“Colin, I’ll get you out of here. Please, don’t leave me.”
I pressed my lips to his and kissed him. I felt him respond, and for a moment I was filled with relief. But then he went slack. I needed help desperately, but I couldn’t leave Colin alone, even for a second.
I stood up to look for Sabeena as fusillades of gunfire sprayed around me. I felt a hard thump to my rib cage. My vision blurred and slid sideways. I was screaming inside my head when all that I’d known went black.
NO. PLEASE, GOD. NO.
Part Two
Chapter 23
I WAS seated comfortably, speeding through total darkness toward a soft light far away. I smelled nothing, heard nothing, and I was not afraid. I wiggled my fingers, and I flexed my toes, but I had no desire to stand or stretch my arms or look in any direction but straight ahead.
I became suddenly aware of a warm place inside my chest that was not part of me. It was an unknown presence, knowing and alive, and it conveyed an idea to me. A big one. That what was happening to me now was meant to be.
I formed words inside my mind.
I asked, What is this?
I wasn’t answered in words, but I had an understanding, something like, You know. You called out to Me.
The warmth expanded out from my chest to the ends of my fingers and toes. What was happening? Was I with God? Was His spirit inside me? Was He protecting me?
Why now?
Am I dead? I asked.
There was no answer.
I had another question, equally pressing.
What happened?
The silence was accompanied by a warm breeze, and then the void was filled. I was far above the killing field in South Sudan, above the birds that cast circling shadows over the ground, and I heard blades chopping at the air. Thousands of bodies stretched out to the horizon. It hurt me to see them, but I could not look away.
Why has this happened? What purpose has it served?
I was sitting on the ground that radiated dry, baking heat. My eyes were half-closed to keep out the dust, and my mouth was dry. At my feet was the wounded soldier, Nick Givens.
But Givens became Nadir, the brave and hilarious boy who’d been shot and had his body hung on the wall. His arms were stretched out, and he looked up at me with light in his eyes.
Nadir is dead. Givens is dead. Why? What is the point of this?
A voice came to me, loud and echoing. “Brigid. Hang on.” It was Sabeena. I watched as my dear friend ran toward a helicopter. Men jumped down from the aircraft and headed toward where I sat in the bloodied dirt with Colin’s head in my lap.
Colin is dead. He’s gone. This can’t be.
A sound inside my mind seemed to say, Be with Colin.
I was with Colin entirely. I felt his terrible guilt and emotional pain. I understood his shame and how hard he had tried to redeem himself in the company of Kind Hands. But now, his expression was gentle, as though he had found peace at last. His voice, but not his voice, entered my mind.
I truly love you, Brigid. Do you know that?
My thoughts went out to him.
I love you, Colin. And I’m so very sorry. It was my fault that you were shot. Forgive me, please. You shouldn’t have died.
His silent words came to me again. Please listen to me, Brigid. Live a good life. Live.
Hands came from above and lifted me roughly onto a stretcher. I heard running feet, felt my weightless body being hoisted up, passed to other hands inside the helicopter.
“Brigid. Can you hear me? Brigid.” That was Sabeena.
I was inside a confessional booth. I saw Father Delahanty’s silhouette through the curtain. I had been holding his hand when he died.
He had wanted to confess, but he had said, “God has a plan for you.”
The last words of a dying man made no sense. I had only hoped to give him comfort.
Father. Why did you have to die?
A reply seemed to come from a presence warming my body and filling my mind, a presence that felt other than mine.
He lived the full extent of his life.
No. I reject that. A black rage filled me, and I thought, This is all wrong. What kind of god are you? Answer me.
No answer.
I thought, And me? Have I lived the full extent of my life?
I was in the back of the donkey cart with the remains of the dead. Father Delahanty’s body was wrapped securely in a sheet. I crossed his forehead with my thumb, and a thought bloomed in my mind fully formed. Father Delahanty wanted me to know that God had a plan for me. That He had more for me to do.
A plan? What plan is this? Speak, damn you.
A soft light was all around me. I could see it through closed eyelids, and I could almost touch it.
What is the plan?
Someone shook my shoulder.
Sabeena? Is it you? Was this all a dream?
Chapter 24
I OPENED my eyes. I was leaning against a man in the seat beside me. He was wearing a dark coat, a brimmed hat, and leather gloves. He looked to be in his sixties, and his wrinkled face was very kind.
“Oh,” I said, pulling back. “Mi dispiace tanto. I’m so sorry.”
We were on a train, and it was decelerating. Lights flashed in the windows, and the flip sign at the front of the car read CIVITAVECCHIA.
The man spoke to me in Italian.
“I hated to wake you, miss. But we are coming into Roma Termini. I’ll get your bag down. We’re here.”
People got up from their seats and gathered their possessions. The man with the hat reached up to the rack and took down my satchel.
“Watch out,” he said. “Be aware of your surroundings. Rome is a big city.”
I thanked him.
He touched his hat and was absorbed into the crush of people moving to the exit doors as the train squealed to a stop. I followed the crowd to the terminal, and from there to the street, where I joined a long taxi queue outside.
The city scene was loud and jarring, a mixed-up puzzle of sights and sounds that did not fit together in my mind. In the place of donkey carts and old Land Rovers were sports cars speeding, shifting gears, braking suddenly, accompanied by the constant blaring of horns.
Pedestrian traffic was also loud and clashing. Fashionable people carried shopping bags and computer bags. They laughed and shouted into cell phones as they strode purposefully down the sidewalk, hardly looking up at all.
Where were they going? To what end? It had been two long years since I had lived in a city.
I moved along with the queue until I was at the front of the line, and the driver of a white Fiat opened the door for me. He saw the way I held my arm and took my battered leather bag and put it in the trunk.
I got into the taxi and gripped the armrest as the driver shot away from the curb. He knew the address I had given him, and he sped through the streets of Rome. Centrifugal force pinned me painfully to the side of the cab, then threw me toward the far side of the seat as we drove around the traffic circles.
The driver had a picture of his wife and children in a frame stuck to the dashboard, and he had hung a rosary from the rearview mirror. The cross swung hypnotically as we took the many high-speed turns. That swinging rosary made me physically sick. I looked away.
I was wearing the same jeans, blue cotton shirt, and crocheted cardigan that I’d worn when I first went to South Sudan. And now I was also wearing Sabeena’s secondhand pink Skechers that, evidently, she had passed down to me.