This wasteland offered no comfort to the mind, no consolation to the heart, and except for the interstate, it provided no evidence that it existed on a populated planet. Even along these paved lanes, the lights of the oncoming and receding traffic made no conclusive argument for a living population. The scene possessed an eerie quality that suggested the science-fiction scenario of a world on which all species had perished centuries before, leaving their domain as morbidly still as a glass-encased diorama through which the only movement was the periodic bustle of perpetual-motion machines engaged in ancient programmed tasks that no longer held any meaning.

To Jilly, this bleak vastness began to look like the landscape of Hell with all the fires put out. 'We're not going to get out of this alive, are we?' she asked in a tone entirely rhetorical.

'What? Of course we will.'

'Of course?' she said with a rich measure of disbelief. 'No doubt at all?'

'Of course,' he insisted. 'The worst is already behind us.'

'It's not behind us.'

'Yes, it is.'

'Don't be ridiculous.'

'The worst is behind us,' he repeated stubbornly.

'How can you say the worst is behind us when we have no idea what's coming next?'

'Creation is an act of will,' he said.

'What's that supposed to mean?'

'Before I create a painting, I conceive it in my mind. It exists from the instant it's conceived, and all that's needed to transform the conception into a tangible work of art are time and effort, paint and canvas.'

'Are we in the same conversation?' she wondered.

In the backseat, Shepherd sat in silence again, but now his brother spewed a prattle more disturbing than Shep's. 'Positive thinking. Mind over matter. If God created the heavens and the earth merely by thinking them into existence, the ultimate power in the universe is willpower.'

'Evidently not, or otherwise I'd have my own hit sitcom and be partying in my Malibu mansion right now.'

'Our creativity reflects divine creativity because we think new things into existence every day – new inventions, new architectures, new chemical compounds, new manufacturing processes, new works of art, new recipes for bread and pie and pot roast.'

'I'm not going to risk eternal damnation by claiming I make a pot roast as good as God's. I'm sure His would be tastier.'

Ignoring her interruption, Dylan said, 'We don't have godlike power, so we aren't able to transform our thought energy directly into matter-'

'God would whip up better side dishes than me, too, and I'm sure He's a whiz at beautiful table settings.'

'-but guided by thought and reason,' Dylan continued patiently, 'we can use other kinds of energy to transform existing matter into virtually anything we conceive. I mean, we spin thread to make cloth to sew into clothes. And we cut down trees to make lumber to build shelter. Our process of creation is a lot slower, clumsier, but it's fundamentally just one step removed from God's. Do you understand what I'm saying?'

'If I ever do, I absolutely insist you have me committed.'

Gradually accelerating once more, he said, 'Work with me here, okay? Can you make an effort?'

Jilly was irritated by his childlike earnestness and by his Pollyanna optimism in the shadow of the mortal danger that confronted them. Nevertheless, recalling how his eloquence had earlier humbled her, she felt a flush of warmth rise in her face, and for the moment she managed to put a lid on the sarcasm that a fire of frustration had set boiling. 'Okay, all right, whatever. Go ahead.'

'Assume we were made in God's image.'

'All right. Yeah? So?'

'Then it's also reasonable to assume that although we aren't able to create matter out of nothing and although we can't change existing matter solely by the application of thought, nevertheless even our less than godlike willpower might be able to influence the shape of things to come.'

'The shape of things to come,' she repeated.

'That's right.'

'The shape of things to come.'

'Exactly,' he confirmed, nodding happily, glancing away from the interstate to smile at her.

'The shape of things to come,' she repeated yet again, and then she realized that in her frustration and bewilderment, she sounded disturbingly like Shepherd. 'What things?'

'Future events,' he explained. 'If we're in God's image, then maybe we possess a small measure – a tiny but still useful fraction – of the divine power to shape things. Not matter, in our case, but the future. Maybe with the exercise of willpower, maybe we can shape our destiny, in part if not entirely.'

'What – I just imagine a future in which I'm a millionaire, then I'll become one?'

'You still have to make the right decisions and work hard… but, yeah, I believe all of us can shape our futures if we apply enough willpower.'

Still suppressing her frustration, keeping her tone light, she said, 'Then why aren't you a famous billionaire artist?'

'I don't want to be famous or rich.'

'Everyone wants to be famous and rich.'

'Not me. Life is complicated enough.'

'Money simplifies.'

'Money complicates,' he disagreed, 'and fame. I just want to paint well, and to paint better every day.'

'So,' she said, as the lid flew off her boiling pot of sarcasm, 'you're gonna imagine yourself a future where you're the next Vincent van Gogh, and just by wishing on a star, you'll one day see your work hanging in museums.'

'I'm sure going to try, anyway. Vincent van Gogh – except I'm imagining a future in which I keep both ears.'

Dylan's persistent good humor in the face of dire adversity had an effect on Jilly no less distressing than the damage that would be wrought with sandpaper vigorously applied to the tongue. 'And to make you get real about our situation, I'm imagining a future where I have to kick your cojones into your esophagus.'

'You're a very angry person, aren't you?'

'I'm a scared person.'

'Scared right now, sure, but always angry.'

'Not always. Fred and I were having a lovely relaxed evening before all this started.'

'You must have some pretty heavy unresolved conflicts from your childhood.'

'Oh, wow, you get more impressive by the minute, don't you? Now you're licensed to provide psychoanalysis when you're not painting circles around van Gogh.'

'Pump up your blood pressure any further,' Dylan warned, 'and you'll pop a carotid artery.'

Jilly strained a shriek of vexation through clenched teeth, because by swallowing it unexpressed, she might have imploded.

'All I'm saying,' Dylan pressed in an infuriatingly reasonable tone of voice, 'is that maybe if we think positive, the worst will be behind us. And for sure, there's nothing to be gained by negative thinking.'

She almost swung her legs off the seat, almost stomped her feet against the floorboard in a fit of frustration before she remembered that poor defenseless Fred would be trampled. Instead, she drew a deep breath and confronted Dylan: 'If it's so easy, why have you let Shepherd live such a miserable existence all these years? Why haven't you imagined that he just magically comes out of his autism and leads a normal life?'

'I have imagined it,' he replied softly and with a poignancy that revealed a plumbless sorrow over the condition of his brother. 'I've imagined it intensely, vividly, with all my heart, every day of my life, since as far back as I can remember.'

Infinite sky. Trackless desert. A vastness had been created inside the SUV to equal the daunting immensities of darkness and vacuum beyond these doors and windows, a vastness of her making. Succumbing to fear and frustration, she had unthinkingly crossed a line between legitimate argument and unwarranted meanness, needling Dylan O'Conner where she knew that he was already sorest. The distance between them, although but an arm's length, seemed now unbridgeable.