Maria Lopez had fought for her life. With every inch of muscle, every ounce of strength she possessed she went down fighting. And it showed. But her body was nowhere to be found.
The white-and-blue checkered curtains and their fixtures lay in a heap on the floor. A white ceramic lamp shattered next to the toppled table on which it had sat. The imitation Oriental screen that separated her bed from the rest of her small studio apartment looked as if someone had been thrown through it, a large hole pouting in the center panel. The checkered sheets of her bed, which matched the curtains, were drenched in blood, soaked through to the mattress.
This is where he got her, thought Chief Simon Morrow, as he touched a gloved finger to the blood. A sharp instrument to a major artery – the throat, the leg…he couldn’t be sure. He could imagine the faceless killer on top of her, his knee on her chest. He winced at the image in his mind, in spite of having seen worse. Her fear echoed in the tossed-up room.
He got down on his knees, tucked the bedskirt up between the mattress and the box spring and shone his flashlight under the bed for anything that may have fallen under there in the struggle. He reached for a small wooden crucifix he saw there. He could see where it had fallen from, by the bare nail and the cross-shaped clean space on the dirty white wall above her bed.
“Jesus Christ. Shit.’’
He wondered how long the neighbors had heard the screams and the banging before they called the police. How he had got her out of the apartment after that. There was no way she walked out, not with all that blood on the bed.
One of the uniformed officers walked in the front door.
“Anybody see anything?’’the chief asked, knowing the answer already.
“No. No one I spoke to saw or heard anything, Chief. But some people didn’t open their doors.’’
“Figures. I’ll send a detective out in the morning. In fact, page Keane right now, tell him to get over here.’’
Morrow knocked on the wall with a pudgy callused hand.
“These apartments might as well be separated by cardboard. Jesus Christ,’’ he muttered.
If there had been any doubt in his mind that the two prior missing-persons cases on his desk were somehow connected, and connected somehow to the dog and the surgical-supply warehouse, he was sure now. The other cases on his desk were cold. No leads. No witnesses. No family or even friends to interview. Those people had dropped from the face of the earth, leaving no trail behind them to follow. But Maria Lopez had made sure her departure was not silent like the rest. There had to be something in this mess. Hair, fibers, prints, something – anything. She had to have been cut very deeply with something razor-sharp for that much blood to be spilled, possibly with a surgical implement. Maybe the same type of instrument used to slice up the German shepherd and remove its organs, an act that had been completed with precision. Lopez was the fourth person missing in two months in a sleepy town that saw little violence. Something was definitely going on.
Morrow still had the crucifix in his hand, was clenching it so hard the edges were hurting him through his latex gloves. He’d found one of these in the home of each of the missing persons – a detailed Christ figure, highly varnished wood. Did it connect them? He couldn’t be sure. People were very religious here – especially those who had little else to live for.
“Call in Homicide and Forensics from State,’’ he said to the uniformed officer standing closest to him. “We need to treat this like a murder, with or without a body.’’ If these cases were connected, he was going to have to call in the FBI. If he did it too soon, he’d look like a yokel who couldn’t handle a few missing persons. If he did it too late, if someone else disappeared…
He’d had to make this call before and things had turned out badly. When he was the St. Louis police chief, three prostitutes had turned up dead in a five-month period. He had been reluctant to call it a serial murder case, because johns killed whores all the time in big cities. So when Lydia Strong had paid him a visit to inform him of the striking similarities to unsolved cases in Chicago, he’d disregarded her as a flake. She had told him about an alleged white-slavery ring that an escaped prostitute had reported to her and which she was investigating for an article for Vanity Fair. But he basically shut the door in her face.
He had been unaware of her reputation and her connections at the FBI. By the time the Bureau finally got involved, two more women had turned up dead. The early St. Louis cases provided key evidence in solving the crime. It turned out that the Russian mob was bringing girls into the U.S. illegally, promising them careers as models. When the girls arrived, they were held prisoner in whorehouses and forced into prostitution. Morrow’s failure to report the murders to the FBI was a blunder that took on national significance due to the article subsequently published. He resigned from the St. Louis police force.
He’d been drinking then. Heavily. Maybe that’s why he didn’t pay much attention to the prostitute murders. Maybe that’s why he ignored Lydia’s warnings until it was too late. Maybe. Six months in rehab and some therapy had helped him deal with his mistakes. He’d been the police chief in Santa Fe for over five years now and done a competent job. Of course, nothing ever happened here. Until now.
Lydia’s presence in town gave him an ugly deja vu. He hated that she was here now, of all times. It was like some kind of fucked-up karma. He knew once this hit the papers, she’d be all over him.
He left two uniformed police officers to guard the scene until the detectives arrived. “Nobody touch anything until they get here. Don’t make a sandwich, don’t make a phone call, just stand at the door,’’ he barked as he put the cross in a plastic bag, careful to note in his log where he found it. “Tell Keane to look for an address book. I didn’t find one.’’
He looked around the tiny apartment again, noting there were no photographs. He was fairly sure that when the detectives started looking through drawers and in closets, they would find no address book, no letters, no photo albums. This was the apartment of someone utterly alone. Someone unconnected. The furniture was cheap and temporary, looked like the kind you would assemble yourself.
He pressed the redial button on the telephone. “You have reached Psychic Helpers. Welcome to your future!’’
He hung up. Then he pressed *69, the sequence which would tell what the last incoming call was. He dialed the number and got a recording from the electric company telling him to call back during business hours. He placed the receiver down gently, though he wanted to slam it.
He thought about the others. It was the same with them. Christine and Harold Wallace didn’t even have a phone. Sad people. Lonely lives. If a life is lost and no one mourns it, is that death still a tragedy? Regardless, this death was still a crime.
He stripped off the rubber gloves and shoved them in his pocket.
“Tell whoever comes from State to be in my office by noon with whatever information they are able to gather by that time.’’
He walked to his son’s room and pulled on a pair of scrubs over his bloodied clothes, then he removed a clean scalpel from the tray. He regarded Maria’s lifeless body, her open mouth, her glassy eyes. He wiped the hair away from her face.
“‘An oracle is within my heart concerning the sinfulness of the wicked. There is no fear of God before his eyes.’’’
“‘The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the treachery of evil,’’’ he said, cutting away Maria’s bloodied nightgown. His voice was thick with passion, growing louder as he spoke.
“‘Blessed is he, who in the name of charity and goodwill, shepherds the weak through the valley of darkness, for he is the finder of lost children.’’’
He cut into Maria’s chest with the scalpel, pushing through the intercostal muscle, and made an incision down to her navel. Then he picked up the small saw and turned it on. Its frenetic whir and the high-pitched scream of metal against bone as he cut away her rib cage was virtually orgasmic. Sweat beaded on his brow and his hands quivered with excitement.
“‘I will carry out great vengeance on them and punish them in my wrath. Then they will know that I am the Lord when I take vengeance upon them.’’’ He was nearly yelling as he made the final cut.
Lydia sat on the plush couch in her living room and watched as the sun rose over the mountains. When she had opened her eyes in bed earlier, she felt warm and safe, remembering that Jeffrey was in the guest bedroom down the hall. His presence had eased the restless, wandering feeling that had plagued her in the days before his arrival. The next thought in her head was about Shawna Fox, wondering if she had ever risen feeling safe and warm. Or had she always felt alone in her foster homes, never fitting in, forever missing her mother? The grainy photo of Shawna in the paper, a school portrait, had made Lydia sad. She wondered who would want that photo, if it would go in someone’s photo album; if anyone would remember Shawna five years from now, ten years from now. What about Christine and Harold? Was anyone lying awake at night worrying for their safety? Is it possible to live a life that touches no one, that no one remembers? Lydia needed to know the answer to that question.
Usually when she was working a case with Jeffrey or writing something, she wanted only the details of a victim’s life: what he did for a living, who he knew, what his habits were. But she wanted as little personal information as possible. She didn’t want to get to know them, feel their personal essence. Like turning off a television screen to escape a violent image or suppressing a traumatic memory, she shut them out. She didn’t want to feel even the slightest twinge of pity or sorrow. She didn’t want even the smallest part of their tragedy to become her own.
She knew that the people she interviewed, families, loved ones, were often shocked by her lack of concern for the victims of the people and crimes she wrote about, insulted by her refusal to even pretend to want to know about them. Her manner was always clipped and professional. People couldn’t believe how little she cared. But in fact she cared too much. The sight of grief, the thought of people being violated, dying in terror and unspeakable pain, was more than she could bear. It cast a light on her soul that crept into dark crevasses where even she was afraid to peer.
But she felt differently about Christine and Harold, and especially Shawna. It was as if their memories were orphans that no one would take in. As if the worried question “Where are they?’’ had not been asked by anyone who cared about the answer. She felt a fierce need to shelter and feed these lost souls, to know who they had been. It was a sensitive business, sorting through the debris of an abandoned life. The layers needed to be peeled back with gentle fingers one after another, like the skin on an onion, to reveal the essence of a person true and ripe. She certainly didn’t trust a hack like Morrow to do it properly.
She wondered if the police had connected the disappearances to one another, if she was the only one who could see the shadow of something sinister behind the collection of strange events. Jeffrey certainly wasn’t convinced by what she’d told him. But this did not deter her; she trusted herself. She just needed more information on the victims, to find out what they had in common, where their paths had crossed, what experiences they might have shared. At the intersections of their lives, she suspected, she would find a madman.
She began plotting in her mind the various ways she could gain access to the information she wanted – some more legal than others – if Morrow wouldn’t cooperate. She believed her best bet was to see if Shawna’s boyfriend was willing to talk.
Jeffrey was watching her from the second-floor balcony that looked down onto the living room, smiling to himself. He could almost see the wheels turning in her mind. She sat on the living room sofa, her back against the armrest, legs tucked up beneath her. She stared absently out the window, biting on her thumbnail. Dressed in black leggings and a pink T-shirt, with her hair wet and no makeup, she looked like a teenager.
“What are you scheming, Lydia?’’ he asked.
She was too cool to be startled; turned her eyes up to him slyly, catlike. “I’m thinking about what you are going to make me for breakfast.’’
“You know,’’ he said dryly, “you’ve never once made a meal for me in all the time I’ve known you.’’
“That is patently untrue,’’ she answered with mock indignation. “I cooked dinner for you every night after you got shot.’’
“You ordered in,’’ he said, smiling as he walked down the spiral staircase.
“Whatever.’’
“Do you have anything in this house besides coffee and cigarettes?’’
“Eggs and wheat bread. Maybe some milk.’’
“Great,’’ he muttered, walking into the kitchen.
Lydia pulled on her sneakers to walk to the mailbox for the paper. Outside, the morning was crisp, the sky blue and close. That was one of the things she loved most about New Mexico. Almost thirteen thousand feet above sea level, you dwelled in the sky. It was all around you, not just above. She took the clean air into her lungs, thinking she needed to run later. She would avoid the church.
She was halfway back up the driveway with the paper in her hand before she glanced at the headline.
BLOODBATH IN THE BARRIO: Woman Missing; Presumed Dead
Lydia ran the rest of the way up the drive and burst in through the front door. Jeffrey was standing at the stove, scrambling eggs.
“Look at this,’’ she said, throwing down the paper.
He turned off the stovetop, took his glasses from his shirt pocket and scanned the article. The fact that this event had taken place in the late-night hours and was in the first edition of the morning newspaper, coupled with the fact that the police had “no comment,’’ indicated this story had been leaked to the press. Someone at the crime scene had a contact at the paper and had called the story in – always a bad thing when hunting a serial killer, not that he was convinced that they were in fact looking for a serial killer. In spite of the glaring headline, the article contained few details. A late-night anonymous call to the police had led them to the apartment building. The door had stood open, so they could easily see the blood and signs of struggle, and had probable cause to enter. The missing woman was a waitress at a local restaurant near Angel Fire. She had a short rap sheet for solicitation. Her name and picture had not been released because relatives had not yet been located.
“Do you think this ties in with the others?’’ he asked, trying not to sound skeptical.
“It could,’’ she answered.
“What makes you say that?’’
“Because now there are four missing persons. In a town this size, that’s an anomaly. There was obviously a mortal struggle. And the body was removed from the scene.’’
“But there was no sign of a struggle or foul play with any of the other missing people.’’
“That only means that this situation got out of control. If this woman had been killed and her body found in the apartment, then I would not be inclined to think that it was connected. But someone took her body. For what? If someone was trying to hide the crime, he would have cleaned up the scene…or at least closed the door. The most important thing to him was to take her with him. It’s a signature behavior. He has another agenda. He probably just did a cleaner job of it with the others.’’
Lydia and Jeffrey sat at the kitchen table with the newspaper between them. She had leaned across the table, looking at him intently. He had to admit, she did have some good points.
“All right, I think I’m going to talk to Morrow. Maybe he has some missing pieces that will help us determine if there is something here.’’
“Alone?’’
“I just think it might be best.’’
“Bullshit, Jeffrey. I didn’t ask you to come down here to play the Great White Hope. I need to be a part of this.’’
“You are. I just think Morrow will cooperate more readily without you there at this stage.’’
“Why?’’
“Because you have a bad history with him. And… you have a way of putting people on the defensive.’’
“The only people who are defensive with me are people who have something to hide.’’
“Come on, Lydia. Charm isn’t going to work on me,’’ he said, a sarcastic smile on his face. He reached out for her hand, which she pulled away. She wanted to kick him in the shin. But she knew he was right.
She crossed her arms across her chest and glared at him. “Fine. But you have to swear to tell me everything. Every last detail.’’
“I promise. Did you pitch this story to someone already?’’
“No.’’
“Then why are you so worked up? I’ve never seen you like this.’’
“I just need to know what happened to these people.’’ She turned her gaze away from him and looked out the window.
He kept his hand outstretched on the table for hers.
“I won’t do another thing without you. Just let me go there alone first, Okay?’’
“All right,’’ she said, and gave him her hand, grudgingly.
He squeezed it and then stood up from the table and started clearing the dishes he had set out for the breakfast they were not going to eat now.
“Leave them. I’ll take care of it. You just go talk to Morrow,’’ she said.
He placed the dishes in the sink and walked from the kitchen. “Don’t be angry,’’ he said over his shoulder, without waiting to hear her response.
She took a pillow from the window seat and threw it at him. It missed its mark by a few feet and lay soft and harmless on the Italian-tile kitchen floor.
She sighed. The thought of sitting and waiting for him to come back was unbearable for her, the hours stretching before her were heavy with boredom and anticipation. She needed to do something.
She walked into her bedroom, pulled her hair back in a ponytail, put on a pair of running shorts and an old T-shirt, and slid three quarters into her jog bra. She put on her Nikes at the door and was gone, running down the driveway toward the road.
From the window on the second floor, Jeffrey watched her go. He hated it when she left without saying good-bye. She seemed so ephemeral at the best of times. Watching her run away, he wanted to throw the window open and call her back. But he couldn’t
– not now, not ever. He just had to hope she’d come on her own. He watched her until he lost sight of her.
She counted her breathing in time with her footfalls on the dirt road. Running was painful because she had bad knees and she was smoking more now than she had in months, but still it set her free. Her form was perfect, shoulders straight but relaxed, abs tight, heels landing firmly on the ground with each stride. Here, it was enough to think of nothing. She could focus on nothing but driving herself to go one more foot, one more mile, before she could go no farther. Soon her worries would seem imaginary and far away. Soon she would be submerged in her effort and in enduring the pain of her joints and in her lungs. She took a masochistic pleasure in it. But today she didn’t seem to be able to run far enough or fast enough to silence the thoughts inside her head, or to quiet the emotions that simmered inside her chest.
She was angry at Jeffrey for wanting to see Morrow alone. On an intellectual level, she recognized that he was right. Jeffrey had a bad history with Morrow, too; but Jeffrey hadn’t created a national scandal by writing an article in Vanity Fair that had exposed Morrow as the alcoholic, chauvinistic incompetent that he was. Jeffrey going alone was probably the best bet they had to get Morrow to let them in. He probably wouldn’t even see Lydia if she were to show up there. But she had called Jeffrey for his help and for his support, not so that he could take over. Sometimes she felt like he was Superman and she was just Lois Lane. He was leaping tall buildings and deflecting bullets and she was just hanging on for the ride, then writing up the story when it was done. She knew it was irrational but it still made her angry. Plus his closeness was so unsettling now. They hadn’t slept under the same roof since he was recovering from being shot. And it felt so good, so safe to have him in her space. The restlessness she dreaded had subsided. She had what she needed, the real thing. She didn’t need to go looking for cheap imitations at the Eldorado.
She had meant to avoid the church today. But in spite of herself she saw it rising before her and she felt powerless to turn around or veer off in another direction. She was drawn to it, drawn to Juno.
“Your mother would be glad to know you have come home to God.’’
On the day her mother had been murdered, Lydia had known she was in trouble. The principal had caught Lydia smoking in the bathroom and had punished her with a detention. The principal also had called her mother at work to let her know of Lydia’s infraction. On top of that, she had missed the school bus and had to walk more than a mile and a half home.
It was September 5, a brisk and clear fall day. The leaves were changing and the air was clean and smelled like cut grass. Lydia sniffled as she walked home carrying her heavy bag. She could envision the scene that awaited her as if it were already a memory. Her mother would be waiting for her at the kitchen table. She would ask Lydia calmly, “How was your day?’’ Then: “Do you have something to tell me?’’ Then there would be an unbearably long lecture that would last at least an hour and maybe the whole evening, depending on how angry her mother was and how much energy she had. Then Marion would be distant and silent, and speak to Lydia only when she absolutely had to, with politely cold directions. “Please do the dishes,’’ or, “Make sure you’re in bed before ten.’’
It would be better if her mother yelled. Then Lydia could yell back. Instead she would have to eat her own guilt, feel ashamed and sorry. She would have to wait for forgiveness.
Lydia would always remember what she had been wearing that day: a red plaid, pleated skirt; white tights and black loafers; a white cotton shirt and black suede vest – her favorite outfit.
She hadn’t even entered the house before she knew something was wrong. She stood at the end of the driveway for a moment and stared at her mother’s car. The door was open. She walked to the blue Chevy and saw her mother’s purse sitting on the passenger’s seat. She could hear music sounding loudly from inside the house.
Her mother was a precise woman, with predictable habits. She was orderly, nothing ever out of place, no action ever spontaneous. Even if she had heard the phone ringing in the house, she never would have left the car unlocked, never mind with the door wide open and her purse sitting there. Even though they lived in a safe, small town, Lydia’s mother had been raised in Brooklyn. She had let Lydia know that the world held dangers she could not yet imagine. No ground-floor window was ever left unlocked at night. When Lydia let herself in on most afternoons, she was to lock the door behind her and not open it for anyone except the police or the neighbors. Her mother was quite strict on these points.
Lydia took her mother’s purse and closed the car door. She walked slowly to the front door of the house and found that ajar as well.
“If you ever come home and find the doors open or a window broken, don’t even go inside. Just run to the neighbor’s, call the police, and then call me at work.’’
“Yeah, okay, Mom. God.’’
“Mom?’’ she called from the front steps. “Mom?’’
She was not sure how long she stood there debating what to do next. Finally, she pushed the door open and walked inside, dropping her schoolbag and her mother’s purse on the floor. She left the door wide open, the outside seeming safer than the inside at that moment.
There were no lights on inside. And when she turned off the blaring stereo, the silence of an empty house greeted her.
“Mom?’’
She walked from room to room downstairs, seeing nothing. Then she climbed the stairs. Her mother’s room was dark, the shades pulled down sloppily below the sill in a way her mother never would have done. When she flipped the light on she saw her mother, a sight she had tried to bury deep inside herself but which she had never forgotten. Bound to the headboard, her dead eyes were rolled up in her head, her mouth parted in a silent scream. Lydia ran to her mother, began shaking her, screaming at her.
Then she backed away, stunned and bloodied. It was impossible for her mind to process what she had seen and she was reduced to an organism reacting to horror. She ran to her neighbor’s door and pounded with both fists, unable to accept that there was no one home to answer her cries. Her mind was racing as she willed herself to wake up from her nightmare. A neighbor across the street finally heard her and called the police. They arrived within minutes. Lydia had exhausted herself by then, sat breathing heavily on her front stoop, staring blankly as shock set in.
She could remember refusing to be moved from the front stoop of her house. A female officer sat beside her, trying to convince her to move into the house out of the cold. But Lydia wouldn’t, thinking inanely that she should be there to stop her grandparents from seeing what she had seen when they arrived from Brooklyn. She sat there, shivering, wrapped in a blanket, trying to imagine how this wrong could be righted.
It was while she was sitting on that stoop that she first saw Jeffrey. He pulled up with another man in a black car. He walked toward her, his eyes on her the whole time. He looked strong and important to her, like someone who would have rescued her mother if he could have. He knelt before her and asked the female officer to leave.
“Hi, Lydia,’’ he said softly. “I’m Agent Mark. I know you’re really scared and sad right now, but maybe you can help me find the person who did this to your mother.’’
He put a gentle, sympathetic hand on her shoulder and she nodded, then started to cry. He gave her his hand, helped her stand up from the stoop, and led her inside.
Lydia slowed to a halt in front of the church and stretched out her back. She wiped the sweat from her face with the bottom of her shirt. The church looked like it was waiting for her. Even in the throes of the restlessness that beset her as her mother’s anniversary approached, she had never reflected on the details of the day she found her mother’s body. Why has this come back to you now? Why is the pain so fresh?
Her head was so crowded with thoughts and memories, she could barely hear her own voice through the cacophony. It reminded her of something a meditation teacher had said to her once: “Your mind is like a roomful of monkeys. You can barely quiet one before another starts shrieking. You must breathe to quiet your monkeys. Only then will you find inner peace.’’ Lydia had been as big a failure at meditation as she had been at therapy. She walked in a circle with her hands on her hips now, catching her breath before she went inside.
She knew she had come to see Juno. Do you really think he’s going to heal you, Lydia?
She walked up the steps and pushed open the heavy wooden door. A mass was in progress; the priest stood at his pulpit, about twelve people in the pews before him. She slipped in quietly, unnoticed, she hoped, staying to the back of the church. She dipped her right fingers into the holy water by the door and crossed herself, more out of a reflexive respect than anything.
She discreetly reached for the three quarters she had placed in her bra and dried the sweat off them on her shorts. Placing them in the box provided, she lit three votive candles.
“Let us pray,’’ she heard the priest say.
The silence was so heavy it was almost sound. She sat in the backmost pew, then knelt as the others did. She wondered what they were praying for. Wondered what she should pray for. Ridiculously, she began to wonder, if she found a genie’s lamp on some deserted beach and was granted three wishes, what they would be. Right now, a cigarette would do.
When she opened her eyes and sat back, she saw Juno at the altar. He began to play his guitar. The acoustics of the church carried the music on the air and filled the room. His fingers were sure and every note was perfect. But it was him and not his music that captivated her. She had to know if he was truly what he was said to be.
She watched him carefully, considered moving closer, but not wanting to call attention to herself, remained seated. He did not look like other congenitally blind people she had seen. She had always thought that the signs of blindness could be seen in a physical deformity of some kind: sunken eyes, an especially large brow, eyes without pupils. Juno looked like someone who had been sighted once, but had lost his vision through some cruel twist of fate. He was peaceful, rapt, moved by this music written for God. She stared at him shamelessly, taking advantage of his blindness, and that all but the priest had their backs turned to her. When his song had finished, the priest said some parting words and the parishioners filed out. They all looked at Lydia in turn, curious, perhaps, at her inappropriate attire. The priest said a few words to Juno and then disappeared behind a doorway. Juno remained, putting his guitar in the case.
She walked toward him, making noise on purpose by clearing her throat.
He looked up. “Hello?’’
“It’s Lydia,’’ she answered.
He smiled. “Lydia, how are you?’’
“Curious.’’
“About?’’
“About what you said the last time I was here.’’ She was speaking softly because his demeanor, his church, demanded it. But she was feeling like herself again, not afraid, not ashamed like an intruder. She was angry. She felt tough, aggressive. And she felt familiar with him, like she had known him for years.
“We talked of many things.’’
“You know what I mean. You said my mother would be happy to know I had come home to God.’’
“It’s true, isn’t it?’’
“Yes, it is. But how did you know to say that? I mean, what do you know about me? What do you know about my mother?’’
“Perhaps we should sit down. You’re upset.’’
She preferred to stand away but sat beside him in spite of herself. “Just tell me what you meant.’’
“Lydia, you have conducted a number of interviews on National Public Radio where you were quite candid about the death of your mother and how it affected you. I could sense when you came to see me that she was very much on your mind and the church had some strong connection to that. I was only trying to help you. I didn’t mean to cause you any more pain.’’
She scanned her mind for what she had said in interviews on the air. Would she have mentioned that her mother was a religious person and that she was not? Any moron could have made the inference he made from a statement like that. But she couldn’t remember.
Juno had his head cocked to the side and a questioning look on his face as he waited for her to respond.
Why are you She asked herself not for the first time.
“I dreamt of you,’’ she found herself confessing. She revealed the details of her dream to him.
“Others have claimed to dream of me and a loved one. Some claim that I help them communicate with people on the ‘other side.’ I can’t explain that. But maybe your mother is trying to tell you something.’’
This answer annoyed her because it managed to be vague and presumptuous at the same time.
“What do you think she is trying to tell me, Juno? And what do you have to do with it?’’ She knew that she sounded belligerent.
“Maybe she is trying to tell you to let go of the past,’’ he said, calmly, not even responding to her angry tone.
“I have let go of the past.’’
“Running away from the past and letting go of it, moving forward, are two different things.’’
His words were sincere, and they touched her because she knew he was really trying to help her. He was not trying to manipulate her, but she felt invaded, felt herself edging away from him inside, bringing down walls to protect her truth. She wasn’t responding any better to this “psychic healer’’ than she had to any of her shrinks. Go figure.
What do your dead parents tell you, you smug bastard? The words were poison darts, waiting to be thrown. But she held her tongue, knowing they were vicious, designed to hurt deeply.
“You don’t know me,’’ she said weakly.
“That’s true…in a way. But then why have you come here?’’ he asked calmly, unflappable.
“I’m sorry. I don’t know,’’ she answered. She honestly didn’t know. She had planned to avoid the church, yet she had carried quarters to light the votive candles. Instead of turning away from the church, she ran right to it. Was it something outside herself or inside her that had led her back here?
She rose to leave. “I’m sorry,’’ she said again.
“Please don’t be sorry, Lydia. I understand you.’’ They were simple words, easy to say. But he meant them and they touched her, even if she wasn’t sure they were true.
“When you’re ready, you’ll be back,’’ he said. He rose also, and finished putting his guitar away as if their conversation had never interrupted him.
She paused and looked at him. He looked so normal, so earthly now. He no longer seemed angelic to her, as he had while he was playing his guitar during mass. He was flesh and blood, like she was. How could he exert so much power over her emotions?
“When I’m ready for what?’’
“To come home to God, of course.’’
“But why you?’’ she asked. “Why were you in my dream?’’
She knew what he was going to say before he said it and was disappointed at the cliche in advance.
“The Lord works in mysterious ways, Lydia.’’
She walked up the aisle, more confused than she had been when she entered. But something that had been like a stone in her heart had shifted.