And there is a Maddison, he thought. Whatever her purpose might be, whyever she felt the need to do this, there is a Maddison.
He continued, “I’ve read some about visitations, research for a novel I once thought I might write. I don’t claim to understand them. Personally, I don’t find any organized religion’s explanation fully convincing, and in fact many religions deny the existence of ghosts or the ability of spirits to return. It all seems stranger and more complex than doctrinal explanations. I need to do some reading. I need to think about this.”
Calista reached out and unerringly found his hand and squeezed it. “You read, child, you think. I know. She was here, she was my Emily. As strange as it was, it nevertheless gave me greater peace than I’ve known in ten years.”
“That makes me happy, Calista. You can’t know how happy. Life is full of mysteries, isn’t it? And maybe we don’t always need to know the answers to them. Each thing we don’t understand is a wall, and we spend our lives throwing ourselves against those walls, with little to show for it in the end. Maybe sometimes it’s just best to accept the limitations of our understanding, accept that some things will be forever beyond our knowledge.”
He realized that he was debating with himself, not with any intention of convincing Calista, who didn’t need to be convinced. Further, he knew that he was not capable of taking his own advice.
The sun had mined a golden treasure from the western sky, and in Calista’s face, fortune’s light turned back the effects of time, so that she appeared young again, her smile that of a girl to whom the sorrows of the world were as yet unrevealed.
| 46 |
From Balboa Island, David Thorne didn’t drive directly home, but curbed his car on Ocean Boulevard in Corona del Mar and walked through the park to Inspiration Point. He stood at the railing, staring out to sea. The vast, deep waters seemed to wash to shore even as in fact they were receding from it.
Whatever reason Maddison might have for temporarily keeping secrets from him—
Be patient, Davey. Give me breathing room . . . Give me a few days, and I’ll explain everything.
—whatever justification she might rightly have for teasing him with claims of being an assassin, he nevertheless felt that she had crossed a line by introducing herself to Emily’s mother. Unless she was Emily. Calista Carlino was sacrosanct. With uncommon grace, she had endured a life of afflictions: a drunken and unloving mother; poverty; blindness since childhood; a cruel husband who abandoned her; the loss of her only child. David couldn’t tolerate Calista being drawn into whatever web of fantasy Maddison might be spinning around herself . . . if Maddison wasn’t Emily.
True, Maddison’s visit had enchanted Calista, lifted her heart. But it could as easily have frightened her or disturbed her so that she would have been robbed of the peace that she’d found during the past decade.
And what was he to make of some of the last words Maddison had spoken to Calista?
I’ve come back just for this one visit . . .
Only that morning, before Maddison left the house, before David had gone off to the cemetery and then to points north, she promised him a future together.
We belong together, and we will be together, and there won’t be any secrets between us . . . there are beautiful days ahead of us.
Was that promise a lie? How could she tell Calista that she had come for one visit—and subsequently become a part of David’s life, therefore a fixture in Calista’s as well?
How could she make a pretense of being Emily’s spirit—but then later reappear as flesh-and-blood Maddison?
I’ve come back just for this one visit, so you will know that I’m happy and beyond all pain . . .
Maybe Maddison acted out of compassion, but if that were the case, her actions were misguided. Unless . . . Unless . . .
The mystery of this woman didn’t fade with every new thing he learned about her, but instead grew more impenetrable.
He wasn’t angry with Maddison. Long ago, by his own descent into deceit, he had forfeited the right to be angered by the deceit of others. He did not have it in him to confront her in righteous indignation, any more than one thief deserved the right to lecture another thief about his larceny.
As he’d stood at the railing, the sun became a wound as it met the sharp horizon line of the sea, and an artery opened in the sky, spilling scarlet light across the west.
When he returned home, if he pressed Maddison to explain why she had visited Calista, he would surely open the door to questions about what he had been doing during the day, prior to responding to Calista’s phone call.