mean?"

"All I'm saying is, what Rove did, it was low, yeah, but ... maybe he didn't know where he stood."

"I loved him. I mean, I still love him. He knows that."

"Yeah, it's..." Grace sighed. "It's like, you always have something that you're keeping to yourself. Something you're hiding."

At that moment, the lights flickered and went out, thunder rolling in the background. Grace looked up at the ceiling and the dead lights. "Great!"

Quietly, Joan asked, "What do you think I'm hiding?"

"All the insane things you do, the clubs you have to join, you never really let anyone in on all that. Not really. You just wanna stick all alone with it."

"I ... like to try stuff."

Looking at the scarf that Joan was still working on, Grace asked, "Like knitting? What's that all about?"

Defensively Joan said, "Somebody suggested it. What difference--" Just at that moment the lights went back on. "What difference does it make?"

Grace looked Joan in the eyes. "People keep secrets, Girardi. I've been there. It keeps people away."

Joan sighed, not wanting to go there right now. "Hey, I guess it's too stuffy in here." She packed her knitting gear, grabbed her jacket and went outside to catch some air.

She reluctantly sat down in front of the Ranger's Station in a chair on the roofed porch, arranging her the scarf and the needles to go on knitting. She heard the noise of a slamming car door and saw the Ranger walking up to her. She frowned at him, confused.

The Ranger asked her almost innocently, "How's the knitting going, Joan?"

Joan stared at him incredulously, looking at the wool and the scarf in her lap. Angrily, she said, "So, God cares more about knitting than Adam. I don't think we have much to talk about."

"You're angry." He nodded. "I understand."

Joan sighed, then spat at him, "You know, it's your fault all of this happened. This secret life we've been having has totally messed up everything."

Ranger-God now shook his head. "You can share me with whoever you want."

"Oh yeah. Yeah. And wind up back in the funny farm," she said sarcastically. She pulled the knitting needles from the scarf and tore hastily at the thread to unravel it.

God pointed at it. "Oh, no no no no no. You shouldn't tear all that up. That was good."

Joan threw the scarf forcefully to the floor. "You know what, it's just a stupid scarf!" She got up from the chair and paced the porch. She stopped next to the window, folding her arms.

Ranger-God told her, "Unraveling it is not gonna make it disappear. You just change its form."

Joan now turned to look at Ranger-God, raising her voice, "Am I ever gonna see him again? I don't mean in another form! I mean here, now?" She was almost crying.

Ranger-God replied with that oh-so calm and wise voice, "You feel how painful it is to sever a connection. A link that can never really be broken. All of creation shares a common thread, like your scarf. How you use that thread becomes the pattern of your life."

Joan's eyes filled with tears. "So, what's happening now, is it because I knitted my life wrong?"

Ranger-God gave her a you're-not-serious look, but Joan continued, almost shouting, "I believe in you. I've seen the ripples, I've seen how it changes people's lives. Even when I didn't see it, I trusted you!"

Ranger-God calmly answered, "And you've developed strength, and understanding, and faith. New challenges are gonna make you even stronger."

Joan shook her head in disbelief. "For what? Huh, for what!" She wiped the tears from her cheek. "How much stronger do I have to be?"

"You'll find out, Joan. Just don't throw away that scarf."

"Yeah, the damn scarf!" Joan spat at Ranger-God. She picked it up from the floor angrily and went back inside, slamming the door behind her.

Sitting back down in the armchair opposite Grace, Grace studied her face. "Dude, what happened?"

Joan lifted her hands in a just-leave-it gesture. "Just back up, okay?" She said in a more aggressive tone than she had intended.

Grace shrugged defensively and didn't say anything else.

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