Part of what I like about the stories was the pairing, that balance — in one way, “After the Leaving” is a kind of suburban story, even while being this bigger, more surreal, Bible story. So, then, it became, “how do I segue out of one and into the next one most effectively?” And also asking what each story added to the whole, with a few stories that felt very at home in one of the half-collections getting cut because, here, it felt too similar to something else and didn’t add anything interesting to the mix.