I’d swallowed past the lump in my throat. “No, I’m just a friend.”

Even that was a lie. There was a time when I could have been so much more to him but I’d run away, trying to put as much distance between us as possible, fleeing both the church’s condemnation and my own shame at what I’d done.

“I’m sorry, but I can only disclose information to family.”

“Could you please just tell me if he’s okay? I’m calling from Zaire and am about to leave for Johannesburg to see him. I just need to know he’s okay. Please.”

She’d softened at the obvious desperation in my voice. “All I can divulge is that he’s still in a critical condition.”

At least he was still alive. I hadn’t been sure he would be, considering the letter revealing his condition was two weeks old. There was still hope if I could just get to him in time.

The guilt that followed me out the orphanage gates still bogged me down hours later when Xavier dropped me off at Goma International Airport. He was a big man, in both height and girth, and he usually wore a big smile, an outward reflection of the optimism that drove him, but just then he looked forlorn.

“Xavier . . .” I said, trailing off as we faced each other.

I wanted so much for him to understand why I needed to leave, but there was no simple way to explain how almost forty years ago, I’d fallen in love with a priest and committed a terrible sin while in the process of taking my vows to become a nun. Excommunication had followed, and I’d agreed to leave the Catholic Church quietly in order to spare Daniel the shame.

For despite how much I’d loved him—despite the fact that he may have wanted me to remain a part of his life and to hell with the consequences—I knew if I insisted on staying that he’d eventually come to despise me for it. Choosing to love him from afar was the hardest thing I’d ever had to do. Sometimes what we deem a sacrifice worth making is one that comes with a price too high to expect another to pay.

There was no encapsulating a lifetime of heartbreak into a simple explanation and so I merely patted Xavier awkwardly on the arm, apologized, and then turned to leave.

When the plane took off a few hours later, the sunlight glinted off Lake Kivu. I watched as Mount Nyiragongo’s volcanic peak became a harmless speck on the horizon. It was only once we landed in Kinshasa, and I waited to board my connecting flight to Johannesburg, that I finally began to feel some of the guilt lift.

“I’m coming, Daniel,” I whispered. “I’m coming. Hold on.”

CHAPTER SIX

Ruth

23 April 1994

Groote Schuur Hospital, Cape Town, South Africa