Belonging?

No one wants you.

Enlightenment?

Huh? What?

Confession?

Oh yeah, breakdown.

Daddy would kill me.

If Mom didn't kill you first.

And if I don't stop talking to myself, I'll only prove that I really am crazy.

Schizophrenic, maybe.

Yeah, Kaeleigh, shut the hell up.

373.

Schizophrenic Me Can barely pay attention to what I'm doing at work, with all the conversation going back and forth in my head. Mental tug-of-war.

Finally I get the breakfast table set. The residents start to trickle in, many dressed up for their own worship to come. Among those women **

in cheerful flowered dresses is Greta, no gentleman beside her. She sits and I go over.

"No Lars today? And you look so pretty, too!"

Greta sighs.

Lars will not come to church with me.

He says there is no God.

He used to think differently, once long ago. The war...

She's known him that long?

"I didn't realize you've known each other since before the war.

Is that how you lost each other?"

What wedged them apart?

374.

Greta's Tale Comes from a place deep, deep inside. It takes a few minutes to surface.

Finally it shudders free.

Lars and I met as small children.

We played together in the streets, and by the time the war started, we were in love. Really, we **

were still only children. I must have been twelve or thirteen, and Lars was a year older.

Our love was pure, and born **

of friendship. But when my father found out, he forbade me to see Lars. We met in secret, shared kisses and laughter. Nothing more.

One day my father discovered us together He nearly beat me to death. I feared he would kill Lars, and so it was almost a relief **

when Lars put on a uniform and went to fight the Nazis.

Almost.

Her voice softens, slows.

I.

mean, he was only a boy inside, 375.

although on the outside he looked every bit the handsome soldier.

My father tried to stop me from going to say good-bye.

But for once, my mother intervened. "Let her go," she said. "She may never see him again." And I didn't.

Not until a few weeks ago, when he showed up here.

More than sixty years have gone by.

Sixty years we can **

never get back, six decades filled with things we will never speak of. But we accept that, and have promised **

to share the few years we have left, create new memories, joyous and loving, that we can take with us when we go.

376.

Love, Resurrected After more than sixty years.

Must be that love never died.

And that means it had to have been alive in the first place.

I want to know living love.

And I don't want to wait for it.

I go through the motions of this mindless work, mind totally **

locked on Ian and possibility.

As soon as I finish, I call him.

He's home.

Hey. I was hoping I'd hear from you. So...

He doesn't have to ask. "Pick me up. Mom can wait."

It's an impossibly long fifteen minutes. Finally I hear his bike, **

and the sound of its approach fills me with happiness. And **

something else. Something very much like desire.

377.

And Now I See His Face And the warmth of his smile intensifies the heat wave flowing inside me. But I have to play cool because that's what good girls do and I want to be good for Ian. "Hey. Missed you."

Not as much as I missed you.

Come here.

And he pulls me into him and now we're kissing and I want to make this amazing sense of belonging last forever.

Have I told you lately I love you?

I fold myself up into his arms, close as one body can get to another, except for...I go stiff at the thought.

No Kaeleigh, no. That's not what this is. It's okay to be here, plastered right up against this incredible guy.

But the magic has dissipated, the warmth frozen over. Ian can't help but notice.

What's wrong?

I shake my head, cling tighter.

In the past, Ian would have turned away. Today he holds fast.

Stay.

378.

Like a Puppy I stay, and for once I stay long enough for the ice dam to melt, warm into an easy flow, burgeoning into a river of need. My pulse picks up speed and I lift my eyes to his, have to look away or I might go blind at the blaze raging there. "Oh God, Ian, I can't believe how much I love you."

And he kisses me again, and now I understand how love can come alive inside you, beneath your skin, beneath your flesh and bone, a separate entity, breathing in and out its own special air, expanding to fill all those hollow places that you can't fill by yourself.

I want to be good. Don't want to go stiff. But if I don't, this sudden rush of want will become unstoppable.

So maybe I'd better stop it now.

379.

Raeanne Home, Bitter Home Mom's home, oh yeah, oh boy. Waiting for her to light into Daddy is like standing beside a river knowing you're going to fall in, no matter what you do.

The only real question is when.

I didn't used to mind their raging at each other. When I was little, I thought it was better than a deep freeze of silence.

Rage meant they were still alive, still feeling something.