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Prologue

AUGUST 1979

HE BURIED HIS ring.

My mother had died two years earlier, when I was just a toddler, and her ring went with her—into the casket, into the ground. My dad had kept his ring on, worn it through those aching, unsteady months of early grief. But now he was getting married again. And we were at my mother’s gravesite. And he was burying his ring.

He slid it from his knuckle up to his fingertip and used it as a tool to dig a small hole in the ground before dropping the ring near my mother’s headstone in the rolling hills of the San Fernando Valley. Then he covered the ring with soil, patting the mound tenderly. I remember thinking that I should probably miss my mom more than I did, but I was only two when she died, so how could I? And I loved my dad with such intensity—and felt just as intensely loved back—that there wasn’t much room for sadness in my heart that day.

There was a softness to my mom that I’ll never forget. A tall, quiet, weepy gentleness. If I closed my eyes tight, I could conjure a rippling image of a swimming pool, her arms around me as we floated. Tighter, and I saw a small kitchen. Broken dishes and blood everywhere.

I remember much less about my mother than I do about the diner we went to after my dad buried his ring. It was here, over a plate of pancakes and bacon, that I first heard the numbers 6-6-6.

“Something’s gonna happen,” my dad said, “but I hope not in your lifetime.”

He set his cup of coffee on the Formica tabletop and held my gaze. I knew he had something important to tell me. He said something about revelations, something I didn’t really understand, and that our mom had known the world was ending. Now he knew it, too. Computers, microchipping, salvation.

“People are going to be buying and selling things with computers, but only if they have the mark of the beast. And I will not ever take the mark of the beast. If I have to live on the side of the road, I will. And I won’t let it happen to you.”

I was only four. A beast, to me, was something under the bed. Something inside the closet. Something dangerous and snarling that could take my father away from me. Something terrible that might have taken my mother.

That night, I started praying fervently. And I never stopped.

Don’t let my daddy die. Don’t let the world end.

Please don’t let him take my daddy too.