But I don’t want what’s in this envelope to be about the diary. What I want is safety for those around me. And answers, for myself.

Footsteps on the stair. The door bursts open. Claudia.

“The police,” she says, breathless. “They’re questioning the brothers. With a picture of you.” Her eyes, which are wild, flick to Goran.

“How is that possible?” I say, feeling the color leave my face.

“They’re saying you were seen boarding the ferry last night,” Claudia says. “With Ivan.”

“But that’s not true!” I say.

“It doesn’t matter what is true,” Goran murmurs, moving swiftly toward a closet. Claudia follows him with a gaze.

“And you cannot persuade me, friend of Audra,” he says, back turned. “Nor do you need to.”

“This is Goran,” I say to Claudia. The look on her face is weird. “The mailman.”

The monk pulls two robes from the closet, pushes them toward us. “Quickly.”

I pull the robe over my head, swiftly tie the rope around my waist. “This way,” Goran says, before leading us upstairs.

“Wait here,” he says and crosses the hall into an office.

I turn on Claudia. “You tried to persuade him?”

“I didn’t know,” she snaps, tying her rope. “You can’t feel them when they’ve been hidden too long, or at all after a certain age. They lose their gifts, like Ivan was beginning to.”

But I had felt him distinctly.

Goran reemerges and gestures for us to follow him.

“Did you come from Rijeka?” he asks.

“Yes,” I say.

“I will take you myself to Merag, I know a fisherman near there. I will call him to meet us.”

He leads us through a small kitchen toward a back door, but pauses before he opens it. “It is twenty meters to the car. You know what to do? I cannot do it myself.”

I glance between them, confused.

“You are a man,” Claudia says to me. “A monk. That is what anyone outside must see.”

Goran opens the door and we step into a day that is far too bright. His stride is crisp as we follow him to the old gray Opel parked in the tiny lot behind the monastery. Ten feet from the car, a policeman steps around the side of the building and hurries after us, shouting for us to stop. I barely refrain from grabbing Claudia’s arm, amped nearly out of my skin. I stop long enough to fix him with what I hope is a monkish gaze.

Feel bad for your sins and walk away, dude. And quit looking at porn.

My heart threatens to fail in the three seconds it takes the policeman to wave a weak greeting and turn back the way he came.