Leanne disappears one night—doesn't come home for a week—so I spend each intervening day envisioning the ways a young girl can die—cut up, strung out, hunted down—and when my daughter does return—unapologetic, face like a rose—she blames her absence on the aliens—viridescent little men shooting beams of white light—thinks I don't know about the boy and so invents a spacecraft—fraught and winding tale of intergalactic escape—so I lock Leanne up in her bedroom and wait for the boy to come—but the cops, naïve as they are, have been walking around with their faces turned skyward—looking for a saucer, looking for God—fools—I sit out on the front porch and balance my rifle across my knees—a perfect straight line—God's closer than we think, you know—I can hold him in my hands.