“Good evening.”
Jan jerked upright at the voice. A man stood in the moonlight, leaning against the gazebo's arch.
“Beautiful night, isn't it?”
Jan ran a hand across his eyes to clear his vision. Here was a man, tall and blond, smiling as if meeting another person after dark in this garden was an everyday occurrence.
“Who . . . who are you?” Jan asked. “The garden's closed.”
“No. I mean yes, the garden is closed. But I'm not anyone to be afraid of. And if you don't mind my asking, how did you get in?”
“My friend is the gardener. He let me in.”
“Joey?” The man chuckled. “Good old Joey. So what brings you here so late at night? And looking so forlorn.”
Jan stood. Who did this man think he was, questioning him like this? “I guess I could ask the same of you. Do you have permission to be here?”
“But of course. I have come to speak with you.”
“You have?”
“Do you still love her, Jan?”
Jan's heart quickened. “How do you know my name? Who sent you?”
“Please. Who I am isn't important. My question is, Do you still love her?”
“Who?”
“Helen.”
There it was then. Helen. “And what do you know about Helen?”
“I know that she is no more extraordinary and no less ordinary than every man. Every woman,” the man said.
The answer sounded absurd and it made Jan wonder again who he could be, knowing Helen and Joey and speaking so craftily. “Then you don't know Helen. Nothing could be farther from the truth.”
“Tell me why she is so different.”
“Why should I tell you anything?” Jan paused. Then he gave the man his answer. “She's stolen my heart.”
The man smiled. “Well, then that would make her extraordinary. And what makes her less?”
“She has broken my heart.”
“Does she love you?”
“Well, now that's the big question, isn't it? Yes, she loves me. No, she hates me. Which side of her mouth would you like the answer to come from? The side that whispers in my ear late at night or the side that licks from Glenn's hand?”
The man suddenly grew very still. The smile that had curved his lips flattened. “Yes, it hurts, doesn't it?” He swallowedâJan saw it because the moon had broken through the clouds and now lighted one side of a chiseled face. His Adam's apple bobbed. The man turned to face the shadows, and lifted a finger to his chin. The anger in Jan's heart faded.
The stranger cleared his throat. “It does hurt. I won't dispute you.” He faced Jan again and spoke with some force. “That doesn't make her more or less extraordinary, my friend. She is predictably common in her treachery. So utterly predictable.”
Jan blinked, unable to respond.
“But how you respond to her, now that could be far less common.” The man's words hung on a delicate string. “You could love her.”
“I do love her.”
“You do love her, do you? Really love her?”
“Yes. You have no idea how I have loved her.”
“No? She is desperate for your love.”
“She cannot even
accept
my love!”
“No, she can't. Not yet. And that's why she's so desperate for it.”
Jan paused, removing his gaze from the man. “This is absurd, I don't even know you. Now you expect to engage me about this madness without telling me who you are? What gives you that right?”
“Ivena once said that God has grafted his love for Helen into your heart. Do you believe that?”
“And how do you know what Ivena has told me?”
“I know Ivena well. Do you believe what she said?”
“I don't know, honestly. I no longer know.”
“Still, you must have an opinion on the matter. Was Ivena mistaken?”
“No. No, she was not mistaken. It started that way, but it doesn't mean I still have any part of God's heart. A man can only live with so much.”
“A man can only
live
with so much. True enough. At some point he will have to
die
for something. If not now, then for an eternity.”
Jan stilled at the words, surprised. How much truth was in those few words?
At some point he will have to die for something
. They could easily be from his own book, and yet spoken here by this stranger they sounded . . . magical.
“I love her, yes,” Jan said, and a lump rose to his throat. “But she does not love me. And I'm afraid she will never love me. It's too much. Now I feel nothing but regret.”
The stranger did not move. “Do you know that even the Creator was filled with regret? It's not such an unusual sentiment. He was sorry he'd ever made man, and in fact he sent a flood to destroy them. A million men and women and children suffocated under water. Your frustration is not so unique. Perhaps you are feeling what he felt.”
“You're saying that God felt this anger? It certainly doesn't seem to fit with this love he gave me.”
“You are made in his image, aren't you? You think he's beyond anger? The emotions of rejection are a powerful sentiment, Jan. God or man. And yet still he died willingly, despite the rejection. As did the priest and Nadia. As will others. So perhaps it's time for you to die.”
“Die? How would I die?”
“Forgive. Love her without condition. Climb up on your cross, my friend. Unless a seed fall to the ground and die, it cannot bear fruit. Somehow the church has forgotten the Master's teachings.”
A buzz droned through Jan's mind. They were his own words thrown back into his face. “The teaching's figurative,” he argued.
“Is the death of the will any less painful than the death of the body? Call it figurative if it makes you comfortable, but in reality the death of the will is far more traumatic than the death of the body.”
“Yes. Yes, you are right. In the death of the body the nerve endings soon stop feeling. In the death of the will the heart doesn't stop its bleeding so quickly. Those were my own words.”
“Perhaps you've forgotten,” the man said. “Now you're tasting that same death.”
“
She
is causing my death. Helen is forcing me to die,” Jan said.
“No more than you have caused the death of Christ. Yet he loved you no less.” A wide smile spread across the stranger's face and the moonlight glinted off his eyes. “But the fruits of love are worth death, my friend. A thousand deaths.”
“The fruits?”
“Joy. But for the joy set before him, Christ endured the Cross. Unspeakable joy. A million angels kissing one's feet could not compare to the rapture found in the tender words of one human.”
Jan swallowed. This stranger would know, he thought, although he wasn't sure why. He stood and paced the floor of the gazebo, thinking of these words. He turned his back to the man and stared out at the round white moon. The man was no ordinary friend of Ivena, surely. Not with this insight.
The edge is gone from my pain already
, he thought.
I have spoken to this man for no more than a few minutes and my heart is feeling hope again
.
“And what of Helen?” Jan asked without looking back. “How will she learn to love? She must
die?”
It was a backward way of looking at the universe, he thought. He'd always understood the place of death, as it related to life. A seed must fall to the ground and die before giving life to the tree. But he'd never associated death with
love
. Yet it was in loveâin the death of self required by loveâthat it made the clearest sense. The man hadn't answered his question.
“You're saying that she too”âhe turned to the manâ“must findâ”
He caught himself mid-sentence. The man was gone. Jan spun around, found no one and stepped from the gazebo. The stranger was not in sight! He had said his piece and then left.
Jan called into the night, “Hello. Is anybody there? Hello.” But the garden remained still except for his own voice.
The stranger's words echoed through his mind.
She is desperate for your love
.
What was he doing? His whole lifeâall of eternityâseemed to be in the balance for this one woman. For Helen. And he had all but cursed her.
Oh, dear Helen. Forgive me!
Jan tore for the path and angled for the east wall that hid Joey's cottage. A panic fluttered through his stomach.
Oh, Father, forgive me!
THE PINTO was still missing when Jan burst through the hedge. He slid to a stop on the gravel, his heart thumping in his chest. She had come back and left already, perhaps.
He bounded up the cottage steps and flung the door open. A dim lamp glowed by the single rattan chair, casting light over Ivena's face.
“She hasn't come yet, Janjic.” She'd been crying, he could hear it in her voice. Ivena walked toward him without waiting for him to close the door. She placed her arms around him and laid her head against his chest. “I am sorry, dear. I am very sorry.”
Jan put his hand on her head. “So am I, Ivena. But we aren't finished. There's more to this story. Isn't that what you've been saying?”
“Yes.” Ivena stepped back and sniffed. “I have been praying for your understanding, Janjic.”
He stepped into the cottage and closed the door. “And God has answered your prayer.”
She smiled. “Then I will retire now.”
“And I will wait for her.”
Ivena and Joey each slept in the bedrooms, leaving the living room to Jan, a gracious gesture considering the circumstances. The night rested eerily quiet. Crickets chirped in the forest, but no traffic sounds reached the cottage. Jan suddenly felt a return of the pain that had flooded his bones earlier. He sank to his knees by the amber lamp, feeling destitute.
What if Helen did not return? Silence rang in his ears, high-pitched and piercing. He gripped his hands into fists. How could the stranger in the garden possibly know of this dread that rushed through his veins? It was death. His heart was being torn to shreds by a death no less real than Father Micheal's. At least the priest had gone to the grave with a smile.
He gritted his teeth, biting back a shaft of fury.
No, Janjic. If you die, it will be for love.
I am dying for love and it is killing me.
He should brand that on his forehead. He slumped to his haunches, overcome by grief. The night blurred in his vision.
For a long time Jan knelt like a lump of clay, feeling lifeless. He got up once and poured himself a glass of tea, but he left it full on the counter after a single sip. He walked to the fireplace and slid along the wall to his seat.
The noise came to his ears then. It was a slight grating and it was at the front door. He had not heard a car approach.
He looked up, thinking it was the windâit would cease any moment. But it didn't. In fact, if he wasn't mistaken, it was the front latch and it was being poked and scratched. Jan came halfway to his feet, his heart pounding.
And then the door swung in, open to the night, and Jan froze. She stood there. Helen stood there, wavering on her feet, taking in the room as if she were trying to understand it.
It occurred to Jan in that moment that he should scream at her. He should slap her and send her packing, because she was standing in the doorway, obviously stoned, slinking back from that beast.
But he could do no such thing. Never.
Helen took two steps forward and stopped again in a wedge of light from the moon, orienting herself in the darkness.
Jan stood up in the darkness and she faced him, perhaps not even knowing precisely who he was. “Helen?”
She looked at him with blank eyes glistening in the dim light.
Jan stepped toward her. “Helen, are you okay?”
She stood still, unresponsive.
“Helen, I'm so sorry!” He reached her and saw that she was trembling. He swept her from her feet, and she felt like a rag doll. A limp doll shaking and now whimpering with tears. “Oh, my dear. I'm so sorry,” he said.
You are sorry for precisely what, Janjic? It is she, not you, who has betrayed.
But it is I who love
, he answered himself.
Jan took her to the couch and laid her down. “Sleep, darling. Sleep.” He pulled an afghan over her body. “It's okay. I'm here now.” He knelt beside her and tucked the blanket around her carefully. Tears were streaming down her face, he saw. And his. His heart was breaking for her. Weeping. Like heaven, his heart was weeping for Helen.
She didn't speak to him for a long time, but he knew from her drooping eyes and sweet mouth, wrinkled with anguish, that she felt so much shame. So much that she could not speak it. It was this as much as any lingering intoxication that immobilized her.
Jan laid his head on her breast and he held her gently. They wept together for long minutes. Then she pushed herself up and buried her wet face in his neck.
“I'm sorry . . . ,” she whispered. A sob choked her off.
“Shhhh.” He pulled her tight.
She groaned. “No. I'm so sorry. Oh, God, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry . . .” Her words were loud enough to wake the house.
But Jan couldn't speak for the fist in his throat. He only wept with her and she kept groaning her remorse. It was a union of their spirits and it was sweet. The fruit of love. The stranger was right; his death in forgiveness was nothing compared to this joy.
Slowly she quieted, and he held her against his chest. Her body eventually stopped its shaking and then her breathing fell into a deep steady rhythm. She was asleep. His wife was asleep.
HELEN KEPT to herself the following morning, nursing a cup of coffee and looking as if she would have chosen to remain hidden under the covers given a choice. Fortunately the hours leading up to Jan's phone call to the police were too mixed with speculation about their futures to give any space to the previous evening's debacle. Now more than ever, it seemed that a meeting with Detective Charlie Wilks was their only hope to save Jan and keep Ivena safe. One thing they all agreed on: Lutz had to be stopped. Regardless of how they felt about it, he quite literally held their lives in his hands. And now that Roald and the council had refused to help, there was no one but the authorities to whom they could appeal.