Leah Libresco Converts from Atheism

The car idled outside the auditorium while the last of the audience trickled out. I waited with the engine running and the heater on low because the April night had turned sharp. Leah came out still in her debate jacket, collar turned up, and climbed in without a word. We drove two blocks before she spoke.

She said the other side had leaned hard on natural law again. I asked how she answered. She shrugged and looked out at the streetlights sliding past. Her answers had been clean, she said, but they felt thinner each time she laid them out.

We parked behind the old dorms and walked back toward the common room where the post-debate crowd had gathered. A few of the usual faces were already there, cups in hand, replaying lines. Leah kept her coat on. She found me near the window and started in again on the same point she had raised on stage, only quieter now, testing the edges.

The room emptied by degrees. Someone turned off the overhead lights and left the floor lamp on. Leah stayed. She asked whether I thought any of the virtue language she had used could stand without the rest of the frame she refused to accept. I told her it was her question to carry. She pressed again, wanting the source of the obligation itself.

I asked where she located the pull when she spoke about moral lapses as wounds. She said it sat outside the material, like a form. I asked how anyone reached it. She gave the mathematics answer she always gave, the recognition of twoness across chairs and houses. I waited. She did not offer the next step.

Her hands stayed in her pockets. She said she had nothing better than the accounts she had already rejected. I asked for her own account anyway. She stared at the carpet a moment, then said the only thing left was to treat the law as though it noticed her back. The words came out flat, almost annoyed at themselves.

She stopped. The quiet after that was different. She asked for a minute. I stayed where I was. When she spoke again her voice had changed register, still low but no longer testing. She said she believed the law was also a person. She asked what came next.

We walked down the hall to the chapel that stayed open for night prayer. The book was on the shelf where it always was. We read the office together, the short verses and the psalm. She kept the page and read her lines without rushing. When we finished she closed the book but did not hand it back.

The next weeks she kept showing up for the same hour. She told the people who had been waiting for the post that she would answer them when she could. She moved the blog address and began the classes at the parish near her apartment. The questions about particular teachings stayed with her, and she said so plainly in the pieces she posted.