“Okay. So what you’re saying is that God has chosen me for some . . . some purpose. I have to go back to the jungle. And if I don’t he’ll torment me with these . . . these . . .”

“Pretty much, yes. I doubt he’s the one doing the tormenting, but he isn’t getting in the way. It seems that you’re needed.”

“Do you have any idea how absolutely stupid this all sounds?”

Helen looked at her for a few seconds. “Not really, no. But I’ve been through a bit.”

“Yeah.” Sherry’s mind swam at the thought of returning to her past.

“I don’t see how that would be possible,” Sherry said.

“Why not?”

“For one thing, the place was overrun by soldiers! Who knows what’s there now.”

Helen nodded. “Father Petrus Teuwen is there. Petrus. Not where your parents were, but in Venezuela, on a mission station farther south, I believe. My husband knew him well when he was a boy. I talked with Petrus yesterday. He’s an exceptional man, Tanya. And he would welcome you.”

A small buzz erupted between her ears. “You talked to him? He knows about this?”

“He knows some things. And he knew of your parents.”

“So you’re really suggesting I pick up and go down there?” Sherry asked incredulously.

“I thought I said that yesterday. You weren’t listening?”

“For how long?”

“Until you have had enough. A week, a day, a month,” Helen said.

“Just up and fly all the way to South America for a day? It takes a full day just to get down there.”

Was she serious? Of course she was serious! Maybe God was calling her as he had called her parents nearly twenty years ago.

But the irony of the thought. Helen was right. Sherry had spent eight years running from her past and now she was suggesting Sherry just step back there. Like it was some kind of booth at a fair she could walk in and out of at will. But it wasn’t some booth—it was the house of horrors and the last time she’d gone in there the lid had locked shut.

But then that was Tanya Vandervan. She was Sherry Blake. The changing of her identity suddenly struck her as absurd. Goodness, her mind couldn’t see what her hair or eyes looked like. The mind was on the wrong side of the skull, where the visions and nightmares wandered around at night.

The silence was stretching.

“You’re free to go now that you’ve left the hospital,” Helen said. “Do you think this is by chance? Think about it, Sherry.”

She did. She thought about it, and the thought that returning might bring justification to her leave of absence from the hospital felt strangely warm. “So just buy a ticket and show up on Father Teuwen’s doorstep?”

“Actually, I’d get word to him. But basically, yes.”

Sherry sat for a long time and tried to wrap her mind around this call of God’s. But the more she thought about it, the more its madness faded.