Your Heart Belongs to Me

terrible question. Blunt and direct. Do you want to die?”
    “Why would I want to die?”
    “Do you?”
    “No. Hell no. I’m only thirty-five.”
    “You do not want to die?” she asked again.
    “I’m terrified of dying.”
    “Then there are steps you’ve got to take, and you know them. But in addition to going to the authorities, you’ve got to do more. I think you must make…the heroic act.”
    “What do you mean?”
    Instead of answering, she turned to the porthole beside her and stared down upon the field of winter clouds, the barren furrows under which seeded snow was harvested by a hidden world below.
    Her skin seemed translucent in the high-altitude light, and when Cathy pressed a few fingers to the glass, Ryan had the strangest notion that, if she wanted, she could reach through that barrier as if it were less substantial than a gauzy membrane, even less solid than the surface tension on a pond.
    He did not repeat his question, because he recognized that this withdrawal was different from her other silences, more contemplative and yet more urgent.
    When she turned to him again, she said, “You may not have time for the heroic act. To be effective for you, it requires a future of satisfactory works.”
    The directness of her stare, the tone of her voice, and her earnestness implied that she believed she was speaking plainly to him, her meaning unmistakable.
    Confused, Ryan did not at once ask her to clarify, because he recalled what she had said earlier—that understanding comes with patience—and he suspected that any question he asked would be met with the same advice.
    “What you need to do,” she continued, “is offer yourself as a victim.” Perhaps she saw bafflement in his face, for she elaborated. “Suffer for the intentions of others, Mr. Perry. If you have the courage and the stamina, offer yourself as a victim all the rest of your life.”
    If he’d been required to put into words the course of action that she had just suggested, he could not have made much sense of it. Yet on some deep level of his mind, in some profound recess of his heart, he knew that she had planted a truth in him and that in time he would understand it fully, and only in time.
    Without another word, he returned to the seat in which he had been sitting before joining Cathy, and they completed the flight apart from each other.
    Crossing Arizona into California, Ryan considered that he did not have to go home, where Lily’s sister must be waiting. He could go anywhere, to Rome or Paris, or Tokyo. He could spend the rest of his life on the run in high style and never exhaust his fortune.
    Nevertheless, he rode the plane down to southern California, where the day was overcast and the sea choppy in the distance.
    On the Tarmac, before going to the limo that Ryan had arranged to transport Cathy back to Los Angeles, she came to him and said, “You remembered what I said about the roots of violence. Do you remember the taproot—always the ultimate and truest motivation?”
    “The hatred of truth,” he said. “And the enthusiasm for disorder that comes from it.”
    To his surprise, she put down her small suitcase and hugged him, not in the manner of a woman embracing a man, but with a fierceness that expressed more than affection. She whispered in his ear and then picked up her suitcase and went to the car that waited for her.
    In his own limo, leaving the airport, Ryan thought again of escape. They could drive to San Francisco. He could get a new car there and drive himself, next to Portland then east to Boise, down to Salt Lake, to Albuquerque and Amarillo. Spending a night or two in each place, on a perpetual road trip.
    His cell phone rang.
    He checked the screen. His father was calling.
    When Ryan answered, the old man said, “What the shit is going on, kid?”
    “Dad?”
    “How deep is the shit you’re in? Are you gonna drown in it? Am I going down with you, what the hell ?”
    “Dad, take it easy. Calm down. What’s happening?”
    “Violet is happening, right here, right now, get your ass over here.”
    For a moment, Ryan thought his father had said violence was happening, but when the word registered properly, he repeated it: “Violet.”
    “What’re you doing with a psycho bitch like this, kid? Are you out of your freakin’ mind? You get her out of here. You get her out of here now.”
    Lily and Violet, sisters in life, sisters forever.
     

 
    FIFTY-ONE

    N early nine years earlier, Ryan