“You said it yourself once, when I was visiting Angie’s office!”
“I was kidding!” He holds out his arms and appraises his T-shirt. The heart tattoo is in full view.
“You literally wear a heart on your sleeve,” I observe.
“Oh.” He drops his arms and it disappears under his shirt. “Yeah.”
“What’s the tattoo about?”
He looks at the sea. A little slice of sun has peeked out from the clouds and soft yellow rays slant over the water. “I’ll tell you another time.”
“Look who’s being mysterious.”
He shakes his head. I guess he’s not giving out this information today.
The breeze has picked up. The afternoon is waning. “My mother is going to kill me when I go home.”
Finn’s eyes narrow.
“What?” I ask him.
“Your mother . . .”
“My mother . . . ?”
“You can’t let her rule you.”
I press my fingertip into one of the crumbs on my plate. “Easier said than done.”
“You have more power than you realize.”
“Right.”
“Of course you do. I was at your audience. You have all the power, not your mother. I saw what you did.”
My eyes flicker up. Seek Finn across the table. “And what did you see?”
“I saw . . .”
What?
“What?”
“I saw a girl performing . . . miracles.” This last word is a disbelieving whisper.
“Did you?”
His eyebrows arch. “Did I?”
I remember the rush of faith I felt this morning. “Yes,” I tell him, and in this moment, it is the truth. I believe in myself. I was there, after all, on Saturday. I am Marlena, the Healer, the Saint. It isn’t a fairy tale. I am not a fairy tale.
“What does it feel like?” Finn asks.
I push my plate to the side and lean my elbows onto the table. “Honestly, it feels amazing. Like the most intimate moment you’ve ever had with another person, like your soul and theirs are connected. An instance of perfect unity.”
“Wow.”
“And it’s not just emotional. I see so much. There are colors, and I can hear everything. Like the essence of a person is composed of music.”
“Marlena,” Finn breathes.
I can tell he is rapt. “Yes?”
“But?”
He knows. He knows there is more. And there is. The anger, the uncertainty bubbles up, as I think of how to go on. “But there is a dark side to my healings. It’s exhausting, and it gets more so as I get older.” I think of the people Mrs. Jacobs brought to my audience a few months back. “Sometime I wonder if my gift is waning, or growing more unpredictable, if sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. And sometimes I’ve wondered if my gift is not from God like my mother says, but from the devil, like I might be dipping into a spring in hell and pulling up water from its fires for people to drink.” I shiver. “Wow, that is something I’ve never said out loud.” I pause, and Finn leans forward. “Sometimes, I wonder if the cost of healing someone is my own well-being. Like, I’m draining my health and passing it on to them. Like, maybe one day, I’ll end up depleted and sick and incurable. That death will be my punishment for keeping people alive.”
“That’s horrible.”
“But even worse,” I go on, because I can’t seem to stop, “I’m just . . . alone. We don’t even have other family. I have my mother and . . . no one. Nothing. Healing and some books about women who lived hundreds of years ago. It’s been nice to have Angie. And you. It’s the first time I’ve disobeyed the rules of this life so that I can do something I want. Something my mother didn’t approve.”
Finn is thoughtful. Calm. Some of that calm reaches across the table and flows into me, like a balm. “Why don’t you take a break?”
“What do you mean?”
“You know, take some time off from healing?”
I shake my head. The idea seems ridiculous. Impossible. “I can’t do that.”
“Why not?”
“Because being a healer doesn’t work that way. Because my mother would never allow it,” I add, realizing this is true.
“You said she would never allow you to meet with Angie, but you’re doing it. You’re eighteen. You can make your own decisions.”
A giant wave slaps into the rocks, followed by a loud splash. The force of it matches the feelings surging in me. “But I’ve never known anything different.”
“And you never will, unless you allow yourself to.”
Could I really do what Finn is suggesting?
“But my mother . . .”
“Can’t force you to do anything you’re unwilling to do.”
“It’s complicated,” I say.
He takes a deep breath. “Life is complicated. That’s never going to change. It’s not a reason to avoid doing something you want to do. And need to.” The look in Finn’s eyes is sincere and beautiful and open. No one has ever looked at me like this, not even at my healings. I don’t think I knew until now how much I’ve yearned for someone to see me this way. I don’t know what to say. I almost want to run away.
“Finn.”
He waits for me to go on.
“I should go,” I whisper.
“Oh.” He sounds disappointed. “I’ll take you home.”
He starts to get up and so do I, but my dress gets caught on the bench and I go tumbling to the ground.
“Are you all right?”
I try to laugh off my spill. “I’m fine.” There are grass stains on the white sheath to add to the coffee-stained slippers. What a mess. I hope that Finn will hold out his hand to help me get up, but he doesn’t.
“You’ve given me a lot to think about.” I look at him from my crouch on the ground. “But there’s one thing I don’t have to think about.”
“What’s that?”
“I want to see you again. I mean, not just at Angie’s center.”
“Okay,” he says.
“All right.”
“All right.”
Finn reaches toward me.
When I take his hand, as he pulls me up, I see suns and stars, streaks of color. I see a swirl of red at Finn’s center, vibrant and beautiful. But there is something else. Sorrow. A sorrow I can’t quite explain or express, a pool of it collecting behind the red.
Once I am standing, Finn lets go. The joyful colors, the suns and stars, the watery sorrow fade. I wait and breathe, breathe and wait, until eventually they disappear. The only thing that remains is the knowledge, the certainty, that my life, my real life, is finally about to begin. That, in fact, it already has.
NINETEEN
When I get home, my mother is sitting on the couch in front of the windows, still in her white suit and heels. The ocean is a stormy dark blue behind her. The workers and television people are gone. The shattered mug and coffee in the kitchen have been cleaned up, the papers piled onto the counter.
“Did you have a nice day, Marlena?” Her gaze goes to the grass stains on my dress, then up to the gray scarf around my neck. Finn’s scarf. I’m still wearing it. “Where did you get that?”
“It doesn’t matter,” I say.
“It does to me. Whose is it?”
I shake my head.
Anger flickers across my mother’s face. “Tell me that some boy didn’t give it to you. You know that boys are off-limits. We both agreed.”