The Healer

THIRTY-FOUR

All night I work.

I climb into the attic and take down the boxes marked “Marlena,” bring them to my room, and return my bedroom to its former appearance. I take everything out of my closet, remove every bit of color. I take the novels I will never have the chance to read, the bright-green thwacking flip-flops I love so much, the platform sandals, the teeny flowered bikini Fatima helped me pick out, the phone with the texts from Finn that keep lighting up its screen nonstop, and heap them onto the chairs and the shelves and the floor of the gift room. The only thing I can’t bear to part with is my Finn painting. That I bring to the attic and shut it away there tight.

I unpack the boxes with my books by mystics, about mystics, about healers like me. I set them on the table by my reading chair just so, line them up on the shelves as they were before. I try to remember their exact order. The Dark Night of the Soul, by Saint John of the Cross, on the bottom, followed by Revelations of Divine Love, by Julian of Norwich, The Interior Castle, by Teresa of Ávila, Hadewijch’s slim volume of poems, The Book of Margery Kempe, by Margery Kempe. Finally, the thickest among them, The Showings, by Hildegard of Bingen. I return the paintings and collages of my visions to the wall. I put them in the same places they hung for years.

Will being so precise, so exact and so careful, help to restore my gift?

The last thing I do is the thing I loathe most. I unpack those horrible white shifts, the filmy long-sleeved dresses I thought I would never touch again. One by one I unfold them and hang them in my closet until my closet is full. The last one I put on, pulling it over my head and letting it slide down my body.

I go into the bathroom and look in the mirror, stare into the face of the girl who looks back. Once again she wears the uniform of Marlena the Healer. This Marlena looks exactly the same as before on the outside, dark hair falling around her shoulders, long-sleeved cotton dress, demure and tentlike, concealing all the curves of her body.

My body, the shape of it, is unchanged, my skin may be unmarked, but inside I am different.

A body that has been loved by another is somehow different from the body of someone who’s never felt love.

But maybe if I can go back to that other girl, then Finn will live.

There are some lines, Marlena, once you cross them there is no going back.

Those words from my mother have been ringing within me all night. Was my mother right? Did I cross too many lines? Have I ruined my gift?

But loving Finn didn’t feel like ruining myself.

It felt like finally making myself whole.

Helen’s words keep plaguing me, too, Helen the unassuming prophet. “But what if someone is sick?” she asked me the night of the party. “What if I came to you now in that chair? Would you turn me away?”

My answer had been a nonanswer, a sidestepping of the question to avoid staring the unthinkable in the face, the possibility that someday I would want those healing powers again because I would need them to save someone I love. I was naïve to think it wouldn’t happen because it had never happened before. It hadn’t happened, I guess, because before I never really had anyone to lose.

I see myself shudder in the mirror.

I turn away from my reflection, return to my room, and get in my chair without attempting to sleep, curling my legs up underneath me and pulling my cotton sheath over them to my toes. I look out over the sea, waiting. Waiting some more. Waiting for that feeling to come back to me, the feeling of healing. I wait for it to return to my body, for it to take me over again, to possess me like a demon.

How does a person who knows love unknow it? Can I unweave it from my being? The phrase steeling oneself crawls to the surface of my mind. Is that how I must do it? Become steel, a hard and cold unfeeling metal, in the face of Finn? Would hardening myself against Finn make me stop loving him? Would it help me forget what I’ve lost?

I hope so.

The thought of never being with Finn, never having him to myself, never feeling his eyes on me or his lips on my lips, makes me want to die. But isn’t that why I’m doing this? My life for Finn’s? Because if I don’t at least try, then Finn will surely die, because he is dying already. This is the bargain. I would rather be in a world where I know Finn is alive, even if I can’t have him. Even if that.

It is the middle of the night, but I find myself leaving the house.

I head down the stairs and onto the beach. My feet slip and slide in the dry sand as I walk toward the water. The sea is rough, the waves churning like a storm might be coming. I stop when I get to the high tide line and stare into the black ocean. I concentrate, prodding every corner of my body and soul for the hint of a vision, but I am blank. A vast white space of nothingness.

My gift has disappeared and I know it, as intimately as the lines on my own hand.

How do I get it back? What do I do?

God, God, if you are listening, I will do anything. Anything!

I’ve heard of artists getting blocked, of writers who can’t find words, painters who’ve lost their inspiration. But healers? Do we go through periods where the gift won’t come to us? I am inching my toes across the wet packed sand and toward the cold churning sea when it comes to me.

The dark night of the soul.

The mystics always talk about this. These long periods when they feel their connection to God—their ability to see God, to talk to God, to receive words and images and visions of God—has left them entirely. They write of total abandonment, being banished into silence and isolation, a despair beyond any consolation. For them, the dark night is torture. It is the loss of the will to believe, to have faith in anything.

I feel this darkness in me now, spreading through my veins.

A tiny wave crashes over my ankles, splashing my knees and shins with icy, salty droplets, soaking the bottom of my shift.

Maybe my mother knew something I didn’t. Maybe she always has known. Maybe that’s why she’s kept me in long white gowns and thin, fragile slippers, a girl from another era, a ghost from centuries long past. My gift belongs in another time, when people believed in such things. When religion was all the science they’d ever known. Maybe my mother has tried to keep me living not quite in this world because she knew that once I stepped foot into the world as it is today, the gift would die with me, an ancient object that can no longer withstand the air and the elements and gives way to nothing. For Finn’s sake, I should’ve stayed in that liminal place between then and now, between there and here. Maybe then he would be okay. Maybe then I could save him.

The black water rushes around my ankles and up to my knees. For the mystics, the dark night was a test from God, after which their visions returned with even more force, more glory, than ever before.

This is my test.

I must take the shipwrecked pieces that I am, hold them together with all my might, and weather whatever comes.

By the time I go downstairs in the morning, the sun is high. My mother is busy, Fatima is busy. Papers are everywhere. There is the feeling of anticipation, of urgency. Fatima keeps glancing at me from the kitchen, like she wants to say something. But she doesn’t.

“Oh good,” my mother says. “You’re up.”

“I’ve always been up. I never slept.”

My mother pushes a sheet of paper across the table. “We need to do this as soon as possible. To quell the rumors.”

I peer at the paper in front of me. On it in big capital letters above and below the photo it says, “The Anniversary of the Day of Many Miracles, a Special Audience with Marlena.” The photo is of me on that day last year. I am surrounded by seekers, everyone reaching out to me. My eyes are closed and my arms are extended. My forearms, my elbows, all the way to my shoulders, are covered with the hands of others.

My mother doesn’t ask if I like the announcement or if I approve. She just goes about the business of restoring things to their former state, goes about the business of me, like there has been no break or vacation. She snatches the paper back and studies it.

“This will appear in all the papers and online,” she is saying, more to herself than to me. “And José has already talked to the print shop about the posters for the town. It will go out as an email to the local merchants and on your mailing list of people waiting for an audience, past attendees, tourists, etc.” She looks up.

“That is great, Mama,” I say quietly. “Thank you.”

In a way, I do have to thank her. My mother is nothing if not efficient with managing my life as a healer. Soon the trappings of it will be in place again and all I have to do is slip back into them. Like I never stepped away from them at all.

“Where is the bag of mail?” I ask Fatima the next time she looks at me.

Her expression is worried. “I can call José to have it brought in.”

I tear my eyes from her. “I would appreciate it.”

“What are you going to do with the mail?” my mother asks, sounding distracted.

“I’m going to answer it.”

“It will take you weeks to go through it.”

I clasp my hands. Try to seem like I am at peace. “I will work as long as it takes.”

“Whatever has gotten into you, Marlena, it is a very good thing,” my mother says.

“I’m glad you feel like Finn dying is a very good thing, Mama,” I reply.

“That is not what I meant,” she snaps.

“Isn’t it?”

“I meant that what you are doing now, coming back to your senses, is what needed to happen regardless of that boy.”

I turn, ready to leave, because I can’t take standing here any longer. “What I am doing now, Mama, is penance.”

The rest of the day I go through the mail, letter by letter. I respond at length by hand to each one. There is so much mail. My mother was right. It will take me weeks to get through it.

It’s not like I’ll be out doing other things.

It’s not like I’ll be with Finn.

The hours pass and my hand aches from holding the pen.

Dear Amy . . .

Dear Gero . . .

Dear Lupe . . .

Please forgive me . . .

I’m so sorry . . .

Please, please, please.

I beg for understanding, for forgiveness, I apologize again and again. I do this until my fingers are callused and bleeding. I keep going. I used to think that people who crawled to my audiences were crazy, but now I understand them in a way I never could before. When someone you love is sick, when they might die, you will do anything for any little bit of hope. Nothing is beyond you. You would give your life for theirs.

Dear Mario, I apologize . . .

Dear Tamika, It is unacceptable that I took so long to respond . . .

Will all of this begging and repentance make up for what I have done? Will it transform me back to the healer-saint I was? In writing these letters, I am begging God to hear me, forgive me, to allow the gift I never asked for to flourish again inside me.

Please. Please. Please.

Letter by letter, I do my best to pay for what I have done. It is true, what I said to my mother, that this is my penance. Penance is a form of payment, like currency exchanged between humanity and God for one’s sins. How much payment might God require to make my gift work again? How much payment does God want from me to help Finn? Does helping Finn require more penance because I fell in love with him?

At four o’clock in the afternoon I hear voices downstairs.

I set down my pen and wipe the blood from my knuckles. Then I go into the hallway and listen.

“I need to see her—”

“She doesn’t want to see you!”

My knees give way and I slide down the wall. Finn has come to my house and is fighting to see me. Fighting for me.

“You ruined my daughter!”

“Mrs. Oliveira, I am in love with your daughter!”

Finn is in love with me.

I should go to him, I should . . .

They yell back and forth. There is desperation in Finn’s voice and a clear tone of satisfaction in my mother’s.

“My daughter never wants to lay eyes on you again!”

“I won’t believe that until Marlena tells it to my face!”

I can barely swallow.

Steel. I must steel myself. Harden my heart so that it is cold metal, impervious to dents and marks. Impervious to Finn. Loving him isn’t going to appease God. I made a bargain and must keep it. Still, I strain to hear each and every word between Finn and my mother. Soon they become too muffled to understand. My mother must have pushed Finn outside, hoping I don’t realize Finn is here.

There are footsteps on the stairs. I look up.

Fatima is crouching down to my level, a few steps from where I sit, curled into myself. “Marlena, querida, your boy needs you to come and see him.”

I drop my head back to my knees and pull my arms tighter around my legs.

She sits down and keeps talking. “Querida, I don’t know everything that has happened, but I know at least some from what I’ve overheard. I think I understand what you are trying to do, but querida, please, it does not have to be this way.”

“Yes it does,” I say into my knees.

Fatima sighs. “Marlena, I have worked for your mother a long time, and I am grateful to her for many things. She has been loyal, and pays me more than anyone else would ever pay for this job. But it is like I have said, I do not agree with her about the way you’ve been raised and treated because of this gift. It does not have to be all or nothing—I beg you to hear me on this, querida. I have watched you become a different person these last weeks. I’ve watched you light up and laugh and live. You do not have to give that up. This boy loves you, so you should go to him. The God I believe in celebrates love and wants love for us.”

“The God I believe in forbids it,” I say. “At least for me.”

“Marlena.” Another long sigh from Fatima. “Do not do this to yourself. Do not do this to that boy who is standing there, taking on your mother.”

The front door slams, the house shaking with the force of it.

“Marlena,” Fatima says again, her tone urgent.

Finn must be leaving. He is probably walking away right now. What if he never comes back? What if he believes the things my mother said to him?

Steel, steel. I tell myself this over and over. The tears pour from my eyes regardless. My body shakes with them.

“Oh querida.” There is a hand on my back—Fatima’s hand.

Quickly, as quickly as I can, I shift out of reach, as though Fatima’s hand is burning. “Don’t touch me,” I snap, looking up. Fatima’s lips part, this time her words lost. I stare at her. “I am not to be touched. You know this. Everyone does.”

THIRTY-FIVE

I take a deep breath.

Gertie’s shop is in front of me. The posters about the anniversary for the Day of Many Miracles are going up, but I wonder if the townspeople already know from the messages my mother has sent out. From the look of things on Main Street, maybe not. The town seems deserted, and Gertie is not in her usual spot in the doorway, gossiping with people walking by and just generally keeping an eye on things. I can see her behind the counter, though. The doll of me is gone from the window, leaving a gaping hole among the candles and T-shirts.

A handwritten letter is clutched between my fingers and a stack of other letters is folded neatly inside my bag.

A huge puff of air bursts from my chest. I keep forgetting to breathe. I tug the edges of my sleeves down to my wrists. I force myself inside Gertie’s shop.

She looks up. “Marlena?” Her gaze sweeps over me.

I make my way to the counter, past an aisle of sale items. Is it my fault so many things are reduced price? I hold out the letter. “I wanted to apologize for the other day.”

Gertie doesn’t take it. She stares at it; then her eyes slide back to me. “What is this?”

What do I say? Do I tell her the truth?

“My vacation is over.”

“Yes. I got your mother’s messages. I was surprised. You seemed to have . . . moved on.”

I nod. “I . . . I . . . realized that . . .” My eyes flicker upward, as though God is sitting there in heaven, looking down, arms crossed and judging. “I realized that everyone was right and that it was terribly selfish of me to have done what I’ve been doing. Healing is my true calling. People depend on me, people like you, and I have failed you. I’m sorry. I really am. I regret everything that’s happened. The letter says this more eloquently. I hope.” Tears fill my eyes, but they aren’t tears of apology or repentance. Everything I am saying to Gertie is one big lie. The only reason I’m here is because I don’t know how else to get my gift back. In truth, I regret nothing. Those were the best weeks of my life. My only regret is how they ended, that somehow I may have squandered Finn’s future.

“Now that my audiences are resuming,” I go on, with a catch in my voice that I try to swallow away, “the tourists will return and your shop can go back to normal.”

“Marlena.” Gertie sounds hesitant. Or maybe worried. It takes me back to that day when she didn’t recognize me and was concerned about my well-being.

Is she concerned about it now? Even though she knows it’s me this time?

“What?”

“This shop isn’t going ‘back to normal,’ as you put it. I’ve decided to stop selling souvenirs related to you.”

“But I need you to keep selling things! You have to.”

She studies me. “That doesn’t make any sense. The other day you . . . you were enraged, Marlena, that we’ve been taking advantage of you for years.” Her eyes lower to the counter. A sign is taped there that reads “Cash Only.” “You were right.”

Stars flare across my vision, and a rushing sound fills my ears. I grab the edge of the counter. “No,” I whisper. “No, I wasn’t. Please. Gertie, please.”

“Please what?”

“Please make things go back to the way they were.”

She tilts her head. “They can’t, Marlena. I decided I would do my best to sell the rest of what’s left in the shop until the day of the anniversary audience, and then I’d be making changes about what I sell. It’s about time.” She leans forward. “This town can’t survive on you forever. You made that clear, and it was good you did. We needed to hear it.”

As Gertie is speaking, it’s like she has one of those plastic beach shovels and is scooping my heart from my body and tossing it aside until there is nothing left of it.

She eyes my bag and the stack of envelopes sticking out of it. “If your plan is to go to the other store owners, I wouldn’t bother.”

“Why?” I croak.

“It’s up to you if you want to apologize, but if it’s your hope that we go back to the way things were, you’re too late.”

I try to swallow but I feel like I’m choking.

“We had a town meeting. We decided that it’s time for us to get out of the Marlena business.”

I don’t even remember taking the stack of letters out of my bag but I must do this, I must leave them with Gertie, drop them on the counter of her store, because when I get home later on they are gone.

For a long time, I sit, staring out the window.

Staring into space. Thinking.

This is all my fault.

I brought this on myself.

I brought this on Finn.

But then I am up, crossing the room like some robot, grabbing more of the mail I haven’t yet responded to, and getting down to work again.

Maybe things can’t go back exactly as they were, but maybe if they go back enough . . .

I bargain and bargain some more as I plead with my pen and paper. I bargain with myself, with these people I am writing to, with the world, the universe, the galaxy, and all the stars and planets within it. Most of all I bargain with God, this being, this divinity, whatever God is, that has chosen to reveal himself only when he wants to punish me.

I bargain about my gift.

I bargain about my future, the possibility that I will never get married and have children and my own family.

I bargain about sex and my body and all those things I was supposed to guard as though my entire gift depends on them.

In my bargaining I promise God to give everything up that has ever meant anything, I promise that I will never allow myself to be touched again, that I will be a good healer-saint for all the rest of my seconds on this earth, that I will live like those women mystics of the past, cloistered and obedient and utterly devoted to the service of God, a good anchorite even if I drown in the process. I promise God that if he will just spare Finn I will never ask for anything else again. I promise God everything, all that I am and ever will be, in exchange for Finn. I promise God my own life, because what is the point of a life if Finn is not there to live it with me?

Are you listening, God?

Are you?

Is this enough?

Send me a sign, God!

Send me a fucking sign!

My breath catches after this last thought echoes through my room and I realize I’ve actually said it out loud.

“I’m sorry, God,” I whisper. “I didn’t mean that last part.”

Yes I did.

I press my pen harder to the paper, blood trickling down my fingers and onto the clean white sheet. I wonder if the recipient will realize what those dark splotches are. I think about all the relics of saints I’ve read about, the tiny swatches of fabric claimed to hold the sacred drops of blood of one famous apostle or another, how worshippers have encased them in glass and exquisitely wrought jeweled containers in order to showcase them. I wonder how much a letter with my blood on it might fetch in one of the souvenir shops downtown. If anyone would try and sell it.

They certainly would have before.

My eyes sting as I write.

My fingers sting even more.

THIRTY-SIX

The anniversary of the Day of Many Miracles arrives. I’ve spent all my time preparing. Every letter has been answered. Main Street has gone back to something like normal, even if it’s only temporary. I have settled into the familiar routine of the life I used to know. Once again, my mother sticks to me like sand after a swim. She goes everywhere with me, does everything with me, setting things right, helping me make up for my crimes.

“Marlena,” my mother says. “Turn to the left. And suck in your stomach.”

I do as she asks as she buttons me into a wedding gown. It is fit for a ball, with a skirt that bells out wide and metal boning throughout.

“Suck in your stomach more. And your chest.”

I close my eyes as she tugs and tightens, careful not to brush my skin.

“You ate too much candy.”

The top of the dress is like a cage around my torso, imprisoning my ribs and my lungs, all the way up my neck to my chin. It is elaborate and conservative. I think of Catherine of Siena, who starved her body, and other women like her who purposely made their bodies uncomfortable, who harmed themselves, as penance for having bodies at all. Denial of the body and its physical needs is classic among these women. I try and imagine that my imprisonment in this dress, my inability to expand my lungs fully, is the same thing.

“There.” My mother finally sounds satisfied.

I open my eyes. There I am in the mirror. The dress, I admit, is beautiful, with its hand-sewn lace. But I swore to myself that I wouldn’t wear another wedding gown again. Not unless I decided marriage was for me and I was going to my own wedding. And maybe not even then.

“You look like a queen. Regal. As you should.”

I look sad. Lost.

A memory flashes of that giggly afternoon with Fatima, when she took me to try on bathing suits. How nervous I was to see my reflection in a bikini. How excited I was to finally pick one out. Fatima didn’t seem to think there was anything wrong with showing off my body at the beach. She thought it was normal and fun. How is it that what is normal for so many people is forbidden for me? A threat to my gift? Why did people make it this way? Why did God make it this way?

“You could at least smile,” my mother says. “People have come from far and wide to see you on this day.”

I plaster a smile on my face.

The car is silent as José drives us to the church.

He is in the front, my mother and I are in the back. I can barely fit inside wearing this dress. My mother is in one of her signature white outfits. The scenery goes by in the window, and I see it, but also I don’t. I know there is ocean and seawall and eventually the church up ahead. The closer we get, the more I wonder if I might pass out. Not because of the tight-fitting gown, but because I am terrified.

What will happen today?

Will I feel my gift returning to my body?

Will it finally be there when I need it? When others do, too?

“José, please pull around back,” my mother directs.

He does as she asks silently.

Don’t we all?

The parking lot is full. Cars spill onto the street. A crowd of people has gathered on the lawn and snakes up to the doors, which are not yet open.

“People are here so early,” I say.

“I’m not surprised,” my mother says. “This is a very special day.” I feel her eyes on me. “And of course, this is your first audience in weeks.”

José pulls up to the private entrance and opens my mother’s door. Then he runs around and opens mine. He doesn’t extend his hand to help me out, even though I’m struggling in this gown. We are back to the way things were. I am Marlena the Untouchable. I don’t even meet José’s eyes as he waits for me to get both feet on the ground. I focus on the task of arranging my skirt and righting myself so I can walk inside. I am halfway to the door when I stop.

What am I doing? Why am I really here? What do I truly think is going to happen when I walk out there onto the stage? That all will be fixed?

“Marlena, hurry. You don’t want people to see you before the audience starts.” My mother acts like I really am a bride and the crowd gathered in front is my groom.

“Marlena?”

I hear José behind me. The way he says my name is an invitation to turn around and go, it informs me that he is willing to drive the getaway car and whisk me to safety. My eyes lower to the ground, to the sand that covers the asphalt in a thin layer, swept here from the beaches. I pick up my skirts and follow my mother inside, the door clicking shut behind us.

There are so many flowers. Their scent is everywhere.

My mother hasn’t let me go out into the church for fear that I will be seen, which will ruin everything and because I am always on the verge of ruin. Isn’t that how I got here in the first place?

She walks through the door to where I wait backstage. “Let’s go over the list of special guests.”

I nod, and listen as my mother explains where the people are sitting, how things are supposed to go. I stop myself from asking how much money each one paid in exchange for my touch.

“What sort of surprises do you have planned today, Marlena?” she wants to know. “I’d rather you clue me in ahead of time.”

The truth is, I’ve avoided thinking about what might happen when I go out there. Or what might not happen.

“Marlena?” My mother’s tone is impatient and a warning.

I shake my head. “Nothing, Mama. I don’t have any plans other than what you tell me I should be doing.”

She studies me. “Of all days, Marlena, this would be the one when you go off script. Give the crowd a little something extra. Something unexpected.”

“Okay, Mama. I’ll see what happens then.”

She eyes me suspiciously. She still doesn’t know what to make of my newfound obedience. “All right then.” My mother glances at the clock. “It’s almost showtime.”

Showtime? Is that what we’re calling it now?

With her heels clicking, my mother comes over to primp and puff my gown. “I’m going to go out and open the audience, Marlena.”

I nod.

My mother is still staring. “Marlena?”

“Yes, Mama. I’m ready.”

I barely hear her heels clicking as she heads out the door again.

So much is riding on this audience.

Everything that matters.

Finn. His life.

I pray to Hildegard, I pray to Julian. I pray to Teresa, with her little sword, and Margery, with her endless tears, and Hadewijch, with her poetry. I beg every one of the mystics and visionaries and healers I have ever read about, known about, studied, because they seem closer to me than God ever has. They seem so much realer than God. Like they might understand where I am coming from because they were human once, too. Women and girls who wanted and hoped and yearned for things like me. Maybe even who loved, once upon a time.

When I walk out onto the stage, all I feel is shame. Shame that I left and came back. Shame for the reasons I did. Shame for what happened while I was gone from this life and shame at the thought that people have heard rumors about me. Shame at the size of the crowd, so many people I abandoned without warning. Shame that they’ve come back as though I never stepped away, as though all is forgiven, just like that. Like maybe I didn’t even need to apologize in the first place.

If they can forgive me, will God?

A tiny flower of hope blooms. This is the moment I’ve been waiting for, the moment when I might find out that everything is going to be okay, if I might give Finn back his life, his dreams, his future. Even if it’s a future I won’t be in.

I bite my lip hard, so hard I taste blood.

I take one step, then another, until I am standing at the center of the stage, shoulders back. Chin lifted. Watching. Waiting.

The church looks both familiar and different. My mother went all out on the flower arrangements. It could be Easter, with so many lilies and big white blooms. There is a banner to commemorate the day, and even more people than usual packed in the back. But the seating is the same, the placement of the altar is the same, the platform where I walk out into the crowd is the way it’s been ever since my mother had it installed.

So why does it feel so strange to be here? What am I not noticing or seeing?

I do my best not to focus on any one particular person in the church. I don’t want to have to look anyone I know in the eyes. Not Gertie, not Mrs. Lewis if she is here, not Mr. Almeida, and especially not Fatima or José or Helen. I know Helen is here somewhere, because my mother told me she was coming. I make my eyes go blurry, so I see only colors and movement, until it’s like I’m watching the world from under the ocean.

People start to whisper.

I close my eyes tight.

I search for that familiar feeling, for the physical tug of my gift within me. I wait and I wait and I hope.

Then I hear rustling nearby on the stage.

“Marlena,” my mother hisses. “What is taking you so long?”

I don’t look at her.

Her sigh is worried. Or maybe it’s angry.

The clock ticks by the seconds and minutes.

The whispering from the crowd gets louder.

My shoulders curl forward. My breaths strain against the cage of this dress. Sweat pours down the sides of my face and mixes with the tears streaming from my eyes. Before I even realize what I’m doing I’m shaking my head.

No, no, no, no, no.

The murmurs turn into talk. Words that I can make out clearly.

“What’s wrong?”

“Is she okay?”

“Is this normal?”

“Maybe we should leave.”

“Maybe that vacation . . .”

“Maybe the rumors . . .”

“Maybe . . .”

“Maybe . . .”

“Maybe . . .”

As the crowd speculates and fills with doubt, their doubt courses through me. They are only confirming what I’ve feared. I’ve hoped that it would happen today, that if I just showed up, my gift would show up with me. But it hasn’t. And maybe it’s not going to.

Maybe, maybe, maybe.

Maybe my gift is gone for good.

THIRTY-SEVEN

I am shaking, fingers curled tight, nails biting into the skin of my palms. I wish I could tear the lace at my neck. There is a rushing sound in my ears. Stars fill my vision and turn the world around me shiny.

The crowd is in an uproar. Some people are standing. Others are shouting for them to sit. A line of people begins to file out. I should just run backstage and end this.

But then, my eyes focus and I see an island of calm at the center of the crowd. Helen. Fatima. José. Mrs. Lewis. They watch me with hope, with steadiness, without doubt. They hold hands, lifting their wrists in a chain. Then I notice the others. Children with their families, people I don’t know, who are watching me, waiting and hoping. Some of them are kneeling in the aisle. Their patience in the face of this angry crowd helps to slow my breathing. I wipe the tears from my face. Lift my chin like before.

I should at least try, shouldn’t I?

I take one step forward. Then another. The crowd quiets. People settle into their seats again.

“Marlena!”

“Marlena!”

“Over here, Marlena!”

I start down from the platform and into the crowd. I lay hands on those who gather around me, the special guests my mother told me about. I kneel, I offer my blessings, I press my forehead to the backs of people’s hands. I walk among the people, allowing some of them to touch my arms, even the side of my face. I go through the motions of healing, which I know by heart. I know exactly how to hold myself, the right tilt of my head, the stretch of my fingers, when to close my eyes, when to murmur, when to reach my hands to heaven.

It’s just like before.

But also not like it at all. There are no visions to accompany my laying on of hands, no bursts of color, no physical tug in the parts of my body that correspond with those I am meant to heal. I am an actress acting a part, doing my best to get it right.

“Marlena, please!”

“Take my hand!”

People believe I am still Marlena the Healer. They walk away happy, relieved. Seemingly cured. Convinced that whatever I have done has helped them.

How is this possible?

Did my mother pay them to do this? Did all of us agree to participate in theater today? Or . . . is it possible that my gift is back and I just don’t feel it? That it has changed so drastically I don’t recognize it? That I am healing people in a new way?

“Marlena?”

A small child kneels before me. She might be four, or maybe five. Her hair is black and wiry and long. Her mother looks at me, eyes brimming with tears. So I do what I know she wants me to do. I place my hand on the little girl’s head, firm and sure, and close my eyes. I wait for something, anything to happen. The shine of pink or blue or green to color my vision, the scene of some future moment. But there is nothing.

I open my eyes again.

“Gracias,” the mother says, crying. “¡Gracias!”

I nod like I have actually done something, when I am just a girl laying hands on a child. It’s almost worse that everyone around me believes. But belief is powerful, isn’t it? Pain and grief make us desperate.

“Marlena! Over here!”

“Marlena!”

People everywhere clamor for my touch, but my eyes search the crowd for someone I’m not used to seeking out. I find my mother, and give her a look. I need her to close this down. She heads to the microphone and as she speaks, people recede and I am able to make my retreat. As I head across the platform and onto the stage, disappearing into the back room, a feeling of gratitude toward my mother spreads through me for her readiness to take control. It is not a feeling I’m used to.

“You did well,” my mother says when she sees me backstage.

I lift my head from the table. The metal boning of the gown digs into my ribs. “I did?”

The smile on her face is pleased. “Yes.” Her hands smooth out her expensive white skirt. “You don’t agree?”

“I don’t know.” I shift in the chair, trying to get comfortable. This wedding dress was not made for sitting. “Were the people . . . the special guests . . . happy?”

My mother goes to the mirror and fixes her hair. A hair pin that was escaping her bun gets put in its place again. “Oh yes. Very.”

“Are you sure?”

“Of course.” She tames another errant hair pin. “Why would I lie?”

I go about the business of standing up. “I can think of a number of reasons why you would, Mama.”

She turns away from the mirror. “Marlena!”

“Appearances are everything. Isn’t it you who tells me this all the time?”

A flicker of guilt crosses her face. “What is this really about?”

“I just . . . I just didn’t feel anything. But people acted like I healed them.”

“And you don’t think you did.”

I hesitate. Then I shake my head.

She walks toward me, stops, inches away. She peers into my face. “Sometimes all people need for healing is hope.” Her voice is gentle, surprising me. “You provide that hope. That is enough.”

“But if I don’t really heal them, why do they act the way they do?”

“But you do heal them, Marlena.”

“I don’t. I didn’t. Not today. I know that I didn’t. Before, healing felt real. Today, my gift . . . it just wasn’t there.”

My mother does something unexpected. She reaches out a finger to lift my chin. “Some things are best left a mystery. Some knowledge is best left to God. That’s what faith is. It doesn’t matter if you know for sure. You just have to believe despite this.”

“But it does matter,” I whisper, looking into her eyes. “It matters a lot.”

“You’re thinking of that boy who came to the house.”

I don’t answer.

“Oh, Marlenita.” She says my name so softly. For a moment I think she might pull me into a hug. “I’m sorry about that. I really am.” Her hand drops from my chin, and she straightens. “It’s time to do the receiving line. People are waiting.”

Again, I act my part and the crowd acts theirs. I am tempted to question each one of them, to interview them like Angie might, about what they saw me do, what they believe happened today, if anything happened, but I refrain.

Suddenly, Angie is in front of me. Just like the first time we met, which seems like a hundred years ago. “Hi,” I say.

She hesitates. “Marlena, I came because . . . I didn’t know how else to talk to you. I haven’t been able to get in touch with you. Why won’t you see me or answer my calls?”

I force myself to hold her gaze. “I’m sorry, but I just . . . can’t. I made a promise not to.” I don’t mention that the promise is to God.

“Okay,” she says. It doesn’t sound like she believes me. “But . . . how can you refuse to see Finn? If I’d known, I never would have involved myself. Marlena, he’s—”

I put up my hand. “Angie, don’t. Please.” I glance at the man behind her in the line, waiting less and less patiently. “It’s more than I can explain right now.”

“Come by the center and explain it to me there,” Angie says, a little defiant.

I shake my head. “No.”

“This is not you, Marlena.” She sounds angry. No, worse. She sounds disappointed. “The you I’ve gotten to know would not act like this. She would not refuse her friends and the people she loves. And who love her,” she adds quietly.

I grip the skirt of the gown and hold on tight. “But it is me. This is how things have always been. You just knew me in a strange time.” My voice catches. “And that time is over.”

Angie stands there, words brimming on her lips. I wait for more admonishment. But just before she walks away, she says, “I am here for you, no matter what. If there is anything you need, or even anything you still want to know about yourself. I haven’t given up on you, Marlena.” She hesitates. “And neither has Finn.”

THIRTY-EIGHT

The days turn into weeks that turn into months.

Every morning I get up out of bed, empty and tired. I look around my room, searching, as though God may have left me a note during the night. But nothing is ever different. No lightning strikes in the remaining hours of the morning. It’s always just me, alone, in my uncertainty. In my regret.

The air gets cold with the onset of winter. On the first day of December snowflakes hover in the air.

Every Saturday I perform for my audience. Every Saturday I go through the motions. The offerings come into the house and are stored in the gift room. At the end of the month they are donated to Goodwill. Gertie was true to her word about changing her wares, though the shift downtown is gradual. Tourists come looking for souvenirs and snatch up whatever remains at the stores that still sell them.

People act as though my touch still heals. Has it come back, even if I don’t feel it? Why would people behave this way if nothing really happened? Or is my mother right, that it doesn’t matter whether I feel proof of healing like I used to? Maybe God needs me to take a leap of faith, to trust that though my gift remains invisible to me, it is still there.

But that sort of test just seems cruel.

Until I can feel my gift, until I know it’s there, I can’t go to Finn. I can’t do that to him. It wouldn’t be fair.

“Thank you for coming to get me, José,” I say, when I walk out of the house and see him standing there by the car.

“Ten a.m. sharp, just like always, Marlenita.”

I slip into the back seat. Alone. My mother has stopped accompanying me everywhere. I try not to notice José glancing at me in the rearview mirror as he drives me where we are going and parks in front.

He hands me an umbrella when I get out of the car. “I’ll be here, waiting.”

I can feel his eyes on my back, watching as I head inside the visitors’ entrance of the hospital. The antiseptic smell of the air is familiar to me now, the fluorescent lighting, the shiny tiled floors and long hallways.

The Healer has started doing house calls.

It started because of a letter I received from a mother whose six-year-old son, Jacob, was in the hospital with leukemia. The hospital was close, only a twenty-minute drive. One day I just got in the car and went. Found his room and his mother, sitting there next to him. She was so happy I came, I talked to her, to Jacob, held their hands. I don’t know if my touch healed or not, but I know it mattered to them that I showed up. So I kept going.

Keep going.

First was Jacob, then there were Aurora, Sarena, Dante, Ethan, Diego, Gabby, and Laurel. The list goes on. In the beginning it was penance, it was practice for Finn, it was the hope of the feeling of healing returning. But now, I’m not so sure what compels me. I see the people who’ve written me, and I see their doctors. I watch the medics and nurses come and go, study the things they do, the pills offered, the machines and bags of fluid adjusted. The kind words, the brusque manners, the hope they bring, the way they are needed by the sick and the suffering.

Are we somehow the same? Is there any connection between what the nurses and doctors do and what I do? These questions grow louder with each visit. Hildegard was a visionary and a doctor, a medicine woman in her day. Could I be another kind of healer, too?

“Can you tell me how to find room 302?” I ask the nurse at the reception desk.

She stands and points. “Down the hall to the left, take the bank of elevators to the third floor, turn right, and go all the way to the end.”

“Thank you,” I tell her, and try to remember the directions.

When I get to the room, I’m nervous.

Today’s visit is special.

I knock.

“Come in,” calls a voice.

I go inside.

A short woman who is all soft edges gets up to greet me. “Marlena! I’m Valeria.” Valeria’s face is round and friendly. Her voice is reverent. “I can’t believe you’re here. After all this waiting. Thank you.”

“I’m glad I could come, but you need to know, I can’t make any promises.”

“But I have faith that you will save my daughter!”

“Mama! Stop!”

My eyes go to the bed. I see a girl with dark wavy hair and big brown eyes. A thick metal-and-plastic brace is like a box around her torso. Her arms are thin, and from the outline of her legs underneath the blanket, they are thinner. “Hi, Alma,” I say. “It’s good to finally meet you.”

“I can’t believe you’re here, either.” Alma glances at her mother. “Though not for the same reasons as Mama’s.”

“Alma, ¡no seas así!”

Alma gives her mother a pleading look. “¿Nos dejas un minuto a solas? ¿Mama?”

Valeria inhales. I can tell she’s about to protest her daughter’s request to give us time alone. “I work better that way,” I say, before Valeria can speak.

“I’ll be in the hall then,” she says, grabbing her sweater and hurrying out.

When the door shuts I sit down in the chair next to Alma’s bed. “I’ve appreciated your letters.”

Alma’s eyes drop to my hands, which rest on the railing of the bed. “So you decided you wanted to come fix me?”

“I meant what I said to your mother, that I’m not sure if I can.”

“Don’t you want to try?”

The brace Alma wears looks so uncomfortable. It’s difficult not to wish for her to be free of it. “Do you want me to?”

Alma blinks her long lashes, breathing labored. She reaches out and places her hands on top of mine. “It’s what my mother needs.”

“Okay.” I close my eyes, draw Alma’s hand to my cheek. Wait, as I always do, for that feeling in me to stir. Sometimes I think it might be there, just waking up after a long sleep, yawning its way back into my veins. Plenty of gifts of gratitude have arrived at the house, alongside claims of miracles.

So why do I continue to feel nothing?

“Marlena?”

I lift my head. Alma is watching me, eyes curious. Like Finn. I draw in a breath. “Yes?”

“Are you okay?”

Alma’s concern reaches around my heart. Suddenly my arms are around her boxy brace and I am hugging her. “I don’t know,” I find myself saying. I pull back. “Not really.”

“You seem sad.”

“I am sad.”

“Why?”

Alma’s statements, her questions, are straightforward. Spoken so simply and honestly. I can’t help but answer. “Someone I love is sick. His name is Finn.”

“I’m sorry. I know that it’s hard to love someone who is sick.”

I study Alma. We are nearly the same age. I am grateful she didn’t ask me why I don’t heal Finn and make things better. “It is the hardest thing I’ve ever known.”

Alma sighs the sigh of someone far older than her years. “It’s so hard on my mother.”

“Did I . . . did I help?”

“I don’t know. I don’t really feel any different.” Alma adjusts her blanket. The hospital air is thick with a stifling heat. “Do you think you helped?”

I shrug. “I’m not a doctor, Alma. I don’t know the answer. I wish I did.”

“You don’t know how your gift works?”

This is the question, right? How does it work? How did it, if it’s gone?

“I used to think I understood it, but lately, I don’t know anymore. Maybe it’s real. But maybe it never was.”

“Maybe it all depends on the person you’re healing,” she says.

“What do you mean?”

“Maybe it takes two people to make a miracle. You might be the one to initiate it, but maybe the other person has to meet you halfway and finish it. Maybe you didn’t heal me because I don’t need you to.”

This theory swirls in the heavy air. I try to take it in. “But why wouldn’t you want to be healed, Alma?”

Alma takes a labored breath. “Because I’m tired of people trying to fix me. I’ve accepted my death and I’m ready for it.”

It is true—even with all the tubes and the beeping machines, Alma radiates a sense of peace. “But your mother . . .”

Now her eyes become sad. “I wish she could accept this reality, and accept my life, and its end, for what it is. I don’t mean to hurt her. And I know she doesn’t mean to hurt me. Love is complicated that way.”

“It is,” I tell her. “Alma, thank you.”

This makes her laugh. “For what?”

“For your wisdom.”

“You’re funny,” she says. “I’m glad you came to see me.”

I stand up, memorizing everything I can about Alma’s face, her open expression, the swoop of her hair and the shape of her body beneath the brace and the blanket. “I’m glad I did, too. Twice now, you’ve been there for me when I needed understanding.”

Alma’s smile is weak. “It’s nice to know that you are real.”

“It’s nice to know you are, too.” My last words come out hoarse. I turn to go. The reality that Alma will not be there for us to meet again goes unspoken between us.

José drops me off at the seawall instead of taking me home. I want to walk. I stare out at the ocean, the beach, at the way the dark gray clouds collide with the horizon. No one is around except for a few surfers, straddling their boards, bobbing up and down over the swells.

It’s been nearly three months since I said good-bye to Finn.

Months.

Finn only has months left to live.

Months. Not years. Months, months, months.

Three have passed.

What are you doing, Marlena?

This voice, the voice of doubt, is suddenly contradicting all that I’ve done, the constant bargaining with the God who never stops punishing. The God I don’t even like.

The God I don’t even believe in.

Why should I?

Why would I give such a terrible God so much power?

Why would anyone?

All this time, I have been drowning in darkness, waiting for God to turn the lights on again, to return my gift and make me whole again. Turning to some divine asshole for forgiveness I don’t even want, because maybe I didn’t do anything wrong in the first place. Maybe it’s God that’s wrong. Maybe that’s been the problem this whole time.

My whole, sheltered life.

I wonder if Hildegard, or Julian, or any of them ever felt any relief that in those dark nights of the soul they were finally free of God’s grasp, of the responsibility their visions brought to their lives. If they did, they kept it to themselves.

Snow starts to fall. Flakes of it cling to my eyelashes and melt against my cheeks. I walk through it, veer right. At first I don’t realize where I’m going, my feet taking over.

But I walk and walk for miles until I am tired and sore, and then I am there and I know.

I stop in front of the house. Study it in a way I couldn’t when I was a child.

The snow is falling heavier now.

Why haven’t I returned here before? Why hasn’t my mother taken me?

The little cottage has white siding, some of it eaten away with age. Forest-green metal shades arc outward from the windows. A big wooden swing hangs on the porch, tilted and in need of repair. The gray shingles on the roof are blackened with age and neglect. The grass has been regularly cut, but the bushes along the front are so wide and tall they nearly cover the windows. There is nothing remarkable to distinguish this place from the other houses around it, save the disrepair. And the fact that my grandfather built it with his own hands when my family came here from the Azores, when my mother was still just a girl, her whole life ahead of her, unknown and still unfolding.

My feet take me forward again, this time up to the windows. I wedge myself between the overgrown bushes and wipe a hand across the glass. It comes away smeared with dirt. I peer inside.

Everything is there, just as I remember it. My grandmother’s figurines. The shelves my grandfather built. The chairs and the furniture he shaped and sanded and pieced together in an effort to make this modest cottage a home for their new life in America. It’s just that the carpet is caked with mildew and the figurines are covered in a thick coat of dust. From here I can see into the kitchen in the back. The plates stacked on the shelves above the sink. Pots and pans hanging from the ceiling.

How would life have been different if I’d grown up here? If my grandparents had never died? If my father hadn’t either? If my mother had never had to mourn them? Would I have grown up a healer, or something else entirely? Would I be happier if I had?

THIRTY-NINE

“You have to be totally still, Marlena,” Angie warns. “No touching the insides.”

My heart is hammering. “But—”

“Do not move a muscle. I mean it.”

“Okay.” The ceiling of Angie’s center is far above, the light around us a strange, bright gray from the snow and the pale white sky. She’s wearing a thick cable-knit sweater and jeans, her hair in a messy knot.

I am in a wedding dress.

“Are you ready?” Angie asks.

“Yes,” I tell her.

Soon the machine is on and whirring and Angie is blocked from view as the platform where I lie moves. For the second time I enter the hulking, curved chamber, this human-made cave. I am as unmoving as I can be while still breathing, and while I listen to all the loud banging and knocking and whirring of the machine. The seconds tick by, tick toward the hour of my Saturday audience. I am supposed to be there right now. José and I didn’t talk in the car, he didn’t ask why we were headed to Angie’s center instead of the church where my mother is waiting for me to appear right now. But when I got out of the car in front of Angie’s big glass box of a building for the first time in ages, doing my best not to step on the lavish white gown billowing around my legs, he spoke to me.

“Marlenita, take as long as you need” was all he said. “I’ll be right here, waiting for you. I’m not going anywhere. No matter what.”

It was like he was telling me to consider not showing up for my audience. That he would be fine helping to facilitate just this. I bet my mother is going crazy, wondering where I am. People will be arriving. What will she do? Will she cancel? Will she wait until the last minute, hoping I’ll show up?

Will I show up?

There’s still time.

The machine shuts off and I am sliding into the lab again. I blink, trying to adjust to the light, and sit up. The skirt of my gown is wrinkled from lying down. Angie is already walking away.

“Give me a few minutes to read the results,” she calls over her shoulder, then disappears down the hall and into the room with the screens that light up the brain scans.

Angie has been all business since I arrived. Like she’s afraid if she says something too intimate, too pushy, I’ll flee and never come back. She didn’t even comment on my attire, or make a joke about how I am overdressed for an MRI. The skirt of the gown rustles as I swing my legs over the side of the platform. Carefully, I climb down. I pad off barefoot to wait in Angie’s office. The light is different in wintertime, with the sun gone and the snow covering the ground to the sea.

I sit down on the couch. Ten minutes pass. Then fifteen.

When I can’t stand it any longer, I get up and knock on the door of the lab. Angie opens it. “What’s taking so long? Can I see my scan?” She moves aside so I can enter. On the big screen in the middle are several brain images, lit up bright. “Are all of these me?”

Angie nods.

I walk up to the one in the center. It is drenched in purple and I am struck, even more than before, by how similar it is to one of my visions. I point at it. “What does this color tell you about me?”

“That you’re terribly sad, Marlena.”

I drop my arm. “Well, that’s true.” I try not to be disappointed that the color’s significance is so ordinary. That it doesn’t somehow confirm my brain is unusual, the brain only a healer could claim. I gesture at another scan with a big round image in black and white. If I could paint it, it would be an oak tree, its trunk nearly obscured by its leafy branches. I wish I could read the scan like a scientist would. Or a doctor. “And that one?”

The knot in Angie’s hair is sliding to the side, coming undone. “Why don’t we go back to my office and talk about it there?”

She is stalling. “What aren’t you telling me, Angie?” I ask as I follow her.

Angie takes her usual position, cross-legged on the rug. When I am once again sitting on the couch, she starts talking.

“Marlena,” she begins. “Your brain, it’s . . . ,” she goes on, then stops. Her mouth opens again. Nothing comes out.

I hold my breath. I want to know if Angie has found something in my brain, some mark she can point to that distinguishes my brain from others. For the first time in my life I want scientific proof that I am different. Or scientific proof that I am not. “What?”

Angie shakes her head, slowly. “Your brain is totally normal,” she says. “I didn’t see one thing that was unusual. Your brain is perfect. Healthy.”

I stand up again, then I sit.

I’m not sure how to process this. Angie has informed me of the very thing I’d longed to hear—until I found out about Finn. That I am normal. “Really.”

Angie crosses and recrosses her legs. “You’re upset.”

I shake my head. “No. I don’t know.” I wonder if the machine would have showed something different about my brain if I’d done this in August. Would we have before and after pictures for comparison? Before Marlena Quit Healing and After Marlena Quit Healing? Could we literally see the difference, scientifically document it? Or is it that my brain has always been this way, and healing is more like what Alma suggested, a union of two people, of two matching desires? Or even what my mother suggested, a simple passing of hope from my body into the body of the person who needs it?

I guess I’ll never know.

“You’re surprised,” I tell Angie.

“I am,” Angie says.

“Why? What did you imagine you’d see?”

“Honestly?” Angie pulls apart the knot in her hair, then starts fixing it up all over again. Soon the knot is neat on the top of her head once more. She gets up and comes to the couch to sit next to me. “Marlena, I thought I’d find a tumor.”

I nod. “Are you disappointed you didn’t?”

“No! How can you even think that? I would never wish a brain tumor on you! Or anyone.” She is studying me. “But are you disappointed I didn’t find one?”

“I don’t know. It would have explained a lot, right? The visions, the colors. The fainting spells. That’s why you suspected one.”

“Yes,” she admits.

“It’s not like I haven’t wondered,” I admit back. “My mother never allowed anyone to check. I’ve never been to a doctor.”

Angie gets up and cracks a window. The icy air feels good amid the heat of the building. “I know. I remember you telling me that one of the first times we met in this office. I’ve been worried ever since. It’s a relief, Marlena, to find out that you have a perfectly healthy brain. Tell me how you feel about hearing this.”

I pull my knees to my chest and wrap my arms tight around my shins. “Well, brain tumors, epilepsy, migraines, are what some people believe explains the visions of mystics. Any sort of brain abnormality that might cause hallucinations. Today we don’t think of what happens to me, what used to happen to me, as real. We only think of visions as delusions. Or girls who perform miracles as crazy people.”

Angie is still studying me. What is she hoping to see? To figure out?

“Did you think I’m delusional, Angie? Or do you think it even more now that you’ve seen my brain?”

She doesn’t answer this question. Instead, she says, “You wanted a reason to believe in yourself, didn’t you—a concrete, scientific explanation for your visions?”

I shake my head, then I shrug. “I don’t know what’s true anymore. People act like I can still heal, you know . . . after . . . these last months . . . but I don’t feel my gift. It’s gone. Poof.” I snap my fingers. “Like it was never there. I’ve been going to see people in the hospital. I’ve been watching these doctors and nurses and trying to understand what they do, and seeing how different it is from my healings, but how similar too. Tell me the truth, Angie. After all your research, what did you conclude? Am I a healer or not? Or was it always just one big wish?” I stare out through the window at the falling snow and the ocean behind it.

I feel Angie’s arm slide around me.

“I know this is about Finn,” she says. “It’s not your fault that he’s sick and it’s not your responsibility to heal him. It never was, and he never thought that it was. He doesn’t think that now either. Neither do I. No one does.”

Her mention of Finn makes my eyes fill. “I keep thinking . . . this whole time I keep thinking . . . if I’d just . . . if I’d just . . .”

“If you’d just what, Marlena? Never come to my office and met him? Never cared for him at all? Never tried to live a little?” She sighs. “There’s no way to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt whether your gift is ‘real,’ as you put it, or was. Not scientifically. Not in the way you wish for. I can do all the interviews in the world with every single person who believes to be healed by you, before Finn, after Finn, but that still doesn’t mean you will be able to heal him. And if you can’t, I would never be able to pinpoint why that is.”

“What I can’t do,” I whisper, tears starting to spill down my cheeks, “is accept that he might die. That he will die. I don’t know how.”

Angie takes my hand. “Oh, honey. You have to. This is life, the hardest part of it, but it is life. Your life. His life. You can’t turn away from it.”

I stare at her fingers on mine. I try to breathe. “I need to go find the bathroom. I need . . . I need a minute.”

“I’ll be right here,” Angie says. “Take your time.”

I get up and leave her office, her words swirling through me like the snow outside. I head down the hall and round the corner. Then I come to a halt.

Finn.

There he is. After all this time.

His face pales as he takes me in, dressed in a wedding gown. “Marlena, what are you doing here—” and “—I didn’t expect you to be here today,” the two of us blurt at the same time.

We stand there, looking at each other. I know I can’t accept a world without Finn, and I know that I have to try to heal him again, to keep trying. How can I not? What do I have to lose? What does Finn? I go to him and take his hand, grab it, because he resists.

“Marlena, no.”

I refuse to let it go, pull it to my cheek and press it there. Close my eyes and wait. I pray and I hope and I pray some more. But just like before, I am dry inside. Colorless. When I open my eyes, tears are streaming down my face and down Finn’s as well. “Did anything happen?” I ask him. “Did you feel anything change?” I hear how pathetic I sound. “Because maybe, the people at my audiences . . . they seem to think that . . . that I can still heal. . . .” I think of what Alma said. “Maybe it’s not working because of you. You need to try, too. Maybe I can only heal if you want to be healed. Finn, Finn?”

He is shaking his head.

I can feel him pulling back his hand.

This only makes me hold on harder.

“Please?” My eyes are raised toward the windows of the center, toward the cold gray sky above. “Just one more time. I will do anything. Give anything. Everything.”

“Marlena.” Finn’s tone is decisive. “You have to stop.”

“I can’t,” I sob. “I can’t, I can’t, I can’t.”

He peers into my tear-filled eyes. “Yes, you can. I need you to.”

I shake my head. My nose is running. I don’t even care. What does it matter? What does anything matter if I can’t save Finn?

“I’m okay with this,” he says.

I stare up at him, sniffling. Wiping at my cheeks. “You’re okay with what?”

“With . . . my situation.”

“With dying?”

There. The word is out. Between us. Gleaming.

“Yes, with dying,” Finn says quietly.

“But, but how? Why? You can’t be! You’re too young!” I choke out words between sobs. “You’re so smart! You’re supposed to change the world! You’re a genius!”

You’re mine, I think, and sob harder.

He takes my hands and holds them lightly in his. “But this is my life. It’s the only life I have. The doctors can’t do anything else. I have to accept this. So do you.”

“No.” I am shaking my head back and forth. He sounds just like Alma.

“Yes.”

“It’s not enough.”

“Marlena,” he says. His hands tighten around mine. “It has to be.”

“But what if—”

“No more what-ifs, no more begging God to help you save me. No more trading with God, your life for mine. No more promising God you’ll never sleep with me again so that you may be able to heal me. No more regretting our time together because maybe God is punishing you for it. No more.” Emotion thunders across his face. “I do not give a shit what you told God you’d do in order to save me or whatever it is you promised that good-for-nothing deity people are always promising things to. What I care about is what you promise me. Right now, during my last days on this planet.”

I’ve nearly stopped breathing. “What do you want me to promise you?”

“I want you to promise to love me until the very end. Like you did before all this—” He sweeps a hand across my white dress.

“You want me to love you,” I whisper. “That’s all you want?”

Finn nods. “That, to me, is plenty. More than enough.”

“And in loving you, you also want me to give up on you? While you give up on you, too?”

“It’s not giving up,” he says. “It’s a choice to live.”

“No,” I say forcefully. “It’s a choice to die.”

“If you want to look at it that way, that’s your decision. But in my mind, it’s choosing to live every one of the last days I have with the person I love the most in the world. Which is you. What more could I ask for in life?”

More days. More years.

Finn takes my hands again. “Promise me, Marlena,” he says. “Please? I need you to stop trying to heal me. I want you to accept me the way that I am. I want you to accept that the best thing for me to do right now is to enjoy the time I have left.”

“I don’t know if I can.” I close my eyes. The press of Finn’s fingers on my skin causes my heart to skip and stutter.

A vision starts right then. I haven’t had one in so long that I nearly don’t recognize it. It reaches out to me like the hand of an old friend and I take it, eagerly, letting it spread through my body and my heart and my mind like a salve, wondering if maybe this is it, the moment when I am going to heal Finn. But then it’s not like the visions from before all of this started, from my audiences during a healing. This vision is more of a memory.

In it, I see the beach and the wet sand, smell the warm air and the bright-blue sky. I see the gentle, crystal waves of the sea swelling toward me. There I am in my bathing suit, alone, the remnants of a toppled dribble castle on my legs, asking so many questions—what-ifs about God and the world and God versus the world. And then, as I get up and wade into the water, one foot in front of the other, I am making a decision that the world is enough for me, that this one glorious day is enough for me, that the promise of seeing Finn is enough for me. I am deciding I don’t need anything more than that, this. Me. Finn. What is right in front of me, here and now.

I open my eyes and find myself deciding this once again. I want what is right in front of me now, for however long it is mine to have. And that is enough. It has to be. Finn is not just enough, he is more than enough.

Finn blinks back at me, waiting for my answer.

“Finn,” I begin, slowly, carefully, knowing that each word, each syllable matters. “You are right. Every day I have with you is more than I’ve ever hoped for.” He steps forward and curls into my chest, pulls my arms around his body, and we stay there, holding each other. I whisper one more thing, as though it’s a prayer, a holy vow, the most loving of promises, because Finn deserves to hear this truth from my lips. “I promise to never let you go. Not for another second that you have on this earth. For all of those I will be with you, until the very last one.”

And I am.