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Monica meets Tess in the dessert, at the same bus stop where she
began her job as a caseworker. It is from this, the place where
her first assignment began, where she will take on her final one.
If all goes well, Monica will advance from caseworker to
supervisor. She can’t wait to get started, so that she can start
work as a supervisor at Tess’s side. But Tess tells her that it
won’t be that way. She’s put in for a new position as well, back
in heaven sitting at God’s feet and singing His praises. She
hasn’t been training Monica to be her partner, she’s been training
her to be her replacement. Monica is upset to hear the news, but
her goodbye is cut short by the arrival of the bus. She climbs
aboard, wondering where she is going, and what her assignment will
bring.
On board she meets Zack, a traveling handyman, seemingly without a
care in the world. She asks where he’s going and he tells her
he’s going where she is, Ascension, Colorado, the bus’s final
stop.
When they finally arrive in Ascension, they are greeted by a feeling
that something is missing. It doesn’t take them long to discover
that thing that is absent, is the children. There are no kids
here, but there is plenty of evidence that they once were. Bikes
lay discarded beside the diner, toy trucks lie in the grass by the
school, and joyless adults wander through their days pondering the
emptiness in their lives. Two years prior, all of the children
were killed when the school’s boiler exploded. Now, the only
thing the adults want more than to forget, is justice for the
person responsible.
It turns out there was a witness to the whole thing, Joey Machulis,
one of Monica’s former assignments. And he’s not the only
familiar face in town. His brother, Wayne, is the sheriff, and
Sophie, a formerly homeless acquaintance of Monica’s is here too.
Also, Mike, a big time lawyer who Monica saved during her search
and rescue days, is the Mayor. Knowing that there is no such
thing as coincidence, Monica tries to figure out what she is doing
here and how she can help.
The answer soon becomes clear, as Carver, an out of town developer,
claims to have seen Zack somewhere before. In fact, it was by the
school the day of the explosion. Such a small claim, from an
unreliable source, is all the grieving townspeople need to become
incensed. While there is little justification, their small world
turns on its end, and suddenly everyone is looking at Zack as a
killer of children. Monica is astounded.
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