“I don’t hate you, Mom,” I said. I should have waited till later to say this because I made her cry all over on me even more than before and in the meantime Jonathan was yelling out louder and louder, “Oh, the pain! Oh, the pain! Why won’t someone help me!”

Then Mom said, “Can you climb down and see if you can help him to the road while I run back to the hotel and call a taxi?”

“I think I can,” I said.

Mom stood watching me as I climbed down the wall holding onto all the vines and ferns that grew out of it. When I was safely down I called up to say I was fine and Mom said, “Wait on the road,” and I heard her running off down the path toward Portofino.

I picked my way through the cactus to where I could see Jonathan Edwards lying. When he saw me he turned his face away and groaned. But even if he didn’t want to look at me he let me untangle his shirt from the brambles. I found his glasses lying next to him and I put them on his face. Then I helped him get up on one leg and hop a little to the bank above the road. I said, “You’ll have to sit and slide down the bank. It’s just dirt.”

He said, “My leg!” But he sat down anyway and slid with me guiding him and we got to the road where I helped him to hop across it and sat him down on the wall above the water to wait. We could hear the waves below. And I suddenly thought, “If he jumps from here, he really will kill himself,” and I worried he’d try again so I held on to the sleeve of his torn shirt. But he wasn’t thinking about committing suicide now because he said, “Are you going to tell?”

“No,” I said. Then I thought about Dad and I thought about how he was when we hiked together and about the spear gun he gave me on my eleventh birthday so I said, “On one condition.”

“What?”

“By the time we get home next week you have to be gone.”

“How will I do that?”

“You figure it out.”

We sat silent for a while. The moon was beginning to sink down below the horizon so it was getting really dark now. He said, “O.K. That’s how it’ll be.”

“O.K.”

He started to sort of sigh and sniff and breathe deeply and finally he said, “I’ll write a letter of resignation from the mission and go back to Westminster Seminary to complete my Master of Divinity degree in youth ministry. It’s my only option.”

“Fine,” I said.

“My future will be in your hands,” he said with a sort of sob.

“I won’t tell, don’t worry.”