It becomes hard to believe she is not being flayed for her sins.

She has to get to the horse before the sun goes down. That is a must, there is no choice. She cannot, will not, spend darkness in the desert.

Jared, I'm sorry.

I'm sorry, children, your mother is sorry. But even as she said it, she felt worm-like in her eleventh-hour contrition. When she ran from them, she didn't allow herself to think of them. She rode on the back of his bike with the wind in her hair, she gulped mountain air, she was hot and thirsty, she was salty, she was Love, she was alive! She convinced herself readily that her family would be fine. But were they fine? It was hard to tell from her vantage point of being in pre historic Australia, in a nest of human-eating taipans, indifferent Walers, treacherous men. How do you replace love with know ledge? How do you repeal your self-obsessed agenda? How do you change what can't be changed?

If only she could get to that horse. Is she moving closer to it, crawling on the ground, or is it just a mirage? Is it moving closer to her perhaps? Larissa blinks. Shiloh momentarily vanishes and is replaced by a sepulcher of tall branchy trees, and a gate, with a man slowly riding a horse through the sloping golf course. The Short Hills Country Club would do that in the wintertime, arrange for a rider on a white horse to celebrate the winter solstice. Larissa tried never to miss it. Except for the last two years when she didn't even know it was happening.

How do other people summon horses? What would Billy-O do?

Here, horsie, she calls out, thinks she calls out.

Here, here, horsie.

Is she calling a horse or a cat? Neither would come. Riot would come. She was a good dog. She would come. But she can't ride Riot out of the apocalypse, can she? She can't mount her Labrador retriever.

What did Billy-O tell her? She can't remember. He told herahe told heradon't tell the horse to "whoa" unless you want her to stop. If you want her to slow down, say, "slow." Don't say "whoa."

Larissa calls out. She summons her powers, her lungs, takes a deep breath and yells, "Whoa!" She yells it again and again. Trouble is, she can't tell if the horse is moving, stalling, slowing, stopping. Is the horse still? The sun makes everything shiver, like the air is trembling, and the horse, too. Larissa crawls on the dusty ground, dragging her leg. Her elbows are hurting, are sc.r.a.ped raw, her forearm is bleeding, for some reason, bleeding right into the dust. "Whoa, Shiloh. Whoa."

She is a field away from the horse. Living a life is not like crossing a field.

What if the horse isn't even there? What if it is also a mirage?

All of it a mirage. Even her. To be this hot, this arid, to hurt so much, to have so much pain, inside and out.

Una palabra. What is the one word I'm looking for that I can't find, one word that will bring me comfort, or stop my horse, or save me? Why don't I know that una palabra?

Where had the time gone?

Fickle friends. Now she knew why Bart was so apathetic to her. They knew. They all knew he loved someone else, that he was done with her. And they were lying for him. The only one who didn't know was her.

O G.o.d! Why are you forsaking me now? Help meaI just want to go to Manila and see my friend. That's all I want. I want to see Father Emilio and say to his kind face, you were right, and I was so stupid. To see Nalini.

Larissa cries into the dirt, and breathes in too much of it, chokes, spits it out, sputtering, hacking, panting. She is so thirsty.

She thinks she might feel better if only she weren't so thirsty. The sun torments her from the sky. She needs water. Feebly she cries out. Help, help. Yihahayihaha All stories end with death.

Yes, just not mine.

His.

Not mine. Eve's. Simi's. Kai's. Not mine. I'm the narrator in my own story. I have to get myself back on the horse, and then I'll be all right. I'll find my way. I'll go see Nalini. Together she and I will figure out what to do. I can still do stuff. I'll drive a bus. I'll fish. I'll sell Father Emilio's fruits.

There must be other things I can do after I get to the horse. I'm so close. It's not too far, it's right within reach. Whoa, she keeps whispering. Whoa.

She hears the Dylanesque sound of his harmonica, blowing plaintive notes of a barely familiar tuneaHe plays, and then he stops and sings. They're in her car, and it's lunchtime. It's before much, but after much also. There's nothing yet to return from, and because of that it seems so simple, so happy, and it hurts the heart. He blows, and then he sings.

"Beautiful dreamerawake unto meastarlight and dewbright are waiting for theeabeautiful dreameraqueen of my songa"

He is laughing and she is laughing too and he is looking at her kind of endearing and kind of funny, and nothing is what it is now, it just is.

How could he do this to me? He loved me so much, how could he do thisa?

What did Dante say was the worst sin? Not that Dante was such an authority on sin. Larissa doesn't know Dante's personal history, but she'd staged enough Shakespeare and read enough of the Greeks, and most important, she'd seen The G.o.dfather, and taken a Corleone course in college, to know that all the poets and all the writers, pulp and cla.s.sical, the United States government and Jesus himself were pretty specific and consistent on what const.i.tuted the gravest of all sins. It wasn't a toss-up between murder and aggravated a.s.sault with a deadly weapon. It wasn't between gluttony or perjury. It wasn't fortune-telling or indolence.

It was betrayal.

Oh, Kai.

That was the one. The U.S. Const.i.tution was plain. "The President of the United States shall be removed from office for Treason." And just so you knew where you stood, the Founding Fathers capitalized Treason for you, in case you had any doubts.

Mark Antony's eulogy of Caesar was no less indicting. "Brutus, as you know, was Caesar's angel. Judge, o ye G.o.ds, how dearly Caesar loved himathen I and you and all of us fell down, whilst b.l.o.o.d.y treason flourished over us."

Father Emilio: Man is not punished for his sin. He is punished with his sin.

Larissa's skin is bubbling up under the sun.

My question to Father Emilio, when I see him next, is this: why is the gravest of sins, the hardest of all the commandments to keep? Why is it the easiest to break? If it's so terrible, why do we all do it?

Why are so many of us faithless?

Betrayal: be: to completely; tray: to hand over. Betrayed: utterly handed over.

Larissa can almost hear the voice of the man of the cloth replying: first answer about yourself, Larissa Stark. Not why are others faithless. Why were you faithless?

I wasn't faithless! she argues, bristling. Perhaps she needs more time to think about that one a little later. Her priority now is to get to the horse. She is almost there! The horse is still and Larissa is moving. Her left side from her shoulder to her ankle is sc.r.a.ping the dusty ground.

I wasn't faithless! I loved them. I love them still. I don't let myself think of Emily's nails she keeps breaking when she plays volleyball but keeps wanting to grow because she wants them long like mine. I don't let myself think of Asher sitting on my bed playing me a song on his guitar he learned just yesterday, or of Michelangelo running through the porch door in Lillypond saying, Mom, come, I caught a whole family of frogs, I put them in our boat, come.

It wasn't because I didn't love them. I just wanted what I wanted. The allegiance was to me first. I hoped Jared would get on with it. I hoped the children would get over it. What's the big deal anyway? People do it all the time.

That last one is true. People do it all the time, betray the ones they love.

That Ninth Circle must be filling up by now, spilling over the Hades banks. No more room in Lucifer's mouth. The icy rooms are full.

But why am I singled out? Larissa cried, crawling on one side, on one arm, when other people do it too? We talk about how betrayal is really an act of rebellion against possession. Obligation is all about what you owe someone else. It's about commitment, vows, the promises you made. Well, we rebel. We don't like to be told what to do. It's not so much betrayal as a.s.sertion. We proclaim who we are to the universe. This is what I am! I don't want to be pigeon-holed. I don't want to be narrowed. Obligations are anchors around your neck, and you want to be free like a bird.

It isn't about other people. It isn't about husbands. Or even about children. It is about Larissa.

Larissa wanted Kai. Larissa wanted adventure. She wanted pa.s.sion. She wanted, period. In the end, that trumped everything.

A small thought bubble takes the breeze out of her self-righteous sails for a moment. Then why is Kai's betrayal so devastating to her? He also wanted what he wanted. Why is she steeped in justification when thinking about herself, but deems it unforgivable when thinking about him? Look how upset she was: she lost her mind, she shoved him. They fell. Now he is dead.

Why did he have to die for no longer wanting to carry his obligation to her?

She didn't mean to hurt him. Certainly she didn't mean to hurt herself. She lost her mind. Now it's back. She was so angry. She didn't meant to hurt him. Still, though. What he did was unforgivable. She fully believes it.

She can't get to the truth of it, like a needle in the heart. Why is the consequence of her action nothing but a beautiful execution of her n.o.blest instinct, and yet the worst thing he could ever do?

Ah! She is getting closer to the truth here in the blinding white wilderness. It is only betrayal when your lover turns his back on you. When you walk away from your family, it is principled self-determination, independence, personhood. It is freedom. It is love. All falling under the category of positive qualities. Almost like virtue.

It occurs to Larissa that this is the first time she even words her abandonment in these terms. She has been calling it all sorts of things, starchy, self-justified. She has never called it betrayal.

Betrayal is what someone else does to you.

We expect so much of other people, thinks Larissa. So much of them, and yet so little of ourselves. Is that unfair? Oh, well. What's done is done. And it is done. You know what's unfair? That she can't move her leg! That she can't find the horse.

"All I do is pick up after the children. That's what I do. I went to school, grew up, went to college, worked hard, studied hard, dreamed BIG, got a job, briefly, thought much of myself, my talents, my intellectual gifts. I rocked to music, devoured books, baked, painted, danced, smoked. I was so happening. And then I had one child and another and another. And now all I do from morning till night is direct them and clean up their cereal bowls. Go get your gla.s.ses. Go get your folder. Go get the letter for me to sign. Go get your shoes. Go get your bag, your lunch money, your coat, your sister, your clarinet. Or: put your shoes away. Put your bowl away. Put the cereal box away. Throw away that wrapper. Close the pantry door. Pick up the straw off the floor. Close the dishwasher. Clothes go in the hamper, not right outside. Make your bed. Fold your couch blanket. Give Riot some water. The tissues from your nose, do they belong on the table or in the garbage? The empty cups, the paper cups, the empty boxes, the open jar of peanut b.u.t.ter, when when when when when will it ever stop?"

Evelyn sat smiling lightly. "I agree with everything you say, Larissa. My back is bent because there's always something on the floor I need to pick up. I was, I am, just like you. I can't believe I'm doing this instead of reading, or writing, or acting on stage. Do you remember how much I loved the stage? It was my life! And now this is what I do while the kids run off to their friends. I bend down and down." Evelyn nodded. "Larissa, I know. But this I also know. When you spend your day, each and every day, all the time, picking up after other people, and not just other people, but your children, your flesh and blood children, you bend, you sigh, you pick up the toy they dropped, the milk cover, the money they had to take with them on a trip and didn't, when you do all those things for them, day in and day out, that's when you find the Divine inside yourself. You know why? Because it's only the Divine in you that would do it. Do you know what I mean? You do it because that is what Love looks like, bent at the basin on the floor, washing their feet."

Larissa nodded. "You are so right, Ev," she said. "That's so smart. That's exactly how it is, how I feel. Now look. I'm sorry I have to run. But I must get to the store, or otherwise, those children I love so dearly and that husband so hungry will have nothing to eat. Sorry, I must run. Look at the time. It's nearly noon. You don't mind, do you?" She was so late! Kai had been waiting since eleven!

Women are saved through childbirth, Evelyn said to her as a goodbye.

To begin, to end, all the traffic in between.

Larissa now knows what the lie is: that the sun always goes down. Not here. Not this sun. It is never going down.

Her eyes see something close to her, and she tries to focus. She is having a harder time focusing. She squints, gleans through the diminishing fog of her blurred vision, a shape in front of her, supine, on its side, so familiar, yet alien, close, yet supernaturally distant.

She shakes her head, blinks and blinks again.

To her uncomprehending gaze, the shape in front of her is morphing into what looks like Kai!

But that can't be! She has been crawling away from him for hours! The horse is just over there, a few feet away. She is far away from Kai. This is an illusion. It can't be.

And yet. Here he is. He is just as she had left him. Except swollen, nearly unrecognizable.

But if he is right here, it means that she is right there, too! It means she hasn't moved at all in all this time. A bubble on her skin bursts, starts to leak weak clear fluid, viscous light-hued blood. Another bubble bursts. And another.

She is just where she left herself. She is in exactly the same place.

Lowering her head, Larissa bends to Kai, lies down next to his body in the sand. She is so tired. She is going to rest for a few minutes before she begins again.

Minutes pa.s.s.

Or is it hours?

Maybe no time at all pa.s.ses since the sun doesn't move.

Maybe there is no more time.

A thought flashes by her. What if I can't get out of this? What if no one comes and I can't get on the horse? What if this is out of my hands? She pushes it out of her head. Ezra was right. Matter could not contemplate its own extinction, could not conceive of itself not being. Atoms could not swirl and contemplate the end of their own electrical charge, could not betray or be betrayed. Could not abandon, or be abandoned. Atoms could not loveaor be loved.

The soul could. And her soul kept searching for the faithless horse in the blinding white. If only she could get on it, all would be well. Paradise was lost, but it could be regained. What did Father Emilio say? We have the power in us to begin the world anew. She would get herself to a hospital and when she was better, she would fly to Manila and go back to San Agustin, work at the orphanage, do her obediences, pay her penance, and take care of Nalini, and if Che hadn't come back yet, they would take what was left of Jared's money and fly back to the U.S. stopping off for a few days in Hong Kong because Larissa had never seen Hong Kong and always wanted to, and then they would go and visit Summit, such a nice town to raise a family. Larissa could show the young girl where she had once lived, introduce her to the husband and children she had left behind.

Epilogue.

Benevolence, Goodness, Kindness, Mercy, Humility, there it was, Humility. She couldn't believe how well she remembered the layout of the streets, the familiar names. She walked faster and faster through the old neighborhood, pa.s.sing the market, still selling the shoes and pears side by side, reveled in the pressed together streets, in the bustle of the afternoon. Faster and faster until she started to run, her little bag on her back, well, she didn't have a lot left. When they discharged her, they gave her back the few things she had, so she ran a little now, it wouldn't kill her, to run outside again, to be free.

Moonwalk, what a nice name for a town. Everything about it pleased her today, the closeness of the buildings, the smells of fish and smoke, the briny bay. She couldn't believe she was finally back. She had written Father Emilio four months earlier when she knew she was going to be released early for good behavior from that f.u.c.khole of a Mindanao medium security prison for women, and he was, as always, good enough to write back. He even sent her a parcel, a care package of dried crackers and cookies, and some potato chips; he sent her a Bible and pictures of her unbelievable baby, he forwarded her a letter from Jared that was too painful for Che to think about then or nowa"not when she was hurrying to see her own childa"Jared's letter about Larissa that broke Che's unmended heart. Though the picture Jared included of his growing family comforted Che a tiny bit: his very pregnant Slovakian wife, his new baby, his children with Larissa, Emily, grown up, looking so much like her mother when young, Asher, s.h.a.ggy-haired and unshaved, and Michelangelo, nearly a teenager, nearly as tall as his dad but with a floppy head of curly blond hairathe girls must love him, thought Che, as she wept for her dearest poorest Larissa.

She almost ran past San Agustin in her reverie.

"Che!" Father Emilio called, standing on the church steps, like always, open door behind him, looking out at the laity rushing by. Dropping her bag, she rushed to him. He hugged her. He was older and grayer, and his back was more stooped than she remembered, but that's because he was always bending to bless the old people in their beds, to bless the hands of the little orphans.

"I'm so glad to see you, Che."

"Not as glad as I am to see you, dear Father," she said, kissing his hands, bending her head to be blessed by him.

"You've had a safe journey?"

She rolled her eyes. "I got sick, caught some viral island thing a few weeks ago."

"You do look very thin."

"I'm okay now. A little rice pudding, a little pandesal, some halo-halo, I'll be as good as new."

He motioned her inside. "Come. No use standing here," he said, "when there is someone who has been waiting so long to see you."

"I'm scared, Father," Che said nervously. "She won't remember me. She doesn't know who I am. She'll be angry. I know I would be. She won't understand. She's so little. I can't explain to herawhat do I do? I've been gone so longanot by choice, buta"

He picked up her bag from the ground. "Come, Che. No use standing here when there is someone who's been waiting so long to see you."

With trembling hands, Che took her bag from him. "I brought her something. Maybe I could give her a gift first? I bought her a dress. A pretty floral sundress. I know here all they wear is uniformsa"

"You can give it to her later. Come." He squeezed her hand gently. "She won't need it now."

They walked through the long darkened corridor just like Che remembered, and walked out through the French gla.s.s doors onto a courtyard, in the middle of which a group of small children were playing. One tiny girl, who looked to be the ringleader, was showing them how to throw the marker onto a hopscotch square. "No, you're not doing it right, Sammy," she was saying imperiously to the befuddled boy. "Are boys even capable of playing this? Watch me. You throw the marker onto a square, but then when you hop, you can't hop onto that square. That's the point of the game. Otherwise you lose. Now, let's try it again. I'm going to throw it on square three, and then you hop." Turning her black-haired head, the girl spotted Father Emilio and Che standing next to him.

For a moment she was motionless.

The small centivo fell from her hands.

"Mama!" she cried. And ran across the stone yard, ran with all her might, and jumped into Che's arms.

"Oh, Mamaa" she cried, hugging Che around the neck, wrapping herself around her mother. For a few moments no one spoke, no one made a single sound, except the chirping birds on the awnings.