I blinked back tears. “But God provided a miraculous escape tonight, just as he did for Paul. Why would he do that if he intended for me to remain? Tell me that.”

He did not respond. Instead, he rose and stretched. “I must retire for the night, and you may take the cot in the corner. Eat a little something—you look famished—then put out the candle when you’re ready to bed down.” He moved toward a separate little room across the cabin, then paused and turned back in the doorway. “By the by, Miss Mourdant. Paul didn’t escape that night—the time the prison walls fell down. You should read the story again.” With a wink, he disappeared into the shadows of the far room, leaving me alone with my troubled thoughts.

Sleep is rarely a friend of artists and creative types. Our minds continue to whirl and discuss and untangle long after our bodies have told us it’s time to sleep. I stared into the fire, waiting for tiredness to approach, and finally settled in at the window with a melted candle stub and a worn Bible, flipping through for the story of Paul. But even as my fingers paged through Acts, I remembered what happened. Paul had gone on to do what he always did—right from where he was, he overflowed with words of God to his jailer, his cellmates, anyone who would listen. Some were touched by his light and walked toward it—toward God. All because he’d chosen to remain.

But how had he known God had wanted him to stay?

How did I know what on earth I was meant to do?

My eyes burned from squinting at the tiny print without the benefit of daylight, so I gave up with a huff and shut the worn volume. Stomach growling, I grabbed a jar of dried figs and dumped a few out onto my hand as I pondered. Why, Paul? What made you stay when God miraculously released you?

As I licked the sticky residue from my fingertips, Bridget’s voice threaded again through my memories. “There was only so much about Paul a person could lock up.”

Because he was already free.

More free than his fellow prisoners. Than his jailers. And he had chosen to remain in the prison to help set others free.

Faces swam before me, in all their bound hopelessness—first the patients at Hurstwell, but then the staff. Nurses, Thornhill, shadowed Dr. Turner. Was anyone truly free?

Not without me, my child.

The truth jarred me so suddenly I sat up straight and clutched my pounding heart. “You were bound up in resentment, Vivienne. Shielded against being controlled . . .” Mitchell had said that, and he was right.