Father Petrus looked up to the canopy to his left and sighed. “So were mine. And I think we may be as well. As were all the disciples and Christ himself.”

Tanya’s mind spun. Something in her belly told her that his words were spun of gold. Her vision swam.

“God’s chess match,” she said.

She expected him to comfort her. To reason with her or something. But he didn’t.

“Yes.”

For a full minute they just stared out to the trees, hearing a sea of cicadas, watching Abdullah’s glazed-over stare from across the way. He was squatting and waiting for something. He was insane.

“You’re saying that my parents died so that I would end up in a box and pledge my life to God to come back here and lay on a riverbank and die myself.”

“Perhaps. Or so that you could do something only you can do.” He looked at her. “Do you know what that might be?”

She considered the question. “It sounds crazy, but maybe to love . . . Shannon.”

“The boy.”

“Yes, the boy. You know him better as Casius. The assassin.”

The father’s eyes widened with the realization. “Casius.” A smile tugged at his lips. “Of course.”

A tear pooled in her eye. “It may not make any sense to you, but my heart is crying for him.”

“So then he is a part of this too.”

“He was the man I loved.”

“Yes, but more.”

“What?”

“I don’t know. But nothing is without a purpose. For all we know his parents were somehow drawn to the jungle so that he could become who he has become.”

“An assassin? Doesn’t sound like God to me.”

“And the man who killed Hitler, was he raised up by God?”

“You’re saying that one of the reasons God brought our parents to the jungle was so that Shannon and I could fall in love and become who we are today for some reason somehow connected with this . . . this attack on America by these terrorists.”

“The chess match. I’m saying that the black side has had something up its sleeve and God has known for a long time. Yes. It happens a thousand times a day.”

“We are hardly pawns. What if my parents had not responded to God’s call?”

“Then you wouldn’t have fallen in love with Shannon, would you?”

“And what if Helen hadn’t persuaded me to come back?”

“Then . . . then you wouldn’t be able to love Shannon again.”

“And?”

He paused. “And I don’t know.”

A knot rose in her throat and she swallowed against it. “Part of me does still love him. But he’s changed. I’m not sure I know how to love him.”

“Love him the same way you are loved,” he said.