“It’s our own midsummer night’s dream, Alex, very near the solstice hour. Just after midnight it will be, in this garden of good over evil where everything is roundabout and upside down.” She leaned against him, looping a finger along the mirrored trail in Venus’s fountain. Tonight more than ever, Alex had what Lucy called his “luminous quality,” and a smile played on his mouth.

“Are you getting drunk tonight, Lucy? I’ve never seen you drunk.”

She laughed and shook her head emphatically. “Do you think I would? I want to remember every hour of this night—all the night long.”

There was something Alex had wanted to say to her privately since the afternoon; and he spoke now, hoping it wouldn’t alter her shining spirits. “Lucy, I’m so sorry your mother didn’t come with Laura. It’s one quest I truly wanted to see you follow to its end; to find her.”

Ah yes! Laura, Lucy thought, and she smiled mischievously at him. But she decided now was not the time for those questions, and propped her glass in the fountain. She put a strong hand on either side of his face and shook her head gently. “Don’t you know yet, Alex Stafford? I have found her. Here.” And she watched his smile of relief, his mouthed “yes,” which communicated his understanding. Diana had become that person in her life better than anyone else ever would.

“Here’s to Diana,” she continued. “To the plurality of faiths; and the avoidance of dogma about things we can have no certain knowledge of.” Finding her own glass almost empty, she took over his, and drained it, laughing. “But can people ever understand this?”

“Can controlling governments afford for them to?”

Lucy leaned her body weight against him. “Well, that’s part of the legacy from the chest, I think. Simon, and Grace, and Calvin, I now realize, and you and I, and everyone like us, should shout from the rooftops about these people’s terrifying influence on politics, and laws, and the freedom of our choices. No single religion has a monopoly on bigoted fundamentalism. In Revelation, Jesus is the hero with a ‘sword in his mouth’—and I hope we can mount a very effective counteroffensive with our own words.”