As if the story was done. An awful feeling. As if it didn’t … As if it could never – no, not ever – be conclusively told.

51

Mr Franklin D. Huff

I am intensely fond of Miss Hahn. Intensely fond. Insofar as I am capable of … you know, anything approaching sincere human feeling. I am ‘in love’ with Miss Hahn (that much must be abundantly clear by now). But the last chapter – 50 – was sheer torture for me. Because the description of events Miss Hahn kindly provided was so woefully inadequate! (I commend you simply for getting through it, relatively intact.) I mean all that pointless, interior gumph! All that endless self-examination! All that ludicrous self-excoriation when the action – the real action – outside her, on this porch, in this place, at this moment …

52

Miss Carla Hahn

But there’s still so much I need to say! For the story to … to hold together! For it to possess any kind of … of deeper meaning. About my mother, Else, how she recovered from the pneumonia and lived for a further eight years. But after a few months we realized that she had early-stage dementia. So she was saved but it was almost as though the saving of her was a kind of … almost a punishment. As if the secrets of my soul – my soul – the confusion – had played out in Orla’s prayers. Does that make any sense?

Other things, too. Why did Mr Huff interrupt me like that? Scare me like that? Other things … Yes. About poor Kalinda. How she mysteriously disappeared after Orla’s death. How Orla died three days after I asked – or didn’t ask – for her prayers. Three days after I left. Because I hadn’t been able to decide who I was or what I wanted. Because I couldn’t be on the inside. Standing on the main stage. I was never … I was always … that phrase Mr Huff …

And so was she. So was Kalinda. Which is why, after Orla died, she turned on herself (first), then afterwards turned traitor. She entered Witness Protection. Alone. Without Bran. Bran wouldn’t … Bran hadn’t … Or had he?

Which means that maybe the nay-sayers were right, all along, about Orla overhearing, and then confiding in Father Hugh. We can never be entirely sure, can we? There can never be true certainty. I suppose the only thing that’s truly certain – right here, right now, on this strange earth – is love. The way it flames. The way it burns. Almost senselessly. Until everything is devoured. Everything is consumed. And then it dies and is gone. Just the ashes remaining. A pointless little pile of exquisite, feather-light flakes of depleted carbon.

Can I offer it up, though?

Can I offer up the ash?

Can I?

Yes?

Can I?

Even that?

53

Mr Franklin D. Huff

She was surrounded by this giant ocean of souls. That’s how I’m seeing them. That’s how I’m describing them. I simply can’t articulate … And then as she reached the closing stages of her confession, descended into a state of moral confusion, this chink of light – that’s the only way to … this chink of light began to break through her cardigan (terrible old cardigan, for the record. With evidence of some kind of smoke damage on the shoulder. Revolting old thing. Muddy brown colour. Quite awful. But lovely, I suppose, because she was in it).