The narrator of The Coin is religious and her boyfriend Don isn’t, until he spends 10 minutes talking to the pastor. Hollander’s story contemplates the nature of logic and faith in a way that lingers long after reading.

To Don, faith was a failing grade in a physics class. “If God wanted me to believe in Him, He wouldn’t have given me the capacity for rational thought,” he would say. Sometimes Don’s lack of faith upset me. I didn’t want to fight, so I just tried to ignore this divide, this one thing we did not, could not share. I knew that trying to convert him would only end badly.