I should have died eighteen years ago with my husband and daughter. I did not. I have finally come to accept that, thanks in no small part to you, and to think that maybe the years between my should-have death and my actual one have been good for something. God's will is not a phrase I care to use, but there is a fate, Glen—a divinity, as Shakespeare calls it—and it does shape our ends.
My fate was to meet Jason and Dulcie. If it brings my end, if a thing happens to me in the next week or two, it will have been worth it. All I ask is that they be kept safe.
I ask it of God, and I ask it of you. I've never asked you for anything, Glen, not even an explanation. I am asking this. Keep those two children safe for me.
—Anne
She tore out the page and folded it up, and was beginning to slip it into the shoe, when she paused to run a hand over the rubbery skin of her face, then smoothed out the page and took up her pen again.
P.S. Sorry about the maudlin sentiments—I haven't slept much recently and my brain is a bit fried. If I can't e-mail this to you in the next two days, I'll find the village post office or a nice friendly helmeted constable riding his wide-tired bicycle down a country lane and send it to you that way. Not to carp, Glen, but you better hurry. There's not a lot of time here.
P.P.S. Oh, and Glen? I hope you're planning to invite me to your wedding. If you don't, I plan to turn up anyway and really embarrass you.
—A
She smiled as she folded the page into the slipper. As she set off in the direction of the early-morning coffeepot, she detoured to take her revenge on Jonas's followers by yanking the pull chain on the antique and incredibly noisy toilet.
She spent the morning happily and mindlessly scrubbing floors, and after lunch joined Jason and two other American students for a brief but productive meeting with Dov and one of the other teachers. Jason, blase as he had been, found it difficult to take his eyes off the lumpy sack she had brought into the room.
After the meeting they gathered up Dulcie from the kindergarten room (where she sat listening carefully to a wildly chattering friend) and Ana led them out through the kitchen and across the yard to a flat, paved area that was used to park the farm tractor during the rainy season. She had spent the hour before breakfast sweeping away the dirt and hanging up a circle she wove from a roll of baling wire. Jason stood with his hands on his hips, puzzling out the odd markings, and when he turned and Ana bounced the ball off the rough concrete and into his hands, a look of pure, uncontained pleasure lit up his face. He dribbled the ball a few times to get the feel of the surface, then circled around, took three fast steps, and shot it neatly through the lopsided hoop.
"I thought they didn't play basketball here," he said.
"Does that look like a regulation hoop? They don't—well, not many of them. I brought the ball with me."
That stopped him short. "You brought the ball in your—oh. Duh. You let the air out first."
"I thought I was going to have to blow it up with my mouth like a balloon. Sara found me an old pump in the tool shed."
So she and Jason and little Dulcie played basketball, undisturbed and undistracted by the adults and children who came to investigate the odd noises. She blocked him, he dodged her, and Dulcie ran after them both, shrieking in joy. Twice Jason lifted his sister up so she could dunk the ball down through the makeshift and increasingly asymmetrical hoop. The third time Dulcie dunked it, the hoop came down. Dulcie felt terrible, but Jason only laughed.
Ana retrieved the mashed hoop. "I think this design needs some work," she said, putting it into the sack with the ball. "But now, I want to take you two for a walk."
She took a smaller sack out of the lumpy one, threaded the handles up over her shoulder, plunked obedient hats on all three heads, and led the two children down the road to the east of the house. The sparking air was rich with the fragrances of mint (from Dulcie, whose class had worked in the herb garden) and roses, lavender and cut grass, and the clean smell of sweat from the boy at her side.
The abbey was not quite as impressive when approached from the direction of cultivated land, but it was still a place of calm loveliness, even to a five-year-old child and a fourteen-year-old boy.
"It used to be a church," she told them. "Four hundred years ago it was part of a monastery; you can see the outline of the walls. That lumpy ground over there was probably the monastery itself, where the monks lived and worked."
They walked up and down, investigating the vague shapes beneath the turf, and then went into the space between the abbey walls and up to where the altar stone peeped out of the grass. There she laid out her picnic of cheese sandwiches and juice and three large and somewhat travel-worn cellophane-wrapped chocolate chip cookies that she had bought at the airport in Phoenix. She gave them each a packet of broken pieces, keeping for herself the one that had been completely pulverized.
They ate their open-air meal, and after they had finished she lay back on her elbows, watching surreptitiously as the two children explored the crumbling walls and ran their fingers over the time-softened carvings. It was a new sensation for Jason to be valued, she decided, first by Steven and now by Jonas. The approval of the two male authority figures and the complete change in setting had continued to work their magic on him. He looked younger and more nearly content than she had seen him, and it was like a knife in her heart to know that if she had anything to say in the matter, it would not last. Jonas would be revealed as a dangerous lunatic, Dierdre would go back home with her parents, Steven's school would be smashed, and these two children who in a few short weeks had taken control of her thoughts and her affections, would be farmed out again to the chance protection of foster homes.
And all that only if she was very lucky.
The sun grew low in the sky, and eventually she stirred and began to gather up the papers and bread crusts. "Thank you," she told them. "I can't remember when I had a nicer afternoon."
"Thanks for the basketball," Jason said. "That was cool."
"Even though I broke the hoop," said Dulcie.
"It can be fixed," Ana said.
On the way back to the house Dulcie alternately lagged behind and raced ahead. On one of these surges Ana drew a breath and let it out slowly.
"Jason," she said,"there's a couple of things I need you to know and then forget unless you need them. And I have to ask you not to say anything about either of them to anyone, not for, oh, maybe two or three months. It is extremely important to me that you particularly not tell Jonas what I'm about to say. I realize this isn't fair to you, keeping a secret from someone like that, but if he or Steven found out, I could be in big trouble. I'm asking you to trust me. Will you?"
After a while he said, "Okay."
"Promise?"
"I said I would," he said testily.
"Thank you. Two things. If anything happens here, if there's a raid or someone appears with a gun or we have an earthquake—no, come to think of it, they don't have earthquakes in England. Anything major and confusing anyway, I want you to promise me you'll grab Dulcie and get her away from the house. Take her to the abbey, or the woods. Don't try to find me or Jonas or your friend Dierdre or anyone, just grab Dulcie and run."
"What's the other thing?"
She took a deep breath and let it out. "I have a friend, an old friend, who works for the FBI. Yes I know, it seems unlikely, doesn't it? Anyway, his name is Glen McCarthy. If you're ever in real need of a friend yourself—years from now, even—get in touch with Glen. He owes me big. Mention my name and he'll help you."
Jason studied the trees for a minute. "I thought you were a friend."