Laurelei shakes her head. “No. That one doesn’t mean anything to me either. Sorry.”

“Anything come to mind when I tell you to ‘have faith in the KSREF’?” I quote the letter again.

Laurelei squints. “I’m afraid not.”

“Oh well. And you’re sure you never heard from him again?” I ask.

Thomas wipes some salad dressing off his chin. “I’m pretty sure.”

“Sorry. Me too,” Laurelei says.

“Oh well,” I say again.

Aware that our visit has just become a lunch with nice people we’ll never see again, we move on to other subjects. Thomas talks about how he fell in love with Laurelei in college in Colorado. She wanted to be an artist, and he was into religion. After college, they traveled to third-world countries like Borneo and Uganda, where they built homes for people and taught them how to sanitize their drinking water. In their thirties, they settled in Wyoming, and he became pastor of a church in Thermopolis.

“I liked it at first,” Thomas says, “but then the pressure came.” He looks at Laurelei, and she offers a sad smile.

“Misguided people,” she says. “Ugliness.”

The head of the church asked him to speak out against the Equal Rights Amendment in his sermons. Laurelei explains that the ERA was a proposed amendment to the Constitution in the 1970s that would guarantee equal rights for women. It passed in many states, but not enough to make it into the Constitution.

“I told him to follow his heart,” Laurelei says, and Thomas laughs.

“You told me that if I said a word against equal rights for women, you’d divorce my ass and move to California.”

She laughs back. “Tomato, tomahtoe.” He reaches out, and her hand clasps his. They squeeze each other’s hands like they’re doing Morse code. I feel like I’m glimpsing something intimate and sweet, and I wonder what it takes to find a Laurelei.

Thomas explains that they gave up organized religion years ago in response to the rise of the religious right in the early 1980s. They didn’t care for the politics. He’d met Pastor John at religious conferences, though, and when he received a phone call from him asking for a place for his friend to stay, he was happy to help.

“So you remember this from, like, over thirty years ago?” Aisha asks.

Thomas spreads his fingers wide. “I can count on this hand the number of friends we’ve had come stay with us since we’ve settled here. Our life is very simple. We like it that way.”

“No Facebook?” Aisha says, and Laurelei smiles as a response.

“We don’t have television and we don’t own a computer,” Thomas says. “One of our friends urged us to start an email account using his computer. We did, but I’m sure we haven’t looked at it in ages, have we, darling?”

Laurelei shakes her head. I try to imagine not having a TV or a computer. It’s such an unbelievable idea that I involuntarily gasp.

“My life is so different from yours,” I say, and they all look at me. “I’m from New York. I pass by thousands of people every day on the streets, and on the subway I’m shoved up against strangers all the time, yet nobody ever says hi to anyone else. I text and I email, and I almost never feel like I’m really connected. And you had a full morning,” I say to Laurelei, “because you got to play with a neighbor’s dog. That’s crazy. Crazy good.”

She gives me the warmest, sweetest smile, and I feel myself falling for these people and their world. I really don’t want to leave.

“Stay for a few days if ya like,” Thomas says, as if he’s reading my mind, and Aisha and I, without even looking at each other, say yes in unison.

Laurelei asks if we’re a couple.

“Gay girl, straight guy. Buds,” Aisha says before I can respond, and Laurelei smiles again, and Thomas says, “Well, it’s settled then. We’re so glad you’ll stay!”

I quickly call my mom and tell her that we are in Wyoming staying with friends of Aisha’s, and we’ll be back tomorrow. She does her usual thing, which includes passive-aggressive breathing followed by a “Whatever you think, honey.” Instead of it bothering me, I just feel relieved, because right now I don’t want to be part of my broken family. I want to be part of this family, and I wonder if there’s some way I can get the Leffs to adopt me. Us.

Thomas looks at his watch and says they have meditation class at two. It centers them, he says, and I can’t help but imagine them literally centered in every room, every photo they’re in. It’s now 1:10.

“We can cancel,” Laurelei says. “Unless — would you like to come?”

I’ve tried something like meditation only the one time, with the gentle yoga, and it was not the most successful thing. Could I do better now? I want to think that I could do better, but I’m scared that I won’t, and I don’t want to let Thomas and especially Laurelei down.

Aisha says, “Sure.”

This is exactly the kind of invitation I’d normally decline, because it’s new and different and maybe a little scary. What if I suck at it? And then I look at Laurelei, smiling expectantly at me, and I drop all that stuff. “Yep,” I say. “Sure. I’m in.”

BY THE TIME we get to the meditation place, I am calm and even a little excited to try it. I will keep an open mind, I keep repeating as we drive over. I will not make jokes out of every little thing.

This is immediately challenging, because Thomas and Laurelei did not tell me that we would be meditating in a kids’ classroom in a church. All around us on the walls are colorful posters with Bible sayings on them. One features an electrical socket and a cord plugging into it. It is unclear why, or what the hell that has to do with the accompanying saying: “Since I live, you also will live.” Another has a lightning bolt and reads, “Go into all the world and preach the Good News to everyone.”

I get the feeling you get when some girl you really like and want to talk to has food stuck in her teeth and you think, Oh no, not her too. I thought Thomas and Laurelei said they gave up religion. Aisha has an alarmed look on her face as well. I tug on her sleeve. “We don’t have to do this.”

She doesn’t give in to my tug. “I kinda want to try.”

“We can meditate outside. Or you can, and I’ll just pretend, since it isn’t actually a thing.”

Aisha walks over to Laurelei, who is helping a woman clear desks out from the middle of the room. “All the religious stuff pretty much makes my head explode,” she says.

Laurelei finishes moving the desk and puts her hands on Aisha’s shoulders. “This isn’t a Christian meditation. Don’t worry about any of that. It’s simply the room we use because it’s empty at this hour.”

Aisha nods and says, “I guess I can always leave if y’all start with the Jesus.”

Laurelei laughs. “Tell you what. We’ll leave too. Okay?”

Aisha looks back at me, and I shrug. Fine. Whatever.

Thomas and Laurelei put down their mats and greet the other six or seven meditators warmly. The leader, an old woman with gray hair and a body that looks almost elastic from the way she sits tall while folding her legs in front of her so effortlessly, explains that we will use the next thirty minutes to simply be together, in silence. We are grateful for this time, and we thank our higher power for it.

At the mention of a higher power, my throat tightens. That sounds like God to me.

“Praying,” she says, “is talking to God. Meditating is listening.”

I look over at Aisha. I’m not so sure God is tuned to our church in north-central Wyoming. He may be a little busy with the people in Africa and the Middle East to talk to a bunch of happy old folks and two wayward teens in Thermopolis.