I was the one who raised my hand when the deacon asked if anybody could stay behind and put the elements away, and I did it without thinking twice, the way you offer to carry a box before you remember how heavy it actually is. Everybody else filed out toward the fellowship hall for coffee, and I found myself alone in the little supply room off the sanctuary with a half case of communion wine in my hands and a closet door that locks from the outside. I stood there longer than it takes to put six bottles on a shelf. Nobody would have known. Nobody would have smelled it on me by Tuesday. I have handled far more dangerous things than that in twenty-two years of staying sober, and still that small quiet room did something to me that an open liquor aisle has not managed to do in a long time. I used to think temptation would always announce itself as something obviously wrong, a bar sign, an old phone number, a bad crowd. What caught me off guard in that closet is how ordinary and even sa...