“As I passed the little cemetery going down to the landing I stopped for a moment near Rebecca’s grave. I shone the flashlight on her tombstone. A frisson of the dream came back to me, and I heard her voice again in my memory as though she was near to me. ‘Not your life,’ she said. ‘Whose life then?’ I asked. And I felt a sense of foreboding, a dreadful sense of it—as though life itself were full of nothing but misery.

“Wasn’t Mona sick unto death, nauseated and miserable, and here I was going out to the Hermitage with no thought of her? Mona wanted so badly to see the Hermitage. But what could I do but pray for Mona?

“The sky was darkening. I had to go.

“When I returned I’d go to Mayfair Medical. I’d search the wards. What hospital room doesn’t have a window for nurses to peep inside? I’d get as close to Mona as I could. Nobody would stop me, but for now it was the Hermitage that beckoned. I had to go.

“Into the pirogue I piled my gear, and, double-checking my gun for bullets, I set out. There was just enough light from the reddening sky to see the trees clearly and I knew the way now, and it soon became evident that the many pirogues of the renovation had plainly marked a trail. They had worn the way, one might put it. And I was soon speeding along.

“In less than half an hour I saw the lights of the Hermitage! And as I pulled up to its new landing and tethered the pirogue, I saw the brilliantly lighted windows and the gleam of the white marble stairs. All around the little house were neat beds of flowers, and the wisteria vine came crawling splendidly over its high roof. The little building resembled a small Coptic church with its many arches.

“In the doorway, facing me, indeed watching me, was the stranger, in his male attire, hair full and loose, neither beckoning me to come closer nor putting up his hand to forbid my coming ashore.

“How was I to know this was the last day of my mortal life? How was I to know that all those random little things which I have described to you would mark the end of my history—that Jerome’s father, Tommy’s nephew, Aunt Queen’s Little Boy, Jasmine’s Little Boss and Mona’s Noble Abelard were about to die?”

CHAPTER 37

37

“I FOUND a paved path to the foot of the stairs. Allen had mentioned it to me on the phone but I had forgotten it. I had forgotten the flowers as well, and how tranquil and sweet they looked in the light from the windows.

“I came to the bottom of the marble steps. He was up there, merely looking down at me.

“ ‘Need I ask your permission to come up?’ I asked.