Now I knew who it was who was talking! It was Jonathan Edwards! He was supposed to be back at the mission in Switzerland tilling the vineyard of the Lord as Dad would say, along with the Kee-gans’, until Dad got back to do the tilling himself. I remembered what Janet had told me on the train and I got all hot all over and my face went red right there in the dark with no one to see. I hung on to the ferns and thought I’d fall for sure and each second was the longest I’d ever been through, even worse than the time I got caned at boarding school when I had to bend over and recite the Lord’s Prayer while I was hit with the cane at the end of each line. Even worse than when I had to lie on the snow waiting for the stretcher sled when I broke my leg.

“Oh, Jonathan,” Mom said. And then I couldn’t believe my ears because I heard kissing! He was kissing my mom! Jonathan was a lot younger than Mom; in fact, he had been a student of Dad’s when Dad taught Summer Bible School when Jonathan had been sixteen. Dad had led him to the Lord! Now he was kissing my mom! I heard it and it sounded a lot longer and wetter than the kiss I had given Jennifer, which had been a lot more respectful by the sounds of it. Then I heard Mom all panting and breathless say, “Jonathan, this is wrong! We can’t!” #x201C;Oh, Elsa,” he said, and I heard him sort of sniff and cry a little.

“I feel the same way,” Mom said, and she started to sniff, then I heard a lot of shuffling around and once in a while I heard muffled sniffing and a sob or two but I couldn’t tell which one was doing the crying because it was all muffled up. So I guessed they were hugging and crying like Mom always did when someone was leaving for a very long trip and we sang, “We shall meet again on that bright distant shore.” But this time Mom didn’t sing any hymns.

After a while Jonathan Edwards said, “Elsa! Come with me!” and Mom said, “To where?”

“Back home. We can start over.”

“Jonathan, I feel for you, very deeply. I feel more for you than I have ever felt for anyone but I cannot give in to this temptation. It’s wrong, and I think you know this, too.”

“Elsa, I can’t live without you! Not even a day! That’s why I followed you here and called you up at the hotel this morning!”