It was in his face. A rapt attention—an eagerness—to the details of disease and death. He showed no signs of sorrow or trouble at the wasting bodies and tormented souls on every side. Instead, he seemed to greet every new vision of the plague with unspoken enthusiasm. Like a student discovering new vistas in his chosen field of study.
But this field should not leave any human soul unmoved.
And Teresa realized something else.
There were four of them making the rounds together, along with Franz, and as usual the sisters of the Oneness responded to their deep communion in impercetible ways as they worked. They knew when one needed a reprieve, when another’s gifts would better suit the needs at hand, how to strengthen each other’s hands and fill the gaps. They did not need to speak, as their hearts continued in communication deeper than words, and so they rarely did. But Franz’s presence, Teresa realized as they moved from litter to litter, patient to patient in the hazy, stinking room, was like a boulder in the midst of their stream. He interfered with the flow, created friction, brought distraction—and more than distraction. In some way his being there fractured them.
Her paintings had been for some time now set up in the hall, positioned so that various of the sick could see them. There were more than one hundred of the diseased and dying lying on litters in the great room, and they so took Teresa’s attention that she had ceased to notice or think about the paintings. But she happened to look up while she was talking to a dying man, a very old man who seemed to see in her his own daughter or perhaps a sweetheart from his youth, and saw Franz Bertoller examining one of her works with a look on his face that she could not describe.
It might have been anger or confusion.
And it felt like a knife to her heart.
* * *
“I need to speak with you about Franz Bertoller,” she told Mother Isabel in the abbess’s study that evening.
“The young nobleman who has been helping the girls?” Mother asked.
“The same.”
“Speak on.”
“I think we must tell him he is no longer welcome,” Teresa said.
Mother Isabel frowned. “That sounds rather drastic. Do you have a reason for turning away help in a season when we need it so badly? I need not remind you that we number only thirty-two, and the plagued are more than three times our number. The young lord is not one of us, but his hands are not wasted.”
“And yet, Mother, there is something deeply wrong about his spirit. Carmela told me of it—I thought as you do, but she urged me to come and see for myself. He does help us, but it is as though he rejoices in the plague.”
Mother’s frown grew deeper. “You would make him a monster. Those who are not One are not therefore our enemies, Teresa.”
“I am bothered by his otherness,” Teresa confessed; “it is a distraction as we work together, and I suspect he keeps us from drawing others into the Oneness while he is present. His being there scatters us. But that is not my primary objection. I tell you, there is something wrong in the way he looks at the dying. And the paintings.”
The last three words escaped her mouth before she could recall them, and she immediately regretted them. Mother Isabel sat back and looked up at her, her eyes holding unmistakable reproof. “He criticizes your artwork, does he?”
“He seems not to know what to make of them.”
“And that makes you wish that he would stay away?”
“Something about it troubles me deeply, yes. But it is not that alone, Mother; it is the other things I’ve said.”
“I know it was not easy for you to bring your gift into the light,” Mother said. “You are exposing your soul in your artwork. I understand that. It embarrasses you. And maybe you don’t want this young man to see your soul, and maybe you are very troubled that when he does see it, he does not understand it. Even reacts negatively. Yes?”
That was all true, though Teresa hadn’t understood it until now. She nodded, but let out a sigh of frustration. “It is true, Mother. And I am sure I need to be more humble, and to let the paintings serve others without wrapping myself up in them so much. I cannot deny that. But please, Mother, believe me. It is not for that reason that I am speaking to you of this.”
“This young man,” Mother Isabel said, in a tone that suggested she might not have heard anything Teresa had just said, “he shows some interest in you also, does he not? They say he has transferred his affections from Carmela, and her family will be very angry.”
“That is true,” Teresa said quietly. She cursed herself for mentioning the paintings—for turning the focus of this conversation inadvertently upon herself. It should have been someone else, she realized, to come to Mother Isabel with these concerns, someone who didn’t seem so personally embroiled. Much as she hated to admit it, she looked like anything but an objective witness.
So she was not surprised when Mother said, “I cannot turn away help, Teresa. Not now. But I release you from any obligation to work alongside the young man. Keep your distance with my blessing, even should it mean that sometimes we are short-handed. But I wish him to continue lending his aid, and I hope that as he works alongside our sisters, his spirit will be drawn into the Oneness as all of ours have been.”
Teresa nodded, gloom settling into her heart. This was not the conclusion she’d hoped for.
“Now, tell me, how is the boy?”
It took her a moment to understand the question. “Oh, Niccolo. He is doing somewhat better. When I go to check on him he is more often awake, and I think soon I shall have to find him a way to occupy himself.”
Mother chuckled. “Yes, indeed. There is nothing more dangerous than an unoccupied child. But if he is doing so well, we shall soon have to move him from your quarters.”
“He cannot be transferred into the sick hall,” Teresa said, alarmed. “I think the air there is foul. I would fear for its effect on him.”
“Mmmm, indeed. Another solution will have to be found.”
“Yes.” Teresa waited, but Mother seemed finished with the audience. She turned, hesitantly, to go, and blurted, “Mother, please, will you continue to think about what I . . .”
“Teresa, you are free from any need to consort with the man. That is all I can give you for now.”
Nodding, she left the room unhappily.
Chapter 5
Richard sat in the waiting room with his hands clasped between his knees, leaning forward. He hadn’t bothered to remove his knit cap or gloves, despite the fact that the room was warm—overly warm, April thought.
Posters displaying various forms of disease in stages of bad to worse hung on the walls. Silent clusters of visitors sat together, mostly grim-faced; one woman chattered in Spanish to the man next to her. A much older woman in the corner of the room was silently weeping.
April felt overwhelmed by it all. By the people looking death in the face, and she could do nothing to help them.
She could not even help Richard, who looked grimmest of them all.
She had invited herself along, even though Mary was already going to accompany Melissa into the doctor’s office, because she didn’t want Richard to be alone. But for all her good intentions, he seemed pretty alone anyway.
It was so warm.
There was little question what the doctor would say. Melissa’s last appointment had confirmed what they could all see in her face and the weight she was losing—that the miraculous halting of her cancer had ceased, and the disease was marching forward aggressively.
Richard still blamed himself for that. Even though they all, Melissa included, understood and had verbalized that there had been no other choice. It was that guilt, as much as the looming prospect of Melissa’s death, that made his face so haggard and his shoulders so bent.
She wanted to say something. “It’s going to be okay.” Except it wasn’t. “It’s not your fault.” Except it was. If Richard hadn’t interfered with the children and challenged the hive, Melissa might still be facin
g a lifetime of music and fame and success.
She might still be facing a lifetime.
Richard was staring straight forward.
April stood suddenly and shed her coat. It was just so hot.
What is the point, she wanted to burst out, of being Oneness, of being a light against the darkness and holding the world together against the forces of chaos, if you can’t even do a thing about death? If you can’t stop one of your own from dying, if one of your own can actually die because she is faithful to Oneness, and if you can sit in a room full of frightened, dying people and do nothing at all to help or to stop it?
Richard looked up at her, his face suddenly questioning, and she realized she hadn’t sat back down, and that her temperature was rising and she was fairly sure her face was going red and her breathing was getting short. Other people were staring at her now too.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I think I need to go outside for a minute. It’s hot in here.”
Richard had both eyebrows raised, his forehead wrinkled in question. At least she was distracting him from Melissa. She wanted to say something else, but her overheating body wouldn’t allow for it. She turned and rushed out the door, dashed down the hallway, controlled her breathing as the elevator descended two floors, and ran through the revolving door into the cold air outside.
A grey drizzle greeted her, mixed with the sooty, exhaust-fumed air of Lincoln. Tall buildings on all sides marked out the downtown area where the clinic was located. She gulped in the air, grateful for it despite the pollution. Rain on the glass windows and lights reflecting off the water on the roads made everything seem darker and gloomier, and she shivered.
“So,” she said out loud, not caring about passersby, “what good is it to be Oneness if you can’t beat death? Answer that.”
To her surprise, the Spirit did.
With one word.
Julie.
* * *
The first of Miranda’s screaming fits struck the second night they were all together as a family in the house. Andrew came running and nearly bumped into Julie, who was running down the hallway from the bedroom at the opposite end of the hall—he had moved himself into the living room and given his own room to his wife, while their daughter occupied what had been a bare, optimistic spare room for years. A nightlight illuminated the hallway just enough to keep the two from colliding.
That seemed fitting. Andrew had bought that nightlight in a fatherly shopping fit fifteen years ago, assuming that his soon-to-be-born child would be scared of the dark. He had never thrown it away. And his child was scared of the dark. Or of something in it.
Despite every instinct screaming at him to burst through the bedroom door and slay whatever dragon was making his daughter cry, Andrew backed off and let Julie enter first. She went straight to Miranda’s bedside, calling her name and snuggling onto the mattress next to her. Miranda woke up with an incoherent stream of words and then sobs, and she curled closer to her mother. Andrew opened the door wide enough that the glow from the nightlight could get in. He didn’t want to flick on the overhead light and hurt anyone’s eyes.
He wished he didn’t feel so awkward.
“Hush,” Julie was whispering. “Hush, it’s okay. It’s okay, Miranda. What’s wrong, baby? Hush, hush.”
Andrew stood in the doorway searching the shadows of the room for a dragon.
Or maybe for Jacob.
At this moment, he could kill Jacob. Probably it was best that the man was already dead.
Though that thought left him with an unsatisfied hollow in the center of his being.
Miranda was murmuring something, maybe telling Julie what was wrong, but Andrew couldn’t hear from where he stood, and no one invited him in. He stood in the door for a few more minutes and then excused himself and stalked back to the living room, leaving the door open for the nightlight.
He paced in front of the couch in the dark. Cold illumination from a streetlight outside shone through a crack in the curtains. Andrew had never been an angry man, certainly not a violent one, but he raged now in the dim light. Raged silently and impotently.
Julie joined him and sat on the end of the couch an hour later. He had stopped pacing but could not lie down and rest, so he just stood there—a blank, restless knot of emotion.
Julie pulled her legs up and sat cross-legged, waiting for him to sit down too. He did, and took his glasses off the side table so he could make out her features as clearly as possible in the dark.
“Did you find out what was wrong?” he asked, surprised at how calm his own voice was.
“She had a nightmare. She wouldn’t say exactly what.”
“All that time and . . .”
“I can’t make her tell me, Andrew.”
“You were there an hour.” He let out a sigh of frustration and held up his hand to stifle any retort. “That’s not what I meant. I’m sorry. This is not your fault.”
“I feel helpless too,” she said.
“I’m her father. I should have been there to protect her.”
“You would have been. I took that choice away from you.”
He peered at her through the dimness. Neither made a move to turn on a light. “You’ve gotten very honest since your death.”
“I think resurrection leaves lies behind it. In the grave.”
“Can you tell me what happened to you?” he asked.
She nodded and gazed over his shoulder, pulling up memories. “I thought I heard Miranda screaming outside. I rushed out of the house to help her—I thought she was across the street. I never found her. I did run into thugs, and they shot me. I didn’t really have a moment to process any of it.”
“It’s what happened after that that I really want to know about,” Andrew said.
“Are you sure about that?” Julie looked especially vulnerable in the dim light—but especially untouchable too, foreign and strange. As she was in reality. He thought over her question seriously before answering it, and found that a part of him—a large part of him—wanted to say no.
He didn’t want to know what had happened. He wanted to know nothing at all about it. He didn’t want to hear what Julie had seen or felt or experienced or why she was alive when she had been dead. All of that was so far out of his normal world, and so far out of his control, that he wanted it to stay out. Forever.
But he couldn’t keep it out without keeping Julie out. And Miranda. Without closing the door he’d kept open for so long.
So he said, “Yes.”
“I died,” Julie said, very slowly. “But I didn’t. Some kind of separation happened. My . . . spirit, or whatever it is . . . separated from my body and didn’t die along with it. But at the same time I knew the body was dying, and then dead; I could feel that happening. And . . .” She stopped. “Honestly, Andrew, I can’t describe this part.”
“Fair enough,” he said.
“But then I could feel something breathing. It was this rhythm, inside me, coming through me . . . almost the way sound goes through you when the bass is turned up, but more than that, because I could feel it contracting and the breath rushing through me, and then suddenly my own lungs were breathing, and I could see light everywhere and feel warmth in every part of my body. My body, which was alive again, and I was back in it.”
She stopped there. So he picked it up. “And then, according to witnesses, you disappeared. In a cloud of light.”
“I don’t actually know,” she said. “I remember the light and the warmth, and the breathing. I can even remember feeling the alley underneath me, and the air—it was a hot night; the pavement was hot. And then I woke up. I don’t know when I fell asleep or what happened in the meantime.”
“You woke up. Not in the alley anymore?”
“No, I was in the woods. I thought I must not be in this world anymore.”
“Like you’d gone to heaven.”
“Yes.”
“But you hadn’t.”
“No.”
He could see it in her face—this was the part she didn’t want to tell him, or didn’t know how to tell him. This was the part that was going to change everything. He was tense. His hands and jaw were clenched. He tried to relax but he couldn’t, didn’t even really want to. He was waiting for a sucker punch and wanted to be ready for it.
“There was someone there with me, Andrew,” Julie said.
“Someone. A person?”
“Not . . . exactly. But a personality, yes.”
“And you talked and . . .”
“Maybe we should backtrack.” She took a deep breath. “I’m Oneness, Andrew. Do you understand what that means?”
He couldn’t keep the bitterness out of his voice. “Sure, Jacob talked about it all the time. Drawing apart to become the unified community of . . .”
“No, Jacob was wrong. He was promoting a mock-up of the Oneness, his own version. A mockery, really. Not the real thing. I never came into the Oneness while I was in the community, even though I thought I had.”
“Okay.” He blinked, a little confused but still resistant. “Okay, then, explain.”
“You met Reese. And Chris, and Tyler, and some of the others.”
“Yes. They helped me find Miranda.”
“They really are Oneness. And Reese brought me into it . . . into them. The Oneness is . . . it’s something supernatural. A real community, because when you enter it, you all become part of each other, and the spirit world opens up to you.”
Andrew laughed this time, bitterly again. “You don’t have to tell me about the supernatural. I saw the fire. And that freak trying to offer my daughter as a sacrifice.”
It’s no wonder, he told himself, that she’s having nightmares.
“Sorry,” he said. “So how do you get into this . . . Oneness?”
“It’s hard to describe.”
“No surprise there. Sorry again. Keep going.”
“Reese visited me, and in her presence I could just feel the Oneness—like an open invitation. And I wanted it, so I accepted the invitation and it just happened. If it hadn’t, I don’t think I would have survived the shooting. I think it was being Oneness that saved me.”
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