And on the second day of her escape, he asked her where she wanted to go, what she wanted to do, and what her plans were for the house. She thought about it for a long moment. In some part of her she still loved the way Finn had been at the beginning, and knew she would for a long time. It wasn't over yet. She would never forget or stop loving the man she had loved for the first nine months, but the demon he had become after that had nearly cost her her soul, and would have cost her life. She had no doubt of it now.

"I'm not sure what to do about the house," she said sadly. Making major decisions about anything was too hard for her right now. She was still too shaken by everything that had happened.

Robert looked at her quietly. She needed a guide to get through the dark forest of what she was going through. "The man threatened to kill you. That was not a story for a book, it was a message to you." She had told Robert all about it.

"I know," she said, with tears in her eyes. "He killed the woman's baby too, so he could get all her money." She spoke about them as though they were real people, which they had become to her, instead of an allegory for her, which she understood clearly in the end.

"I'd like to give him thirty days to pack up and get out. People like him always land on their feet again. They tell enough lies and screw over enough people, and the next thing you know, they turn up somewhere else," Robert said. He was sure that Finn would too. "Can you live with that? Thirty days for him to figure out his plans and pack up." Robert would have preferred to kick him out in twenty-four hours, but he knew that it would be too stressful for Hope to contemplate doing that.

"Okay," she agreed.

"I'll go out there and pack up your things sometime this week."

"What if he follows you back here?" Hope asked, looking terrified again, and Robert thought about it. Hope knew he didn't have Robert's name or numbers, because he had torn up the piece of paper and thrown it away, and he was still text-messaging her to no avail. Robert still had her phone. He handed it to her later that day, and saw her reading all the frantic text messages from Finn, and when she turned it off, she cried. It was awful what loving a man like that did to another human being. He had gone through the same thing when he finally walked away from his wife. There was no other choice. They were people who had been stolen by aliens sometime in their youth, destroyed, turned into twisted machines, returned, and then walked the planet destroying other lives. They had virtually no conscience and no heart, and very sick minds.

Hope was afraid that Finn was combing Dublin for her, and Robert knew it was possible. There was no limit to what a sociopath would do to reclaim his prey. So she sent Robert shopping for her, and she gave him all her sizes. He came back with enough clothes to keep her going for a few days. She hadn't decided where to go yet, but she knew that Finn might look for her in New York or Cape Cod. He would think nothing of getting on a plane to find her. And his text messages were getting increasingly desperate, alternating between threatening and loving. When a sociopath lost his prey, or any perpetrator, they went insane looking for them so they could torture them again. Robert had seen it all before. His wife had been similarly desperate, and the last time he had left her, he never went back. He wanted this to be the last time for Hope and she said it was. Whatever she still felt for him, she knew there was no other choice. She had barely come out alive. If he hadn't killed her, she would have killed herself. She was certain of that. She remembered thinking about it on the last night, and knowing she had surrendered her soul to him, she would have welcomed death, or sought it herself.

Robert was bringing in food for her, and she was too afraid to leave the house. They were sitting in his kitchen eating dinner, when he gently asked her where she thought she might like to go. She'd had an idea all day, and since she didn't want to go back to New York or Cape Cod yet, it seemed like it might be the right choice. She didn't want to go to a strange city and hide. And there was no telling how long Finn would look for her or how desperate he would get. And she didn't want to give herself the temptation of seeing him again. Every time she read his loving text messages to lure her back, her heart ached and she cried. But she knew that whoever was writing them was not the same man she would find if she went back. The mask was off for good, and as everyone who knew him had said, he was a dangerous man. He was everything they had described and worse.

She had Robert's secretary make a reservation for her to New Delhi. It was the only place she wanted to go, and she knew she would find her soul again there, just as she had before. She wanted to hide, but she also needed to put herself back together again. She still shook violently every time she heard the phone ring, and her heart stopped every time Robert let himself into his home. She was terrified it would be Finn.

Her reservation to New Delhi was for the following night, two days after she had walked to Blessington in the early-morning snow. And listening to Hope tell him about the ashram over dinner, Robert thought it was a good idea. He wanted her as far away as possible from Finn. He was planning to go to Blaxton House himself after she left, and serve Finn with eviction papers. They were giving him thirty days to get out, and after thinking about it, Hope told him to sell the house. She never wanted to see the place again. It was too intimately linked to Finn. She knew she had to close that chapter of her life for good.

The day she left for New Delhi, she called Mark Webber in New York and told him what had happened. He asked if she had called Robert Bartlett, and she said she was staying in his house and he had been wonderful to her. She didn't tell him that he had been particularly helpful to her because he had had a sociopathic wife. But Mark was relieved to know she was in good hands. She told Mark she was going back to the Sivananda Ashram in Rishikesh, where she had been before, and he thought it was an excellent idea. The photographs she had taken there had been the most beautiful of her career, and being there had restored her before. He asked her to stay in touch, and she promised that she would.

And then, trembling from head to foot, she called Finn before she left. She had to say goodbye. She needed closure, and couldn't leave without saying something to him, even if only that she loved him, and was sorry she couldn't see him again. It seemed only fair. But fair was not an operative word for Finn.

"This is about the money, isn't it?" he said, when she called him.

"No, it's about everything else," she said, feeling broken as she talked to him. Hearing his voice ripped out her heart and reminded her of the agony she'd been through at his hands. "It wasn't right. I couldn't do what you wanted me to. You frightened me with that story the last night." He had intended to, to get out of her what he wanted.

"I don't know what you're talking about. It was just a story for a book, for chrissake. You knew that G.o.dd.a.m.n well. What the f.u.c.k is this all about?" It was about saving her life. She knew it then, and even when she heard his familiar voice, and his denials, she still knew it now.

"It wasn't just a story, it was a threat," she said, sounding more like herself.

"You're sick. You're frightened and paranoid and neurotic and you're going to wind up all by yourself," he threatened her.

"Possibly," she admitted to him and herself. "I'm sorry," she said, and he heard something in her voice that concerned him. He knew her well. It was how he did what he did, by knowing people's underbellies and their weaknesses and how to play them. He could hear a note of apology in her voice.

"What are you doing about the house?"

"You have thirty days," she said in a choked voice. "And then I'm putting it on the market. I'm going to sell it." There was no other choice unless he wanted to buy it himself. And there was no way he could. All his plans to bilk her out of money had gone awry. He had shown his hand too early and played it too hard. He had been so sure of himself that he had blown all his Machiavellian schemes to smithereens. "I'm sorry, Finn," she said again, and all she heard after that were two words.

"You b.i.t.c.h!" he said, and cut the line. The words were his final gift to her, and somehow made it easier to leave.

Robert drove her to the airport that night, and she thanked him again for everything he had done, including the use of his bed and his good advice.

"It was nice to meet you, Hope," he said, looking at her kindly. He was a very decent man, and had been a good friend to her. He would never forget finding her in the woodshed in Blessington, and she would never forget looking into those gentle eyes. "I hope to see you again sometime. Maybe when we're both back in New York. How long do you think you'll stay in India?"

"As long as it takes. It took six months before. I don't know if I'll stay longer this time or not." Right now, she never wanted to come back. And she never wanted to see Ireland again. For the rest of her life. She was afraid she would have nightmares about it for years.

"I think you'll be fine." He thought she had made remarkable progress in the past two days. From the broken woman she had seemed two days before, the sh.e.l.l of who she had been before was already beginning to emerge. She was stronger than she thought, and she had been through worse, but not much. Falling in love with a sociopath was one of those experiences you never forgot, if you were lucky enough to survive at all. And the worst was that they seemed so human, and sometimes acted so mortally wounded themselves, but when you reached down to help them on the ground, they pulled you into the swamp and drowned you if they could. Their killer instincts couldn't be cured. Robert was glad she was going as far away as she could, and the place she had described sounded like heaven to him. He hoped it would be for her.

They hugged each other as he left her at security with her small bag, full of the clothes he had bought for her to wear.

"Take care, Hope," he told her, feeling the way he had when he sent his daughters off to camp.

She thanked him again, and as he walked back to his car in the garage, he knew that whatever happened to her next, she would be all right. There was a spirit in her and a light that even a man like Finn O'Neill couldn't kill.

He was in his house, sitting in front of the fire, thinking about her and his own experience with his wife, when the plane Hope was on lifted off the runway and headed for New Delhi. She closed her eyes, laid her head back against the seat, and thanked G.o.d that she was safe. And then she wondered how long it would take for her to stop loving Finn. She didn't have the answer to that question, but knew she would one day. When the flight attendant handed her the newspaper, Hope took it and sat staring at the date. She had met him a year ago today. It had started exactly a year before, and now it was over. There was a symmetry to it, a perfect seamlessness. Like a bubble floating into s.p.a.ce. The life that had been hers and Finn's was over. It had been beautiful at first, and terrifying at the last. She sat staring at the sky as they burst through the clouds over Dublin, and she could see stars in the sky. And as she looked at them, she knew that however broken she still felt, her soul had reentered her body, and one day she would be whole again.

Chapter 22.

The chaos in the New Delhi airport felt wonderful to Hope. She looked at the women in the familiar saris, some of them wearing bindis. The noises and smells and brightly colored costumes all around her were just what she needed. It was as far from Ireland as she had been able to come.

Robert's secretary had hired a car and driver for her, and she traveled the three hours north to Rishikesh in comfort. And then they traveled a smaller road to the ashram where she had spent half a year before. It felt like coming home. She had requested a small room by herself. She had asked for time with the swamijis and monks so that she could continue the spiritual seeking she had pursued before. The Sivananda Ashram was a holy place.

She could feel her soul sing when she saw the River Ganga, and the Himalayan foothills where the ashram rested peacefully like a bird in its nest. The moment Hope stepped out of the car, it was as though everything that had happened to her in the past year faded into the mists. The last time she had come here, she had been heartbroken over Mimi, and devastated by the divorce from Paul. This time the pieces of her had felt so broken in Dublin, and the moment she walked into the ashram it was as though all else was stripped from her life and she could feel her essence come alive again like a brightly burning flame. It had been the right place to come.

They had pa.s.sed several ancient temples on the way to the ashram, and just being there filled her soul. She fasted that night to purify herself, and did yoga in the early morning, and as she stood at the edge of the river afterward, she told her heart to let Finn go. She sent him with her love and prayers down the Holy River Ganga. She released him. And the following day she did the same with Paul, and she wasn't afraid to be alone anymore.

She met with her beloved master every morning after she did her meditation and yoga. She was up each day by dawn, and her master laughed when she told him she had been broken. He a.s.sured her that that was a great gift, and she would be stronger now. She knew that what he said was right and she believed him. She spent as many hours with him as he would allow her. She could never get enough of his wisdom.

"Master, the man I loved was totally dishonest," she explained to him one day, as she thought of Finn. He had been on her mind all morning. It was January by then. The Christian holidays had come and gone, with very little meaning for her this year. She was grateful not to have to celebrate them, and had slipped into January peacefully. She had been at the ashram for a month by then.

"If he was dishonest, he was a great lesson for you," the swamiji answered her after a long pause for thought. "We are always better than before when those we love inflict wounds on us. They make us stronger, and when you forgive him, you will no longer feel the scars." She was aware still that she did feel them, along with the regrets. And part of her still loved him. Her memories of the early days were the hardest to give up. She was more willing to forget the pain. "You must thank him for the pain, deeply, sincerely. He gave you a great gift," the swamiji told her. Hope found it hard to see it that way, but hoped that eventually she would.

She thought of Paul a great deal too. She missed him, and being able to call him. He was always in her thoughts, somewhere, in the past behind her, along with their daughter, who was a gentle memory now. She had been for a long time.

Hope walked in the foothills. She meditated twice a day now. She prayed with the monks and the other guests at the ashram. And by the end of February she felt more serene than she ever had in her life. She had no contact with the outside world, and missed it not at all.

She was startled when she heard from Robert Bartlett in March. He apologized for calling her at the ashram. They had brought her to the main office for his call. He needed a decision from her. It was about the house in Ireland. They'd had an offer, for the same amount she'd paid for it, which meant that all her improvements would be a loss. But they were willing to buy the furniture for a fair price, which was a loss as well. He said it was a young couple who had fallen in love with it, and were moving from the States. He was an architect and she was an artist, they had three young children, and the house was perfect for them. Hope wished them well and didn't care about the losses. She wanted to get rid of it, and it was good to know it would be in the right hands. He said that Finn had left right after Christmas, and said he was moving to France. Someone was lending him a chateau there, in Perigord.

"Did he give you any trouble?" she asked cautiously. She wasn't sure she wanted to know. She had spent so much time pushing him from her mind that she was hesitant to think about him now, for fear that he would poison her again. She had worked so hard to heal the wounds, and didn't want thoughts of him opening them again. Everything about him was toxic for her.

"No, he was all right. Kind of pompous and difficult, but he got out. It doesn't matter. How are you, Hope?" He was happy to talk to her. He had thought of her often and the day he had put her on the plane to India. She looked so small and fragile, and so brave. He admired her enormously. Getting out the way she had, taking nothing with her, and running for her life through the night took tremendous courage. He knew it all too well.

"I'm fine." She sounded happy, and free. "It's so beautiful here. I never want to go back. I wish I could stay forever."

"It must be beautiful," he said wistfully.

"It is." She smiled as she looked out the window at the hills around them, and wished he could see them through the phone. It was a long, long way from Dublin, which she hoped never to see again. It had too many ugly memories for her. She was glad he had been able to sell the house. He had said the new owners were keeping Winfred and Katherine, and Hope was glad to hear it. She had written them both letters of thanks and farewell from the ashram, with apologies for not saying goodbye to them. She was still paying them until the house was sold. "When are you leaving Dublin?" she asked him. It was nice talking to him. He had been part of such a strange time, and had saved her life with his wise counsel. He had been the swamiji of that hour in Dublin. Thinking that made her smile.

"In two weeks. I'm taking my girls to Jamaica for their spring vacation, and then I have to go back and settle in. It'll be strange working in New York again. I'm going to miss Dublin. I'm sure you don't have decent memories of it, but it's been nice for me working here for all these years. It sort of feels like home."

"I almost feel that way here."

"When are you coming back?" he asked her.

"I don't know yet. I've been turning down a.s.signments. I think Mark's getting mad at me, but I'm in no hurry to rush home. Maybe this summer. Monsoon season starts in July. It's not so great here then. I could go to the Cape." She had told him about her house there.

"We go to Martha's Vineyard in the summer. Maybe we could sail over to see you."

"That would be nice." He had told her about his girls. One was a dancer, like Mimi, the other one wanted to be a doctor. She remembered their talks about them during those strange days before she left for New Delhi. It all seemed very surreal now. The only thing that still seemed real to her were the early happy months with Finn. It really had been a dream that turned into a nightmare. She wondered who his next victims would be in Perigord or elsewhere.

Robert promised to keep her informed about the sale. And a week later she got a fax. It had gone through at the price she'd paid for it. Blaxton House was no longer hers. It was an enormous relief to her. Her last tie with Ireland and Finn O'Neill had been severed. She was free.

Hope stayed at the ashram until late June. The monsoons were coming, and she savored her last days there like a gift. She had done a little traveling this time with other seekers from the ashram, and had discovered some beautiful places. She had taken a boat trip on the River Ganga. She had bathed in the river many times to purify herself, and she had taken spectacular photographs again of the pink and orange colors at the ashram and along the river. She had worn saris for the last several months. They suited her, and with her jet-black hair, she looked completely Indian. Her teacher had given her a bindi, and she loved to wear it. She felt so much at home here. She was sad for days before she left, and spent many hours with her favorite swamiji on the last day. It was as though she wanted to store up all his knowledge and kindness to take them with her.

"You will be back, Hope," he said wisely. She hoped he was right. It had been a healing place for her for the past six months. The time had flown by.

On the last morning, she was praying long before the sun came up, and meditating. She knew she was leaving a piece of her soul here, but as she had hoped to, she had found other pieces of herself in exchange. Her teacher had been right in the beginning. Her scars had healed here, faster than she expected. She felt like herself again, only more and better, stronger, wiser, yet more humble. Being there made her feel pure. She couldn't imagine going back to New York. And she was planning to spend two months on Cape Cod, before starting work in New York in September.

When she left the ashram, they drove through sleepy Rishikesh. She wanted to cling to every moment, every image. She had her camera over her shoulder, but didn't use it. She just wanted to watch the scenery she loved so much slide by. She had very little with her, except for the saris she had worn, and a beautiful red one she had bought to wear to parties at home. It was prettier than any dress she owned. Robert had sent her camera to her when he retrieved her belongings from the house in Ireland. On her instructions, he sent the rest to her apartment in New York. She had been happiest at the ashram with almost no possessions to weigh her down.

She felt light and free when she boarded the plane in New Delhi. The flight stopped in London on the way back, and she bought a few silly things in the airport. This trip hadn't been about acquiring objects, it had been about finding herself, and she had. As she flew home she knew that at long last she was whole, possibly more than she ever had been in her life.

Chapter 23.

When Hope left India, she flew straight to Boston. She wasn't ready for New York yet. Predictably, it was a shock to her system. People looked so drab here, there were no saris, colorful clothes, or beautiful women. There were no pink and orange flowers everywhere. There were people in blue jeans and T-shirts, and women in short hair. She wanted to put her sari on and wear her bindi. And she wished she were back in New Delhi when she went to rent a car at the airport.

She drove to the Cape, thinking quietly to herself, and for a moment she looked around the house when she got there, and thought of her time there with Finn, and then she opened the shutters and forced him from her mind.

She went to the market that afternoon and bought flowers and groceries, and then put the flowers in vases around the house. She went for a long walk on the beach and felt peaceful being alone. It had been Finn's greatest threat to her, that if she didn't give him what he wanted, he would abandon her and she would be alone forever. And instead she had embraced it, and now she enjoyed her solitude. She took her camera with her when she went walking on the beach and she never felt lonely, only quiet and happy and serene.

She saw her old friends there, and went to a Fourth of July picnic. She was still meditating every morning and doing yoga, and she was happy to hear from Robert Bartlett in the second week of July. She had been at the Cape for three weeks then. She had adjusted to some of the culture shock from being back from India. And she still wore simple saris sometimes at night when she was alone. It was a way of reminding herself of her time at the ashram, and she would instantly feel a sense of peace come over her when she wore them. And in the mornings she did yoga on the beach.

"So how is it being back?" Robert asked her when he called her.

"Weird," she said honestly, and they both laughed.

"Yeah, it kind of is for me too," he admitted. "I keep wondering why people don't have brogues when I buy my groceries."

"Me too," Hope said, smiling. "I keep looking for saris, and monks." It was nice to talk to him. He no longer reminded her of a bad time. He was just a friend now, and she invited him and his daughters to come for lunch that weekend. They were coming by sailboat from Martha's Vineyard, and she told him where they could anchor. She would pick them up at the marina, and then bring them back to the house for lunch and the afternoon.

It was a gloriously sunny day when they sailed over from the Vineyard, and she smiled when she saw his daughters stepping off the boat in bare feet onto the dock. They were carrying their sandals in their hands, and he was shepherding them around like a mother hen, which made her laugh. He was reminding them to put on sunscreen, take their hats with them, and put their shoes on so they didn't get splinters on the dock.

"Dad!" His oldest daughter scolded him, and then he introduced them both to Hope. Amanda and Brendan. They were very pretty girls, and they both looked a lot like him.

They loved her house. And they sensed the peace there, and the warmth. That afternoon all four of them went for a long walk on the beach. The two girls walked far ahead of them, and Robert and Hope brought up the rear.

"I like your girls," Hope said, as they walked along.

"They're good girls," he said proudly. He knew that she had lost a daughter who was about the same age and he wondered if it was hard for her being around them, but she said it wasn't, it brought back happy memories for her. He thought she looked like a different woman from the shattered soul he had rescued in Blessington seven months before, in a woodshed behind a pub. The memory struck them both. She had never been as happy to see anyone in her life. And he had been so kind to her when he took her to his house, and let her sleep in his bed, while he slept on the couch.

"You recovered a lot faster than I did when it happened to me," he said quietly. He admired her a lot for all that she'd been through and survived.

"India will do that for you," she said happily. She looked like a free woman, as they turned finally and went back to her house, and then he had an idea.

"Do you want to sail back to the Vineyard with us? You can stay with us for a few days if you like." She thought about it for a minute. She had nothing else to do, and it sounded like fun to be on the sailboat with them. They'd be back at the Vineyard by that night. And she could rent a car to get her back to the Cape.

"Are you sure?" she asked him cautiously. She didn't want to intrude. She knew from what he'd said how precious his time with his daughters was, now that they were away at school most of the year. He talked a lot about how much he missed them all the time. But he insisted that he wanted Hope to join them, and the girls added their voices to his. They said it would be fun.

Robert helped her close the house. She packed a small bag and put the alarm on when they left. She drove them back to the marina and parked her car. She liked being with them. It was like being a family again. She was so used to being alone now that it didn't bother her at all. But having opened her arms to it, as the swamiji had instructed her at the ashram, she found suddenly that being in a group like theirs was a precious gift.

She helped them toss the lines when they set sail, and then she stood next to Robert as they sailed slowly up the coast. And for some odd reason she thought of Finn then and his dire threats about how lonely she would be if she didn't stay with him, reminding her of how alone she was and that she would have no one now. She looked at Robert then, and he smiled at her and put an arm around her shoulders and it felt right.

"Are you okay?" he asked her with that same kind look in his eyes she had noticed the first time she met him in Dublin, and she nodded with a smile.

"Yes, I am," she confirmed. "Very much so. Thanks for bringing me along." He had noticed the same thing she did, that the four of them seemed like a nice fit. The girls chatted with her as they made their way slowly to the Vineyard. The sun was setting as Robert trimmed the sails with Amanda's help. Hope and Brendan went below to get snacks for all of them. It was one of those perfect moments when you wanted to stop time, and when they came back on deck, Hope took pictures of the girls. She wanted to give copies to Robert, and she got a lovely one of him in profile with the sails behind him, and his hair ruffled by the breeze. He quietly reached over and took her hand then. She had come a long, long way from where he'd found her on that terrible morning. And as he looked at her and they exchanged a smile in the balmy evening, she discovered that her master had been right, all her scars had disappeared.

"Thank you," she whispered to Robert, and he nodded, smiling back at her, and then they both looked at his girls. They were laughing at something one of them had said to the other, and as Robert and Hope looked at them, they started laughing too. It was just one of those times when everything felt good. A wonderful day, a perfect evening, the right people, a moment to be cherished, and a feeling of rebirth.

Books by Danielle Steel

JOURNEY.

MESSAGE FROM NAM MESSAGE FROM NAM.

THE HOUSE ON HOPE.

DADDY DADDY.

STREET.

STAR STAR.