The Taker

FORTY-SIX

They sit at the table in the hotel room, Luke and Lanny, a coffee service of elegant white porcelain spread before them with a plate of croissants, untouched. Four packs of cigarettes, ordered along with the rest of the room service, rest in a silver bowl.

Luke takes another sip of coffee, heavy with cream. Last night was rough, with the drinking and smoking pot, and while the fatigue shows on his face, Lanny’s visage reveals nothing except pert, soft, smooth skin. And sadness.

“I suppose you’ve tried to learn about this spell,” Luke says at some length. His question brings a bemused sparkle to Lanny’s face.

“Of course I did. It’s not easy to find an alchemist, a real one. Every town I went to, I looked for the dark ones, you know, people with a dark inclination. And they are in every town, some out in the open, some driven underground.” She shakes her head. “In Zurich, I found a shop on a narrow back street just off the main thoroughfare. It sold rare artifacts, ancient skulls with inscriptions chiseled into the bone, scripts bound in human skin and filled with words no longer understood. I thought if anyone would know the necromancer’s true art, it would be the people who owned this shop, who put their lives into tracking down arcane magic. But they only knew rumor. It came to nothing.

“It wasn’t until this century, about fifty years ago, that I finally heard something with the slightest ring of truth to it. It was in Rome, at a dinner party. I met a professor, a historian. His specialty was the Renaissance, but his personal avocation was alchemy. When I asked if he’d heard of a potion to confer immortality, he explained that a true alchemist wouldn’t need a potion for immortality because the real purpose of alchemy was to transform the man, to bring him into a higher state of being. Like the supposed quest to turn base metal into gold; he said that was an allegory, that they sought to turn base man into a purer being.” She slides her cup away an inch or two, the saucer pushing a minute wake ahead of it in the white damask. “I was frustrated, as you can imagine. But then he went on to say that he had heard of a rare potion with a similar effect to what I’d described. It was supposed to turn an object into an alchemist’s-well, familiar is the best term, I think. To bring an inanimate object to life, like a golem, to make it the alchemist’s servant. The potion could reanimate the dead, bring them back to life, too.

“This professor assumed the spirit that filled the dead person or the object came from the demon world,” she says, crackling with self-loathing. “A demon meant to do someone’s bidding. That was all I could bear to hear. I haven’t gone looking for explanations since then.”

They sit quietly and watch the traffic a dozen flights below them. The morning sun is starting to break through clouds, setting the cutlery and silver bowl on fire. Everything is white and silver and glass, clean and sterile, and everything they have been talking about-darkness, death-seems a million miles away.

Luke picks up a cigarette, rolls it between two fingers before putting it aside, unlit. “So you left Adair walled in the mansion. Did you ever go back to see if he got out?”

“I worried about him escaping, of course,” she says, nodding almost imperceptibly. “The feeling, our connection, was gone, though. I had nothing to go on. I went back once, twice-I was afraid of what I’d find, you know-to see if the house was still standing. It was. For the longest time it was used as a home. I’d circle the block, trying to feel Adair’s presence. Nothing. Then one time I went back and saw that it had been made into a funeral home, if you can believe it. The neighborhood had fallen on hard times… I could picture the rooms where they’d work on the bodies, in the basement, steps away from where Adair was entombed. The uncertainty was too much…” Lanny tamps out the spent cigarette in her hand and immediately lights another. “So I had my lawyer contact the funeral home with an offer to buy it. As I said, there was a recession; it was a better price than the owners hoped to see in their lifetime… They accepted.

“As soon as they moved out, I went in by myself. It was hard to imagine as the house I had known, so much had been changed. The part of the cellar under the front stairs had been updated. Cement floor, furnace, and hot water heaters. But the back half had been left alone. No electricity ran back there. It was left dark and damp.

“I went to the spot where-we’d put Adair. You couldn’t tell where the original wall left off and where the part Jonathan built began. It had all aged together by then. Still, no feeling from behind the stone. No presence. I didn’t know what to think. I was almost tempted-almost-to have the wall torn down. It’s like that perverse voice in your head that tells you to jump off the balcony when you get too close to the edge.” She smiles ruefully. “I didn’t, of course. As a matter of fact, I had the wall reinforced with rebar and cement. Had to be careful; I didn’t want the wall to be damaged during the construction. It’s sealed good and tight now. I sleep much better.” But she doesn’t sleep well; Luke has learned this much in the short time they’ve been together.

He needs to lead her away from the place he has left her, the dark cellar with the man she condemned. Luke reaches across the table and takes her hand. “Your story… it’s not finished yet, is it? So you and Jonathan left Adair’s house together-what happened next?”

Lanny seems to ignore the question for a moment, studying the nub of the cigarette in her hand. “We remained together for a few more years. At first, we stayed together because it was, ostensibly, the best thing to do. We could look out for each other, watch each other’s back, as it were. Those were adventurous times. We traveled constantly because we had to, because we didn’t know how to survive. We learned to create new identities for ourselves, how to become anonymous-though it was hard for Jonathan not to attract attention. People were always drawn to his great beauty. But then it became more and more apparent that we remained together because it was what I wanted. An ersatz marriage, only without intimacy. We were like an old couple in a loveless pact, and I’d forced Jonathan into the role of the philandering husband.”

“He didn’t have to stray,” Luke objects.

“It was in his nature. And the women who were interested in him-it was relentless.” She knocks ash into the saucer they are using for an ashtray. “We were both miserable. It got to the point where it was painful to be in each other’s presence; we had wronged each other so, and said hurtful things to each other. Sometimes I hated him and wished he would just go. I knew he would have to be the one to leave because I would never have the strength to leave him.

“Then one day, I woke up to find a note on the pillow beside me.” She smiles ironically, as though used to watching her pain from a distance. “He wrote, ‘Forgive me. This is for the best. Promise me you won’t come looking for me. If I change my mind, I will find you. Please honor my wish. Your dearest, J.’”

She pauses, crushing the cigarette in the saucer. Her expression is stark and faintly amused as she stares out the tall windows. “He finally found the courage to go. It was as if he’d read my mind. Of course, his leaving was agony. I wanted to die, sure that I would never see him again. But we go on, don’t we? Anyway, I had no choice, but it helps to pretend that you do.”

Luke remembers how it feels to be exhausted by tension, recalls those days when he and Tricia couldn’t stand to be in the same room. When he’d sit in the dark and try to imagine how it would feel if they split up, the peace that would come over him. There was no question that she’d be the one to leave-he couldn’t be expected to walk away from his children or his childhood home-but when his family had left and it was just him in the farmhouse, it wasn’t like being alone at all. It was as though something had been violently taken away from him, as though a piece of him had been amputated.

He gives her a moment to fold up her pain and tuck it back in its place. “But it wasn’t over, was it? Obviously, you saw each other again.”

Her expression is inscrutable, light and dark. “Yes, we did.”

FORTY-SEVEN

Gray day. I peeked from behind the curtains at the thin sliver of sky visible from the third story of my home, one in a series of ancient row houses in the fifth arrondissement. It was the start of winter in Paris, which meant that almost every day would be gray.

I turned on my computer, then stood by the desk and stirred cream into my coffee while the computer started up. I find the series of whirs and clicks subliminally comforting, like the chirping of birds or some other sign of life external to mine. I cherish normalcy and long for as much routine as I can cram into what is otherwise a free-form existence.

I sipped the coffee. Though I don’t really need it the way some people do to pull them into consciousness, I drink it out of habit. I’d barely been asleep, a catnap really; I’d been up until the wee hours as usual, dutifully doing research needed for the book I had been contracted to write but which now bored me to impatience. Then, tiring of that, I resumed cataloging my ceramics collection while watching reruns of American television. I had gotten to the point of thinking I’d send my ceramics collection off to a university or an art museum, someplace where it would be seen. I’d gotten tired of having so much clutter around all the time, pulling at me like hands clawing from the grave. I felt the need to shed a few things.

My email finished loading and I glanced down the list of the senders’ addresses. Business, mostly: my lawyer, my editor at the wonky small press that had published my precious monographs on ancient Asian ceramics, an invitation to a party. What a life I’d made for myself over the past twenty years as a faux expert on Chinese teacups. My false identity was based on a collection of priceless cups my Chinese employer had pressed into my arms as I boarded a British ship to escape the ransacking nationalists. This had happened in The Jade Pagoda days, another lifetime ago, another story no one knew.

Then I noticed, in the list of emails, an address I didn’t recognize. From Zaire-oh, only it’s called the Democratic Republic of Congo now. I could remember when it was the Belgian Congo. I frowned to myself; did I know anyone in Zaire? It was probably a plea for charity or a scam, a con artist claiming to be an African prince who just needed a bit of help out of a temporary pecuniary dilemma. I almost deleted it without opening it but at the last minute changed my mind.

“Dear Lanny”-it read-“Hello from the one person you thought you’d never hear from again. First, let me thank you for honoring my last request by not trying to track me down at any point since we parted…”

Damn innocent words, written in flickering pixels on the screen. Print, I jabbed at the clicker on the mouse. Print, damn you, I need to hold these words in my hands.

“… I hope you’ll forgive me for imposing on you like this. For all its convenience, I’ve never gotten over the feeling that correspondence by email is somehow less polite and correct than writing a letter. I find using the telephone difficult for the same reason. But I’m pressed for time, so I had to resort to email. I will be in Paris in a few days and would like very much to see you while I am there. I hope your schedule will allow for this. Please write back and let me know if you will see me… Fondly, Jonathan.”

I scrambled into the seat quickly, fingers poised over the keys. What to say? So much bottled up inside after decades of silence. Of wanting to speak and having no one to speak to. Of talking to the walls, to the heavens, to the pigeons, to the gargoyles clinging to the spires of Notre Dame Cathedral. Thank God-I thought I’d never hear from you again. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Does this mean you’ve forgiven me? I’ve been waiting for you. You can’t imagine how it feels to see your name on my computer screen. Have you forgiven me?

I hesitated, clenched my hands into two tight fists, shook them, unfurled them, shook them again. Hovered over the keyboard. Finally, typed “Yes.”

Waiting for that day to arrive was torturous. I tried to keep a tight rein on my expectations. I knew better than to get my hopes up, but there was still a small part of me that harbored romantic dreams where Jonathan was concerned. It was impossible not to indulge in a daydream or two, just to feel joy like that again. It had been so long since I’d had anything to look forward to.

Jonathan told me about his life in his second email. He’d picked up a medical degree in the 1930s in Germany, and used it to travel to poor and remote places to deliver medical services. When one had suspect paperwork, it was easier to get past the authorities in isolated areas where a doctor was needed and harried government officials could push your case through. He’d worked with lepers in the Asian Pacific, smallpox victims in the subcontinent. A hemorrhagic fever outbreak took him to central Africa and he had remained to run the medical clinic in a refugee camp near the Rwandan border. It’s not open-heart surgery, he’d typed: gunshot wounds, dysentery, and measles vaccinations. Whatever is needed.

What could I say in response, other than to confirm the time and place we were to meet? It thrilled and unsettled me to think Jonathan was a doctor, an angel of mercy. But Jonathan was waiting for me to tell him about my life, and as I sat before the computer I couldn’t think what to write. What could I say that wasn’t embarrassing? Life had been difficult after we’d parted. I’d done stupid things, which I believed at the time to be necessary for my survival. Now, finally, my life was peaceful, almost a nun’s life and not entirely out of choice. But I had come to terms with it.

Jonathan would notice my omission, but I assured myself that he wouldn’t harbor any illusion that I’d changed in our time apart-at least not as dramatically as he had. Instead, my first email to Jonathan was full of pleasantries: how I was looking forward to seeing him and the like.

I couldn’t sleep at all the night before and sat up, looking into a mirror. Would I look different to him? I examined my reflection fastidiously, worried that there had been changes, as though I was like the women in commercials fretting over laugh lines and crow’s-feet. But there were no changes, I knew. I still looked like a college student with a permanently cross expression. I had the same smooth face that Jonathan had looked on the day he left. I still had the smolder of a young woman who could not get enough sex, even if in truth I’d had enough sex to last my multiple lifetimes. I didn’t want to look desperate when he saw me, but there was no way to avoid it, I realized, looking into the mirror. I would always be desperate for him.

Still staring in the mirror, I wondered if it would seem strange and maddening, when we met tomorrow. To look at each other, time might as well be standing still. How long had it been since I’d last seen Jonathan? One hundred and sixty years? I couldn’t even remember what year he had left me. I was surprised to find that it no longer hurt violently, that it had taken decades but the pain had eased into a dull throb, and was easily outweighed by my eagerness to see him.

I put down the mirror. It was time for a drink. I cracked open a bottle of champagne. What was the use in saving it for tomorrow in the hope that he was coming back to me? Wasn’t it enough cause for celebration that Jonathan had contacted me after an eternity of separation? I resolved to nip my hope in the bud before I changed the sheets or put extra towels in the bathroom. He was coming to visit me and nothing more.

Meet me in the lobby at noon, he had instructed in his last email. I could barely wait and considered instead camping out at an earlier hour or going up to Jonathan’s room. But wouldn’t that be pathetic; better to pretend I could exercise self-control. So instead, I watched the hands of the clock in my study crawl to eleven o’clock before I stepped outside, hailed a taxi, and directed it to the Hotel Prix St. Germain. From the back window of the taxi, I watched my street peel away like the cartoon-painted backdrop to a carousel when the music started up.

I knew of the Hotel Prix St. Germain, but had never been there. It was a quiet place buried on an unfashionable street on the Left Bank, quite in keeping for a bush doctor in Paris for a few days. The air in the lobby was stale, and a professionally dour-looking clerk behind the front desk watched as I took a seat in one of the leather club chairs in the lobby. Did all hotel lobbies feel like this, like a room holding its breath? The chair I had selected faced the path that ran between the door and the front desk. An ornate old clock suspended over the front door read 11:48. As a young man, Jonathan had made it a rule to keep others waiting. As a bush doctor, I imagined he’d learned to be more punctual.

A discarded morning newspaper sat on the side table. Never one to follow world events, I rarely bothered to get a newspaper these days. Events confused me, they had all become similar. I’d watch the evening news and slip into an uncomfortable feeling of déjà vu. A slaughter in Africa? Was it Rwanda? No, wait, that was 1993. Or the Belgian Congo, or Liberia? A head of state shot? A plummeting stock market? A plague, of polio, smallpox, typhus, or AIDS? I’d lived through all of it from a safe distance and watched as events ravaged and terrorized mankind. It was terrible to see the suffering, and be unable to affect anything. I was a ghost standing in the background.

I could see how it might have appealed to Jonathan to go to medical school, to equip himself to do something about the terrible things going on in the world. To roll up his sleeves and apply himself, even knowing that it would be impossible to eradicate disease, even within a single village, but trying nonetheless. Without realizing it, my eyes had fallen to the newspaper the entire time I’d been thinking.

I looked up abruptly, anticipating Jonathan’s entrance.

The front door was pushed open and I leaned forward anxiously at what seemed to be a familiar shape, but relaxed again. The man was wearing wrinkled khakis and an age-worn tweed jacket. A piece of cloth in some ethnic pattern was wrapped around his neck, sunglasses were over his eyes. And his face had grown over, three or more days’ worth, scruffy and uneven.

The man walked right up to me, hands in his pockets. He was smiling. Then I knew.

“Is this the welcome I’m to get? Don’t you remember what I look like? Maybe I should have sent a recent picture,” Jonathan said.

We went outside at Jonathan’s suggestion, saying I looked faint. Jonathan took my arm right away and held it tightly as he escorted me out to the sidewalk. We found a quiet corner of a park that was all cement and park benches, only one lone tree bounded by concrete on four sides, but it gave the illusion of nature.

“It’s good to see you.”

I couldn’t answer and my response was unnecessary anyway. It seemed absurd that he had been absent from my life this long and, seeing him again, it seemed no reason on earth should keep us apart. I wanted to touch him and kiss him, to reassure myself that he was there, in the flesh, before me. But as familiar as we were to each other, more than a hundred years of separation stood between us. And, something about his demeanor told me to proceed slowly.

Once I’d regained color, we found a café and ended up staying for hours. Over coffee and tumblers of Lillet and cigarettes (for me-though Jonathan the doctor disapproved), we sat in a booth and caught up on several lifetimes. The bush stories were fascinating and I was amazed that Jonathan could be so happy in a land as dry and sparse as Maine was cool and lush. That he could sit in a tent, patiently filling syringes without a thought to the mosquitoes buzzing around him. Malaria, West Nile, what did it matter to him? He volunteered to trek into a valley gripped by an outbreak of dengue fever. He’d carried antidiarrheals and other medicines on his back when the Land Rover couldn’t cross the river. As much as I admired what he did, the stories of putting himself in danger made me uncomfortable, even though such fears were irrational.

“How did you find me, after all this time, in all the world?” I asked him, finally, dying to know. He smiled cryptically, and took another sip of his aperitif.

“It’s a funny story. The short answer is technology-and luck. I’d been wanting to look you up for a long time, but struggled with this very question. How in the world could it be done? The answer began with a children’s book I happened to see at a colleague’s house-”

“The Jade Pagoda,” I guessed.

“The Jade Pagoda,” he answered, nodding. “Reading the book to the colleague’s child, I recognized you in the drawings. With a little research, I found the artist’s model-Beryl Fowles, a British expatriate living in Shanghai-”

“I always liked that name. Made it up myself.”

“-and hired someone to find out what he could about Beryl. But by then, Beryl Fowles had been gone for decades.”

“And yet you still found me.”

“I hired an investigator to track down who had inherited Beryl’s money, and so on and so on, but the trail ran cold eventually.”

“But you didn’t give up?”

Jonathan smiled at me again. “Here’s where technology comes in. You know about the photo-recognition software they have online these days, so you can try to find photos of yourself or friends on websites? Well, I tried it on one of the pictures in the book and damn if it didn’t work. It wasn’t easy, and I had to be persistent, but it came up with one match, a thumbnail photograph of the author of a little monograph on ancient Chinese teacups, of all things… I never would have thought you’d become an expert on Chinese porcelain. Anyway, your publisher told me how to contact you.”

The Chinese teacups entrusted to me by my employer in Shanghai, where I’d gone to work after posing for the children’s book. And so my last great adventure in China had led Jonathan back to me.

We ended up at my home by late afternoon, the champagne drunk and a cabernet three-quarters done along with the foie gras and toast. At Jonathan’s insistence, I showed him around the house, but I became more and more embarrassed with each room. I amazed even myself with the multitude of things acquired over the years, hoarded as a cushion against the relentless future. Jonathan said kind words, praised my foresight in saving rare and beautiful things for future generations, but he only meant to assuage my guilt. A bush doctor didn’t travel with a freighter’s worth of bric-a-brac. There was no storehouse of mementoes waiting for Jonathan’s return. I came across a box I hadn’t seen in nearly two decades, full of precious jewelry that had been given to me by admirers: a ring with a ruby the size of a grape; a stickpin with an heirloom blue diamond. The sight of such excess was sickening and I pushed it back in the forgotten bookcase where it had been moldering.

We came across worse: there was plunder, things I had spirited out of faraway countries during my frantic years. Surely Jonathan recognized them for what they were: beautifully carved Buddhas, hand-knotted rugs of twenty colors, ceremonial armor. Treasures I’d gotten in trade for long rifles or taken at gunpoint or-in some cases-stripped off the dead. All of it would go, I vowed, closing the doors to these rooms; every stick and statue would be sent off to museums, back to their native lands. How could I have lived so long with these things in my house, without even a thought to them?

The last room we toured was my bedroom on the top floor. It had the sad air of a room no longer used for its intended purpose. There was a Swedish headboard and bedstead beside a set of tall, narrow windows; the windows and the bed were draped in white cotton, an ice blue silk comforter thrown over the mattress. An eighteenth-century French secretary served as a computer table, spindly legs and all, with a Biedermeier chair pulled in front of it. The table was strewn with papers and knickknacks, a gray silk dressing gown was draped over the chair. All gave it the look of a room in which the dustcovers had only recently been pulled off the furniture, as though everything had been in waiting.

Jonathan stood in front of the picture that hung opposite the bed. The artist’s name was long lost, but I remembered the day the sketch had been made. Jonathan didn’t want to sit for the portrait but Adair had insisted, so he was caught leaning back churlishly in a chair, dark and moody and breathtaking. He thought he would spoil the picture but damn if it hadn’t made the drawing better. We both stood in front of it, taken back nearly two centuries.

“Of all the treasures you’ve amassed in this house… I can’t believe you kept this stupid drawing,” Jonathan said, weakly. When he saw the stricken look on my face, he softened and took my hand. “But of course you would… I’m glad you did.” We gave it one last look before walking out of the room.

By the time night had fallen, Jonathan was sprawled on a couch in the drawing room and I was on the floor, leaning against an armrest. We’d swapped stories for hours. I’d broken down and told him some of the past I was ashamed of: going out in search of adventure with the madman who’d taken Jonathan’s place when he left me. His name was Savva and he was one of us, one of Adair’s early companions, the only other one of us I’d ever run across. Savva had the misfortune of being found by Adair, centuries back, near St. Petersburg, stranded in a storm. Savva wouldn’t share the details of his falling-out with Adair, but I could guess at them, for Savva had a mercurial temper and a sharp, impatient tongue.

Because Savva couldn’t stand to be in any place for long, we’d roamed the continents like exiles. For a man who had been born into ice and snow, Savva was inexplicably drawn to heat and sun, which meant we spent most of our time in northern Africa and central Asia. We’d traveled with nomads across deserts, run guns through the Khyber Pass. Taught Bedouins to shoot the long rifle, even lived with the Mongols for a while (they had been impressed with Savva’s extraordinary equestrian skill during the chase to hunt them down). We were together, close as brother and sister, until the end of the nineteenth century. We just realized that we had nothing left to say to each other. We probably should have parted decades before, but it had been too easy being with someone who needed no explanations.

“And you.” I took the opportunity to change the subject, exhausted from dredging up those memories. “Surely you haven’t been alone this whole time. Did you ever marry again?”

He twisted his mouth but offered up nothing.

“Don’t tell me you’ve been lonely all this time? That would be too sad.”

“Well, I wouldn’t say lonely. You’re rarely alone if you’re a doctor in these villages, everyone needs your attention and they’re happy that you’re there… I was always being invited to eat with them, attend their observances. Partake of their lives.” His eyes dipped closed for longer and longer instances, and a languor settled on his face. I took a lap robe and spread it over him. He opened his eyes for a brief moment.

“I’m going back to Maine. I want to see it again. That’s why I looked you up, Lanny. I want you to go with me. Will you?”

I had to fight back tears at the prospect of returning home with Jonathan. “Of course I will.”

FORTY-EIGHT

We took one of those gigantic Airbus planes for the trip back to America. From New York we took a commuter plane to Bangor, then rented a sport utility vehicle to drive north. I hadn’t seen this land for two centuries and, crazy as it may sound, there were stretches that seemed to have changed very little. For the rest of it, there were asphalt roads, Victorian farmhouses, immense fields of neatly tended crops, the spindly towering inchworms of irrigation pipes off on the horizon. Seen from behind the windshield of this big plush vehicle, it was easy to fool myself into thinking that I’d never been there. Then the road would cut off the farming plains, into the Great North Woods. We’d plunge into the cool dark of the forest, flanked by row after row of outsize trunks, the sky obliterated by a blanket of green. The car dipped and climbed to follow the rise and fall of the land and swerved around boulders pushing their way up out of the earth, now mossy with lichen. All this I remembered. I saw the trees and was taken back two hundred years, flooded with the recall of my first life, my true life, the one that had been taken away from me. It had to be the same for Jonathan.

We sensed our home getting closer. The trip passed quickly in an automobile. The last time we had made this trip it was weeks in the carriage, Jonathan in shock from what I’d done to him, barely speaking a word to me.

We were speechless on the approach to town. How everything had changed. We couldn’t even be sure that this road, the main road cutting through the middle of town, was the same small dusty wagon trail that led to the fledgling St. Andrew two hundred years ago. Where was the church and the graveyard? Shouldn’t we be able to see the meeting hall from here? I rolled the car down the street as slowly as possible so we could try to transpose the town we remembered over the one in front of us.

St. Andrew hadn’t become like many towns in America, where every store, restaurant, and hotel is the product of a multinational corporation and generic the world over. At least St. Andrew had some individuality, even if it had lost its original purpose. It was no longer industrious. The sprawling farms were gone and there had been no sign of the logging business for the past ten miles. The business of leisure had taken its place. Wilderness outfitters lined both sides of the main street, businesses where well-scrubbed men in rugged clothing escorted other men and women through the forest or down the Allagash in canoes. Or took them into the middle of the river in hip waders, casting all day for the fish they would release once they had been admired. There were craft stores and inns where once there had been farmhouses and barns, Tinky Talbot’s forge and the Watfords’ general store. We were amazed to figure out, finally, that the congregation hall must have been demolished and that the center of town was now occupied by a hardware store, an ice-cream shop, and a post office. At least the graveyard had been undisturbed.

This new generation of inhabitants surely thought it pleasant enough, and if I hadn’t known what it was like two centuries ago, I wouldn’t have objected. But the town now made its living catering to the whims of strangers and seemed degraded, like finding your childhood home had been turned into a bordello, or worse, a convenience store. St. Andrew had traded its soul for an easier way of life, but who was I to judge?

We checked into a sporting lodge outside town. Dunratty’s was like an old motel, shabby from an unavoidable neglect, that catered to the seasonal hunters and fishermen and so a certain austerity was expected. There was a set of ten or so rooms making up one unit, attached to the office. We asked for a cabin, the one set farthest into the woods. The caretaker said nothing, merely looked discreetly for the presence of rifles or fishing poles and finding there were none, went back slowly and resignedly to his task. He did ask if we were married, as though he minded that one of his murky cabins would be used as a love shack. The place was empty except for us, we were told; it would be very quiet. He would be available at the house if we needed anything-and he pointed off in some indiscernible direction-but otherwise we could expect to be left alone.

It was dismal, all four walls lined with cheap paneling, the roof merely covered in plywood. The space was dominated by two beds-slightly larger than single beds, neither as large as a double, with Depression-era metal rail frames-set apart by a small dresser put in the place of a nightstand, and topped with a ceramic lamp. Two threadbare upholstered chairs faced what looked to be a thirty-year-old television. To one side was a small, round table accompanied by three armless wooden kitchen chairs. Through a doorway I found a small, functional kitchen, and through a second doorway, a slightly mildewed bathroom. I laughed when Jonathan threw the suitcases on one of the beds. “We’re staying?” I asked, incredulous. “There must be someplace nicer. Maybe in town…”

Jonathan said nothing but stood before a set of sliding glass doors. Beyond a plain wooden deck were the woods; great thick trunks towering above us, creaking in the wind. We opened the door and stepped into the middle of the forest, and clean air licked over and around us. We stood on the modest square of the deck and looked into the endless forest for an immeasurable amount of time. This was the home we had known. It had found us. “We’re staying,” Jonathan replied.

We left the cabin about five that afternoon, anxious to look around a little more before the sun set. It was difficult to make our way, though; roads we expected to lead in one direction ended up taking us to another place entirely, as the area had been shaped and reshaped over time. The current grid of roads had been laid down by the modern logging companies and went through mile after mile of forest for no apparent reason, leading straight to a highway, which in turn would take us to the juncture of the Allagash and St. John Rivers. After two false starts, we found a road that reminded us of the carriage trail that had led out to Jonathan’s house, and it was with a silent nod from Jonathan that we pursued it to its end.

We burst through a tunnel of overgrown trees onto a cleared swath that had once been hayfields in front of the St. Andrews’ house. The road had been moved-it no longer swept through the gully by the icehouse and then up to their big house-but I recognized the shape of the land. Now, a dirt logging road cut to the right of the house, which still stood on the bluff. We sped up a little, anxious to see it again. But as we got closer, I let up on the pedal. The house was still standing, but only someone who had once lived there would have been able to recognize it.

The once glorious house had been left to rot. It was like a corpse that had been exposed to the elements, a skeleton with every feature by which you’d known the person fallen away. The once grand house sagged, stripped of paint, missing slate tiles upon its head, slats from its torso. Even the stand of pines that had formed a windbreak in front were failing, spindly and unloved, the kind of trees you find in a graveyard.

“It’s abandoned,” Jonathan said.

“Who would have thought,” I offered, not knowing what to say. “Oh, well, Jonathan… at least they left it in its spot. You saw where my family’s house would have been-nothing but a crossroads now. The world moves on, doesn’t it?”

Jonathan fell quiet in response to my attempt at cheerfulness. We turned the car around and headed back toward town.

We went to a small restaurant in the center of town that night for dinner. You could call it a restaurant in that it was a place where meals could be purchased, but it didn’t resemble the sort of restaurant that I was used to patronizing. It was more like a diner with a dozen laminate-topped tables, each surrounded by four metal-tube chairs. The tablecloths were oilcloth, the napkins paper. The menus were covered in yellowing plastic, and it was a safe bet that the menu had not changed in twenty years. There were five customers, including Jonathan and me. The other three were all men in jeans and flannel shirts and some kind of cap, each sitting at a separate table. The waitress was probably also the cook. She looked at us critically as she passed us menus, as if there was some question of whether she would serve us or not. Country music played sweetly from a radio.

We ordered food that neither of us had seen in a long time, if ever, living abroad: fried catfish fillets, chicken and dumplings, food that was almost exotic in its strangeness. We lingered over bottled beer and spoke little, under the joint impression that the other patrons were watching us. The waitress-hair like coiled wire and determined sags cut into her face-looked pointedly at the half-eaten meals before asking us if we wanted any dessert. “Pie is good,” she deadpanned, as if making a general observation.

“Was it disappointing, to visit your home?” I asked, after the waitress had brought over two more beers. Jonathan shook his head.

“I should have expected it. Still, I wasn’t prepared.”

“It’s so different, but in some ways, so much the same. I feel disjointed. If you weren’t with me, I’d leave.”

We left the diner and walked down the street. Everything was closed, except a tiny bar, the Blue Moon to judge by its neon sign predictably shaped like a crescent moon. It sounded romantic, but through the plate-glass front I saw it was completely full of men, truckers and loggers watching a sporting event on the television. After the commercial part of town had petered out, we came upon the churchyard. There was just enough moonlight to wander among the headstones.

It had become wild and overgrown. Wild berry bushes and nettles had reclaimed the stone wall, shrouded the twin columns that had once flanked the entry, and swallowed up some of the markers. Years of frost heaves had thrown some of the gravestones out of their places; other headstones were eroded by time or had been broken by vandals. I picked my way through the graves quickly, not anxious to visit my former neighbors in this way, while Jonathan made his way from graveside to graveside, trying to read the names and dates, pulling at weeds that had sprung up around the stones. He seemed so sad and wounded that I had to quash the urge to make him leave.

“Look, it’s Isaiah Gilbert’s marker,” Jonathan called out. “He died in… 1842.”

“A respectable amount of time. A good long life,” I called back from the spot where I stood, smoking and weaving from remembrance and vertigo.

By then Jonathan had turned to another tombstone. He was crouching, on the balls of his feet, looking around the churchyard. “I wonder if everyone we knew is here, somewhere.”

“It’s inevitable that some of them left. Have you found any of my family?”

“Wouldn’t they be in the Catholic cemetery on the other side of town?” he asked, walking down an aisle, looking from headstone to headstone. “We can go over there next, if you like.”

“No, thanks. I’ve no curiosity left.”

I knew Jonathan had found someone significant when he knelt next to a large double marker. It was rough stone and pitted with age, its broad, flat back to me, so I could not read the inscription. “Whose is it?” I asked as I walked over.

“It’s my brother.” His hands were running over the engraved words. “Benjamin.”

“And Evangeline.” I touched the other side of the tombstone. Evangeline St. Andrew, beloved wife. Mother of Ruth.

“So they married.”

“Family honor?” I asked, brushing off the letters with my fingertips. “It doesn’t look as though she lived long.”

“And Benjamin was buried beside her-he never remarried.”

In the next hour we found most of Jonathan’s family-his mother and eventually the daughter Ruth, too, the last St. Andrew to live in the town. Jonathan’s sisters were missing, though, which led Jonathan to hope they’d married and left town, to raise happy and successful families somewhere else and be buried beside their husbands in more cheerful surroundings. He wanted to believe they’d escaped all the melancholy of St. Andrew.

I took Jonathan back to the cabin. I’d smuggled two bottles of an extraordinary cabernet all the way from France in my suitcase. We pulled the cork on one and let it breathe on the counter while we lay in bed together. I held Jonathan against me until the chill had left his body and then I undressed him. We lay in bed between the aged and softened white cotton sheets, sipping the cabernet in tumblers and talking about our childhood, the brothers and sisters, friends, and fools; the closely held long dead, decomposed and inert matter in the ground while we were still inexplicably alive. I could not bear to tell him the truth about Sophia. Instead, we spoke of each cherished one until Jonathan lapsed into sleep-and then I cried for the first of many times.

FORTY-NINE

There were no more excursions to relive the past: no more visits to graveyards, no retracing of paths in the woods at once familiar but now barely evident and ghostly. We walked along the Allagash, sighting moose and deer and admiring the light from the full Maine sun sparkling on the current, rather than reminiscing about events that had transpired on this spot or that. The rest of the time was spent quietly in each other’s company.

Time spent together became like a drug I couldn’t get enough of, and I began to think maybe we could get lost here, where we had started together. We wouldn’t have to live in St. Andrew proper; since the town had changed so much, it might be disconcerting to stay. We could find land in the woods and build a cabin, where we’d live apart from everybody and everything. No newspaper, no clock, no insistent ticking of time tapping us on the shoulder, reverberating in our ears. No running from the past every fifty or sixty years or so, to emerge as another person in another land, or rather pretending to be a new person, as new as a chick just come from the egg, but inwardly feeling like the person I was and could never get away from.

We were out one night on the deck behind the dilapidated cabin, wrapped in our coats, sitting on two folding chairs, drinking wine from glass tumblers and looking up at the flat moon. Jonathan steered our talk to the past and it made me uneasy. He wondered whether Evangeline had had a hard, unhappy life after he disappeared and whether he had been the cause of his mother’s early death. I said I was sorry over and over, but Jonathan wouldn’t hear any of it, shaking his head and saying no, it had been his fault, he had been terrible to me, taking advantage of my obvious love for him. I shook my head, placing a hand on Jonathan’s forearm. “But I had wanted you so much, you see,” I told him. “You weren’t entirely to blame.”

“Let’s go out there, again,” Jonathan said, “to that place in the woods, where we used to meet, the place with the vault of birch saplings. I’ve thought of them often, the prettiest spot on earth. Do you think they are still there? I’d hate it if someone has cut them down.” Tipsy and warm from drink, we climbed into the SUV, though I had to go back inside the cabin for a blanket and a flashlight. I held the open wine bottle to my chest as Jonathan maneuvered the vehicle through the woods. We had to leave the sport utility on the side of the logging road and travel the last half mile on foot.

We managed to find the glade though it had changed. The saplings had grown but only to a certain size, then stopped. Their tallest branches now touched each other, closing over the hole in the canopy, overshadowing the seedlings that had tried to follow their example. I remembered this glade where we had met as children to laugh and tell each other stories from our lonely lives, but time had taken away its unique beauty. The glade was no longer blessed and graceful; it was as any other patch of forest, no more and no less.

I spread the blanket on the ground and we lay on our backs, trying to see through the foliage canopy to the night sky above, but there were only a few spots where the stars were able to peek through. We tried to believe that it was the same place where we had met but both knew it could have been five paces to the west, or a hundred yards to the left; in short, it was as good as any place in the woods, as long as there was a thinning of the treetops, as long as we could lie on our backs and see stars.

Thinking of our childhood reminded me of the burden I’d been carrying all this time. The time had come to tell Jonathan the truth about Sophia. Old secrets have the greatest strength, though, and I was terrified of how Jonathan would react. Our reunion could be over tonight; he might banish me forever from his life this time. These fears almost made me retreat, again, but I couldn’t continue to have this hanging over me. I had to speak.

“Jonathan, there is something I must tell you. It’s about Sophia.”

“Hmm?” He stirred next to me.

“It was my fault that she killed herself. My fault. I lied to you when you asked if I’d gone to see her. I threatened her. I told her she would be ruined if she had the baby. I said you would never marry her, that you were through with her.” I’d always thought I’d burst into tears when I made this confession, but I didn’t. My teeth began to chatter, though, and my blood was cold in my veins.

He turned to me, though I couldn’t make out his expression in the dark. A long few seconds ticked by before he answered. “You waited all this time to tell me this?”

“Please, please forgive me-”

“It’s okay. Really, it is. I’ve thought about it over the years. Funny how you see things differently with time. Then, I’d never have thought my father and mother would have let me marry Sophia. But what could they have done to stop me? If I’d threatened to leave the family to be with Sophia and the child, they wouldn’t have disowned me. They would have given in. I was their only hope to keep the business going, to have someone to take care of Benjamin and the girls after they died. I just didn’t see it then. I didn’t know what to do, and I turned to you. Unfairly, I see that now. So… it’s as much my fault as anyone’s that Sophia killed herself.”

“You would have married her?” I asked.

“I don’t know… for the sake of the child, possibly.”

“Did you love her?”

“It was so long ago, I don’t remember my feelings, exactly.” He may have been telling the truth but didn’t realize he’d drive me mad with that sort of answer. I was sure he saw the women in his life in some kind of priority and I longed to know where I stood, who was on the step ahead of me, who fell below. I wanted our complicated history to be simplified: certainly things had been sorted out with the passage of so many years. Jonathan had to know how he felt by now.

I sat, not touching Jonathan in any way, and that made me nervous. I needed the reassurance of his touch to know he didn’t hate me. Even if he didn’t blame me for Sophia’s death, he might be disgusted by all the terrible things I had done.

“Are you cold?” I said to Jonathan.

“A little. And you?”

“No. But is it okay if I lie next to you?” I took off my jacket and spread it over both of us. Our frosty breaths hovered over us like a specter as we scanned the night sky.

“Your hand is cold.” I lifted Jonathan’s hand and blew warm breath on it before kissing each finger.

I cupped his cheek. “Your face is chilled.” There was no protest, either, as I nuzzled his stubbled face, his handsome nose and his paper-fine eyelids. There was no interruption from there as I peeled back Jonathan’s clothing until I’d tunneled a path to his chest and groin. Then I undressed and pressed myself on top of him, the flannel on the inside of my jacket brushing softly against my buttocks.

We made love there on the blanket under the stars. We moved through the sexual act, but it had changed between us. It was slow and tender, almost ceremonial-but how could I complain? The whirlwind of our young passion was gone and in its place was something loving, but that left me sad nonetheless. It was like we were saying good-bye to each other.

When it was over-me leaning over Jonathan like a jockey, Jonathan sighing in my ear, then pulling his trousers up to his waist-I reached into the pocket of my jacket for cigarettes. A contrail of smoke was expelled into the cold air, the warmth in my lungs calming. I continued to draw on the cigarette while Jonathan stroked the top of my head.

I’d wondered what would happen at the end of the trip. Jonathan had never said and I wasn’t sure when it was supposed to end. The tickets were open ended and Jonathan had not mentioned when he was expected back at the refugee camp. Not that the trip could drag on much longer; it had been nothing but disappointment (with intermittent wild longings for happily-ever-after), reminders of loss with only the trees and the beautiful sky overhead to welcome us back.

Nor could I throw off the niggling doubt that I was the cause of Jonathan’s melancholy. Had I disappointed him, or perhaps Jonathan had still not forgiven me? We hadn’t talked about why he’d left me and I assumed I knew the reason: that after years of frustration and recrimination, he had grown sick of disappointing me.

But this time wasn’t about being together forever; this was about something else. I just wasn’t sure what that was. He wanted to be with me, that much was obvious; otherwise, he wouldn’t have asked me to make this trip with him. If he was still angry he never would have contacted me, sent the email, drunk champagne, kissed my face, let me cradle him in bed. I was insecure around him and always would be, the burden of my love like a stone manacled to my neck.

“What would you like to do tomorrow?” I asked, feigning nonchalance, stubbing the cigarette out in the dirt. Jonathan tilted his chin up, toward the stars, and closed his eyes.

“Well, then,” I drawled when he didn’t answer, “how much longer would you like to stay? Not to rush you, I’ll stay as long as you’d like.”

He gave a slow smile, but still no answer. I rolled on my side toward Jonathan, propping my head on one hand.

“Have you thought about what we’re going to do next? About-us?”

Finally, his eyes opened and blinked up at the sky. “Lanny, I asked you here for a reason. You haven’t guessed-?”

I shook my head.

He reached out for the wine bottle, rose up on an elbow and drank, then passed the bottle to me, with just a scant inch or so left on the bottom. “Do you know why I suggested we come back here?” I shook my head. “I did it for you.”

“For me?”

“I’d hoped it would make you happy if we came back here together, that it would make up in a small way for when I’d left. This trip hasn’t been for me-it’s been hell for me, coming back. I knew it would be. I’ve always wished I could have made it up to them, my family, the wife and daughter who thought I deserted them. I’d give anything to have it all back.”

How could it shift so suddenly, become so bad? It felt like a cold, invisible barrier was descending between us. “It wasn’t your fault,” I said, as though we didn’t know whose fault it was. I had no stomach for more wine and gave the bottle back to Jonathan. “What’s the point of talking about it, Jonathan? There’s nothing you or I can do to bring that back. What’s past is past.”

“What’s past is past,” he repeated before draining the bottle. He stared into the darkness, careful not to stare at me. “I’m so tired of this, Lanny. I can’t continue on this treadmill anymore, this never-ending succession of day after day… I’ve tried everything I could think of to carry on.”

“Please, Jonathan, you’re drunk. And tired…”

The wine bottle sank in the soft earth as Jonathan leaned forward on it. “I know what I’m saying. That’s why I asked you to come with me. You’re the only one who can help me.”

I knew where this was leading: life was circular and even the worst parts of it were guaranteed to come around a second time, begging at your heels. It was the argument we’d had every night for months-years?-before he finally left. He’d hectored, pleaded, threatened. That was the real reason he’d left, it wasn’t because he couldn’t help disappointing me-it was because I wouldn’t give him the only thing he wanted. His one desire would hang in the air between us, the only way for him to escape from everything he wanted to forget: abandoned responsibility, a dead child, betrayal by the person who loved him the most. Only one thing could make it go away.

“You can’t ask me to do this. We both agreed it was too terrible a thing to ask of me. You can’t leave me all alone with-that.”

“Don’t you think I deserve release, Lanny? You must help me.”

“No. I can’t.”

“Do you want me to say that you owe it to me?” That stung because he had never, ever said that to me before. Somehow he had managed never to fling those words in my face, words that I fully deserved. You owe me this because you did this to me. You put this curse on my head.

“How can you say that”-I wailed, intent on striking back, intent on making him feel as terrible as he had made me feel-“when you walked out and left me to wonder, all those years?”

“But you weren’t alone. I was still with you, in a way. No matter where you were, you knew I was there, too, somewhere in the world.” Jonathan struggled upright, weary. “Things have changed for me. I have something to tell you. I didn’t want to, Lanny. I don’t want to hurt you, but you have to understand why I’m asking you again. Why it’s important to me now.” He took a deep breath. “You see, I fell in love.”

He waited, expecting me to react badly to news of the best thing that had ever happened to him. I opened my mouth to congratulate him but, of course, no words came out.

“A Czech woman, a nurse. We met in the camps. She worked for another aid organization. One day, she was called to Nairobi by her home office for a meeting. I got the news over the radio out in the bush that she’d been killed in a car accident in the city. It took me a day to be helicoptered out to recover her body. We’d only been together a few years. I couldn’t believe the injustice-here I’d waited so long, lifetimes, to find the one I was meant to be with and we had just a short time together.” He spoke quietly, without too much grief, to spare me, I think. Nevertheless, as I listened my insides twisted tighter and tighter.

“Do you see now? I can’t go on anymore.”

I shook my head, determined to be tough, steely, in the face of his pain.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” he said. “And I know you know the pain I am going through. Do you want me to tell you how wonderful she was? How I couldn’t help but love her? How impossible it is to go on without her?”

“People do it every day,” I managed to say. “Time passes, you forget. It gets easier.”

“Don’t. Not to me. I know better. So do you.” Maybe he hated me at that moment. “I can’t do this anymore. I can’t bear her loss; I can’t accept that there is nothing, nothing I can do to make this pain stop. I will go insane, insane and trapped forever inside this body. You can’t condemn me to that. I resisted for as long as I could because I know-I know-it is a terrible thing to ask. I didn’t mean to ask you like this. I didn’t mean to tell you about her, so abruptly. But you forced my hand, and now that I’ve told you… we can’t go back. Here it is, you know what I need from you. You must help me.”

He reached out and struck the wine bottle against a rock. The cascade of notes, high and harsh, went through and around us. He clutched the neck and shoulder of the bottle in his fist, serrated peaks of green glass, held in his hand like a bouquet. It was the only weapon at hand; it was crude and violent, and he wanted me to use it on him. He wanted to bleed to death.

You can’t leave me all alone, by myself, without you.

I wanted to say that to him, but I couldn’t. He had brought me an inarguable reason: he had lost his love and couldn’t go on. The time had finally come to let him go.

I couldn’t speak and only knew I was crying from the cold ignited on my cheeks by the wind, cold like biting fire. He reached up and touched my tears. “Forgive me, Lanny. Forgive me that it’s come to this. I’m sorry I couldn’t give you what you wanted. I tried-you don’t know how badly I wanted to make you happy, but I couldn’t make it work. You deserve to be loved in the way you have always hoped for. I pray that you will find that love.”

Slowly, I took the broken bottle from him. Jonathan took his shirt off and offered himself, and I looked from my hand to that pale chest, glowing blue in the moonlight.

We should have had a life of great love.

I couldn’t look at him; I simply pushed against him, knowing the edge of the glass would do the rest. The teeth of green sank into his flesh, a perfect circle of a bite, soft and yielding. The broken bottle sank deep and Jonathan’s blood welled up to my fingers. He let the quietest gasp escape.

And then a swipe of my hand, and three lines were drawn across the white blankness of his skin. Deep, the wounds split open, letting more blood escape. Jonathan crumpled, falling on his chest and then rolling on his back, hands held limply against the wound, blood gurgling out of him. What stood out to me was that the flesh had given way so easily. I kept expecting the edges of the wound to knit back together but they didn’t. I must’ve said the words “by my hand and intent” in my head. There was no denying that deed had been done by my hand, but surely this was not my intent. I had made a mistake-this had not been my intent. Wake up, I heard my own voice say from far away; I must wake up.

And then I did, waking up in the woods with the one I loved rocking, convulsing, in the dirt before me, choking and sputtering, but smiling. His chest rose and fell with deliberation, and I realized I’d seen Jonathan do this once already, in Daughtery’s barn. And in an instant I was next to him, pressing his shirt against the wounds, foolishly trying to hold back the flow of blood. And Jonathan shook his head and tried to push the shirt from my hands. In the end, all I could do was hold him.

That was when it hit me, what I had lost. Jonathan had always been there, even during the years when we were apart, and the resonant hum had always been in the back of my mind, a comfort. Now all I had was a great, sucking void. I had lost the only important thing in my life. I had nothing, I was alone, the weight of the world crushing down on me with no one to help me. I’d made a mistake. I wanted Jonathan back. Better to be selfish. Better for him to resent me to the end of time than to feel like this. To feel like this and have no way to make it right or make it go away.

I held his body a very long time, until the blood had gone cold and I was covered with a film of wet slickness. I don’t remember letting go of Jonathan. I don’t remember leaving the body and running through the woods, screaming to the heavens to take pity on me and let me die. Let it be over for me, too. I could not go on without him. I don’t remember ending up at the highway, limping along the logging road to be found by the sheriff and his deputy. It wasn’t until I’d been locked in the car with my hands cuffed that it all came back to me, that I realized all I wanted was to be back in the woods with him, to die with him so we could stay together forever.

FIFTY

The narrow front hall of the town house is filled with crates, the wood fresh and prickled with splinters. A hammer, nails, and a pair of work gloves rest on a pedestal table along with a pile of unopened mail. Luke carries a marble bust down the stairs, his face reddening from the exertion. The bust is the second in a pair going to the Bargello, in Florence-one of Italy’s many museums, chosen over the Uffizi for its superior collection of Renaissance sculpture-the first piece already packed in its own crate. From the wall, watching the activity, is the one piece of artwork that will never leave the house, the charcoal sketch of Jonathan that Lanny took from Adair’s house. The portrait was moved from its original spot-at the foot of Lanny’s bed-to the front hall, though Luke had no particular objection to leaving it in place. He is no more capable of being jealous of the man in the picture than he is of hating the golden sunrise or the Notre Dame cathedral.

Lanny comes out from the study with a sealed envelope in her hand. Inside the envelope is a note of apology for having kept the piece of art from its rightful owners, whoever they might be after all this time. The note-which has accompanied every piece shipped so far-is contrite but vague, devoid of any facts relating to how the piece was appropriated, or when, or by whom. Lanny worked on it for days, read several versions aloud to Luke before the two settled on the final wording. They wear latex gloves as they work, so they’ll leave no fingerprints. Lanny has arranged for the shipping and the donation of the anonymous gifts to be done through her Parisian lawyer, whom she picked especially for his devotion to his clients and his flexible attitude toward aspects of the legal code. She has no concern that the shipments will be traced back to her, no matter how insistent the various museums and other recipients may become.

As for Luke, he’s a little sorry to see all these marvels go so soon after his arrival. He’d like more time to make sense of what must be the most expansive private collection of art and artifacts in the world. Lanny hadn’t exaggerated when she told him her house was more amazing than any museum. The upper floors were stuffed with treasures, stored with no rhyme or reason. Each time he dislodges one item to ship, he uncovers eight or ten more. And it’s not just paintings and sculpture; there are mountains of books, undoubtedly including many first editions; Oriental carpets made of silk so fine they can pass through a woman’s bracelet; Japanese kimonos and Turkish caftans of embroidered silks; all manner of swords and firearms. Grecian vases, Russian samovars, bowls carved from jade, made of beaten gold, chiseled from stone. Several chests filled with fists of crumpled silk and velvet, each one housing a piece of gem-studded jewelry. Then there are the complete surprises: for instance, inside a fan box, he found a note to Lanny written by Lord Byron. Luke can’t make out most of the words, but he manages to find “Jonathan” written among the scrawl. Lanny claims she can’t remember what the letter was about, but how do you forget a note from one of the world’s great poets? It’s the house of a mad collector, trying to compensate for an unarticulated, undisclosed lack in her life, a slave to a compulsion to amass beauty. Still, she has generously set aside some pieces to be placed in a trust for Luke’s daughters, enough to pay for tuition at a good college when they are older.

Luke discovers that, aside from the collection of ancient Chinese ceramics, no attempt was ever made at an accounting, so he makes Lanny catalog the pieces as they go out: a description, a guess at where she’d acquired it, the name of the person or place that will receive it. He thinks it will be a comfort to her one day; it will give her the ability to remember her distant adventures without being weighed down by the objects themselves.

It’s good for her to divest herself of these things, he thinks. It takes her mind off Jonathan, though not entirely; Luke has caught Lanny crying, in a bathroom or in the kitchen while waiting for water to boil for tea. Still, the crying has tapered off of late and their current project, shipping out the contents of her house, has made her visibly happier. She says she feels more at peace, that she’s atoning for some of the bad things she’s done. Once, she even said she also hoped that if she tried very hard to make amends, she’ll be forgiven and the spell will be broken. She’ll be able to grow old with Luke, to leave this earth at the same time, more or less. To never suffer that profound loneliness again. That sort of talk-dependency on a magical intervention-makes Luke uncomfortable. Given the circumstances, though, he knows not to doubt (entirely) in improbable interventions.

Lanny tucks the note under the bust and Luke hammers the lid on the wooden box. The courier is coming at two o’clock for the day’s delivery and Luke has gotten only the two busts packed up. He’d hoped to have at least a half dozen pieces ready. He’ll have to work faster.

When he puts down the hammer to wipe his forehead, he notices the stack of unanswered mail. On the top is a thick envelope from America and, out of reflex, he strains to read the address. It’s from a lawyer’s office in Boston, the one watching Adair’s house-or rather, Adair’s crypt. Luke flips through the stack quickly: there are seven letters with the same lawyer’s address, going back nearly a year. He opens his mouth to say something about it to Lanny when she rushes by, purse over her shoulder, hunting distractedly for her house key. “I’ve got a hairdresser’s appointment, but I should be back before the courier arrives. Shall I get lunch for us while I’m out? What would you like?”

“Surprise me,” he says.

Luke takes delight in how she’s fallen back into her routine-a sign that she hasn’t been immobilized by depression-and, in particular, how quickly she’s incorporated him into her life. He loves that they are so comfortable together. She’s given up smoking because he asked, because he can’t bear the sight of it even though he knows it poses no health risk to her. She shares everything with him: her favorite bakery, her favorite afternoon walk, the old men she chats with in the park. He is happy to do things for her, to take care of her, and in return she’s grateful for every consideration he shows her. Does he love her? He’s skeptical, truly skeptical, that love could happen so quickly, especially given who she is and what she has told him, but at the same time there’s the giddy sensation that’s overtaken him, a feeling he hasn’t had since his daughters were born.

Once Lanny has left, he heads back upstairs in search of the next item to be repatriated. He must remember to leave Lanny to deal with the courier because Luke has an appointment later in the afternoon. He’s meeting the director of volunteer services at Mercy International, an organization that sends doctors into war zones and refugee camps, clinics for the homeless. It was the last organization that Jonathan worked for; someone had contacted Lanny shortly after she and Luke arrived from Quebec, looking for Jonathan. He’d given the organization her address as a way to get in touch with him during his absence, only he’d never returned and they wanted to know if Lanny knew where he was. She was speechless, momentarily, then collected her wits and said she knew another doctor who might want to donate his services, as long as he could remain in Paris. Luke is glad for the interview, glad that Lanny knows he won’t be happy if he can’t make use of his medical training, hopes that his rusty French will be good enough to tend to immigrants from Haiti and Morocco.

Luke selects the next item to be shipped, a large tapestry that will go to a textile museum in Brussels. The tapestry has been rolled like a rug and is jammed against a barrister’s bookcase that has been packed with all manner of bric-a-brac. Half the glass faces on the bookshelf had been left up and an item falls from a shelf as Luke tries to wrestle the tapestry upright.

He leans over, picks it up. It’s a small ball of chamois, and he recognizes by the way the chamois is wadded up-Lanny’s haphazard way of packing things-that there’s something inside the dusty old cloth. He peels it back carefully-who knows what fragile thing might be inside-to find a tiny metal object. A vial, to be precise, about the size of a child’s pinkie finger. Though it is mossy and dark with age, he can tell it’s as delicately wrought as a piece of jewelry. Fingers trembling, he tugs off the lid and pulls out the stopper. It’s dry.

He sniffs the empty vial. His mind races: it may be dry but there are ways to analyze the residue. They could send it to a lab and find out the elixir’s ingredients, the proportions. They could try to make a batch and probably, after some trial and error, they would succeed. Re-creating the potion means he could be with Lanny forever. She wouldn’t be alone. And, of course, other people would be interested in immortality. They could sell it for ridiculous sums, dole it out on the tongues of their customers like communion wafers. Or they could be completely charitable-after all, how much money does anyone need?-and give it to great minds to study. Who knows what impact this could have for science and medicine? An elixir that regenerates wounded tissue could revolutionize the treatment of injury and disease.

This could change everything. As would revealing Lanny’s condition to the world.

And yet… Luke suspects that analysis of the residue would reveal nothing. Some things resist scrutiny, can’t be examined in the cold light of day. A tiny fraction of a percent of occurrences can’t be explained or reproduced. In his time as a medical student, he’d heard of a few, offered spontaneously by a sage old professor at the end of a lecture, whispered among the students as they filed out of the operating theater after a dissection. There are some physicians and medical researchers who dismiss such stories and would have you believe that life is mechanical, the body no more than a system of systems, like a house. That you will live as long as you eat this, drink that, follow these rules, as though they were a recipe for life; if you fix the plumbing or shore up the frame when they become damaged, because your body is only a vessel for carrying your consciousness.

But Luke knows it’s not straightforward like that. Even if a surgeon were to search inside Lanny-and what a nightmare that would be, the body trying to close itself up even as the hands and instruments probed inside-he wouldn’t find what part of her had changed to make her eternal. Nor would bloodwork or biopsies or any amount of radiological scans. So, too, you could analyze the potion, give the recipe to a thousand chemists to have them re-create it, but Luke thinks not one would be able to duplicate the result. There is a force at work in Lanny, he can feel it-but whether it is spiritual or magical or chemical or some kind of energy, he has no idea. All he knows is that the grace that is Lanny’s existence, like faith and prayer, works better in solitude, protected from skepticism and the brute force of reason, and that, if the facts of her circumstances were made public, she might disintegrate into dust or evaporate like dew in sunlight. That’s probably why none of the others-these others Lanny told him of, Alejandro, Dona, and the diabolical Tilde-have gone public, Luke thinks.

He rolls the vial between his fingers like a cigarette and then, quickly, places it under his heel and brings all his weight down on it. It folds as easily as if it were made of paper, squashed flat. He goes to the window, opens it, and throws the chip of metal as far as he can, over the rooftops of his neighbors, deliberately not following its trajectory with his eyes. Immediately, he feels relieved. Perhaps he should have spoken to Lanny before he destroyed the vial, but no-he knows what she would have said. It’s done.