“I’ve been going out of my mind, worrying,” he says. “You took off like that, half-cocked and frantic and whatnot, and then the Garter was all over the news. I’m so sorry, Clara. I know Angela was one of your best friends.” He lets out a breath. “At least you’re safe. I thought you were—I thought you might be—”

Dead. He thought I might be dead.

“Where are you?” he asks. “I can come meet you somewhere. I have to see you.”

“No. I can’t.” Just do it, I tell myself. Get it out before you lose your nerve. “Look, Tucker, I’m calling because I have to make you understand something. There’s no future for you and me. I don’t even know what my future is, at this point. But I can’t be with you.” A lone tear makes its way down my face, and I wipe at it impatiently. “I have to let you go.”

He gives an aggravated sigh. “It doesn’t matter, does it?” he says, his voice laced with anger. “All that I said to you before, about us, about what I feel, it doesn’t matter. You’re making the choice for both of us.”

He’s right, but that’s just how it has to be. I push on. “I wanted to tell you that wherever I am, whatever happens, I’ll always think of you, and the time we spent together, as my happiest time. I’d do it all over again, if I had the choice. No regrets.”

He’s quiet for a minute. “You’re really saying good-bye this time,” he says, and I can’t tell if he’s asking me or simply trying to get his head around the idea.

“I’m really saying good-bye.”

“No,” he says against my ear. “No. I won’t accept that. Clara …”

“I’m sorry, Tuck. I have to go,” I say, and then I hang up. And cry. And cry.

I sit on that swing for a long time, in the rain, thinking, trying to get a grip on myself. I try to picture Chicago, what it will be like, but all I can conjure in my head is a giant silver bean and a bunch of tall buildings. And Oprah. And the Bears.

I gaze up at the gray, shifting clouds.

Is this my destiny? I ask them. To be with Christian? To go with him? To protect Web because his mother can’t be here?

Is this my purpose?

The clouds don’t have a lot of answers.

For the first time in my life, I wish for a vision. I almost miss having them, which is ironic, I know. Every night lately as I lay me down to fragile sleep, I wonder, will it come? Is this the night when the mysterious scene will play like a movie trailer behind my eyelids and the whole process will begin again: sorting through the fragments, the details, the feelings, trying to understand what they add up to? In that moment before I close my eyes and give in to the darkness of night, to sleep, my body tenses under the sheets. My breath quickens. Waiting.

Hoping that a vision will steal over me, and there will be something God wants me to do. Anything.

Hoping for a direction. A path to walk. A sign.

But the vision doesn’t come.

From behind me, bells start to toll the hour from a towering redbrick church a couple blocks away. I count the beats—ten of them—and stand up. I should get back to Christian.

But then, as the last notes from the clock fade away, an idea comes to me, a thunderclap of sudden inspiration.

I could make myself have a vision. Or, at the very least, I could try.

I glance around. There’s no one else in the park, which makes sense. You’d have to be crazy to go out in this downpour. I’m alone.

I smile and close my eyes. Focus.

And the glory comes, like it never left me. It comes. Thanks largely to the congregation, I think.

I imagine sunshine. A line of palm trees. A row of red flowers along a path of purple-and-tan checkered stones.

I think of Stanford.

I cross.

The quad is largely deserted as I walk to MemChu. The last few steps I practically run into the church. I can’t be gone long, I think. Christian will worry.

It’s still early here, and there’s only one person walking the labyrinth when I get to the front of the nave: a guy in a red sweatshirt, mumbling quietly to himself as he walks the pattern on the floor. I shuck off my damp shoes, pick up at the entrance of the circle and start walking, slowly, following the turns and twists of the pattern, trying to clear my head of all that’s clogging it.

Time to meditate. Briefly I worry that I might start to glow in front of red sweatshirt guy, but he seems lost in his own thoughts and I can’t wait.

I walk in circles for a while, not thinking but moving my feet automatically, following the path before me, then stop and check my watch.

I’ve been here for ten minutes, and I haven’t even come close to having the vision.

Maybe this is a pipe dream. I couldn’t make myself have a vision before. Why would it work for me now?

“You’re not going to get the result you want if you keep looking at your watch,” says a voice. I turn. Standing on the opposite side of the circle in the red sweatshirt is Thomas.

Good old Doubting Thomas.

“Thanks,” I say wryly. “I bet you’re not going to get the result you want if you keep stopping to see how everybody else is doing.”

“Sorry. I was just trying to help.” His eyebrows come together. “How’d you get all wet?”

“Do you come here often?” I ask instead of trying to explain, since this isn’t exactly the place I would have expected to find the guy who could never seem to leave well enough alone in happiness class.

He nods. “Since I finished that class. It helps me get my mind off my crazy life.”

His crazy life, I think. How crazy could it be?

“I’m not very good at this,” I confess, gesturing to the blue vinyl circle. The morning sun is passing through the stained-glass windows, casting a riot of color onto the patterns under our feet. “I don’t know what I’m doing. It’s just not happening.”

“Here.” He pulls at something around his neck and comes away with the earbuds for an iPod, which he hands me. “Try this.”

I tentatively slip the buds into my ears. He presses play, and I’m flooded with a chorus of male voices singing in Latin. Gregorian chant.

Again, Thomas surprises me. I would have pegged him as a rap aficionado.

“Nice,” I say to him.

“I don’t know what they’re saying, but I like it,” he says. “It helps.”

I listen.

Panis angelicus fit panis hominum … Bread of angels becomes the bread of men …

Sometimes it doesn’t suck to be able to understand any language on earth.

“So now you walk,” Thomas says. “Just walk, and listen, and let your mind empty itself out.”

I do what he says. I don’t think about what I want. I don’t think about Angela or Web or Christian. I walk. The monks chant in my ears, and I hear them like I’m standing among them, and I stop for a moment in the center of the circle, and I close my eyes.

Please, I think. Please. Show me the way.

That’s when the vision hits me like a Mack truck doing seventy. And I am swept away.

17

TWO MINUTES TO MIDNIGHT

In the vision, I’m waiting for someone. I’m standing next to a long metal bench—standing because I’m too nervous to sit down. I take a few steps in one direction. Stop. Walk back the other way. Look around. Check my watch.

Two minutes to midnight.

A cloud drifts in front of the moon, which is full, circled by a hazy grayish ring. I pull my jacket tighter to me even though I’m not cold. My head is full of fear, my chest tight with it, my heart beating fast. This is crazy, I think. Foolhardy, my mother would call it. Insane. But here I am, anyway.

Sanity is overrated.

Behind me something hisses, loud and mechanical, and I turn to look. There’s a train, a sleek, silver line of cars stretched along the tracks. It rolls slowly toward me.

Maybe I’m supposed to go somewhere.

The train passes, clacking in a heavy rhythm like my heart. The brakes squeal as it glides to a stop, and the passenger doors slide open. I take a step forward and then look down the empty platform. After a moment the doors close, the engine rumbles, and the train continues on, shaking the earth with its weight, screeching and clacking until the last car passes. It rolls away into the darkness without me.