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room, she saw the diary lying openly on the pillow, and she closed the door
and cautiously tore out the incriminating pages. The only place she could
think to hide them was inside the sole of her Chinese slippers; she folded the
pages over and over and pushed the long rectangle in between the cloth lining
and the sole. Not ideal, but as a temporary hiding place, as good as she could
do.
She put her head back onto the pillow, and was asleep.
Ana's day began two hours later, long before the birds had begun their dawn
chorus, when her bedroom door was flung open and a man's voice began talking
at her. She went from deep sleep to heart-pounding panic in a split second,
whirling around in the tangling covers and bruising her elbow on the wall
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before she was upright and blinking at the door. It was Jonas.
"What?" she croaked.
"What is wrong with you? I said I'm not going to need you during the day, I'm
working on some calculations, but I may want you tonight. Be available. Listen
for my call. You know how to get there?"
She sat up more fully, scratched her scalp to encourage brain activity, and
said, her sarcasm half swallowed up by a yawn, "I think I can find it again,
Jonas."
He stepped back and was gone. After a minute she climbed out of bed and
closed the door. The sarcasm that she had let slip was not a good sign, but
she was, after all, fast asleep, and it was annoying to be credited with
barely enough brains to walk downstairs to the Bear's den.
Her eyes went to the diary on the bedside table. After a moment, she took it
up and turned to a clean page.
Glen I fully intend to watch my step, take care, and all the rest. For the
first time in many long years I can honestly say that I do not want to die.
Realistically, though, things happen. You and I both know that. We"ve known it
since the day you planted your finger on the doorbell of my apartment fifteen
years ago.
I should have died eighteen years ago with my husband and daughter. I did
not. I have finally come to accept that, thanks in no small part to you, and
to think that maybe the years between my should-have death and my actual one
have been good for something. God's will is not a phrase I care to use, but
there is a fate, Glen a divinity, as Shakespeare calls it and it does shape
our ends.
My fate was to meet Jason and Dulcie. If it brings my end, if a thing happens
to me in the next week or two, it will have been worth it. All I ask is that
they be kept safe.
I ask it of God, and I ask it of you. I've never asked you for anything,
Glen, not even an explanation. I am asking this. Keep those two children safe
for me.
 Anne
She tore out the page and folded it up, and was beginning to slip it into the
shoe, when she paused to run a hand over the rubbery skin of her face, then
smoothed out the page and took up her pen again.
P.S. Sorry about the maudlin sentiments I haven't slept much recently and my
brain is a bit fried. If I can't e-mail this to you in the next two days, I'll
find the village post office or a nice friendly helmeted constable riding his
wide-tired bicycle down a country lane and send it to you that way. Not to
carp, Glen, but you better hurry. There's not a lot of time here.
P.P.S. Oh, and Glen? I hope you're planning to invite me to your wedding. If
you don't, I plan to turn up anyway and really embarrass you.
 A
She smiled as she folded the page into the slipper. As she set off in the
direction of the early-morning coffeepot, she detoured to take her revenge on
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Jonas's followers by yanking the pull chain on the antique and incredibly
noisy toilet.
She spent the morning happily and mindlessly scrubbing floors, and after
lunch joined Jason and two other American students for a brief but productive
meeting with Dov and one of the other teachers. Jason, blase as he had been,
found it difficult to take his eyes off the lumpy sack she had brought into
the room.
After the meeting they gathered up Dulcie from the kindergarten room (where
she sat listening carefully to a wildly chattering friend) and Ana led them
out through the kitchen and across the yard to a flat, paved area that was
used to park the farm tractor during the rainy season. She had spent the hour
before breakfast sweeping away the dirt and hanging up a circle she wove from
a roll of baling wire. Jason stood with his hands on his hips, puzzling out
the odd markings, and when he turned and Ana bounced the ball off the rough
concrete and into his hands, a look of pure, uncontained pleasure lit up his
face. He dribbled the ball a few times to get the feel of the surface, then
circled around, took three fast steps, and shot it neatly through the lopsided
hoop.
"I thought they didn't play basketball here," he said.
"Does that look like a regulation hoop? They don't well, not many of them. I
brought the ball with me." [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]