Demon

I cancelled my doctor’s appointment. I vacillated between desperation and fear. I could not spend my life like this, but if I had inadvertently wandered into a battlefield of opposing spiritual forces, neither did I want to become yet another piece of collateral damage.

I returned to the online Bible, compared it again with my account—and I saw now that it was truly my account—of our every interaction. But while Lucian had finished his tale of jealousy, revenge, and his probable end, I knew—with the sense of one who has spent his entire life reading stories—that mine was not finished.

TWO DAYS LATER, I knocked on Mrs. Russo’s door. I had no idea what I would say, what to even ask for. But I knew she could help me find it.

When she pulled it open, she did not greet me with her characteristic smile and “Hello, dear!” but told me to come in even as she hurried into the kitchen.

She was breathing quickly, her hands hesitating in the air before her as though they had forgotten what they were about.

I had expected to come in, to search for words, to be afraid to look into those aging hazel eyes. That she seemed flustered was even more unsettling.

“Open that refrigerator, Clay, and take out the perishables. You need to take them.”

“Mrs. Russo, you’ve given me enough food to last for days. Is everything all right?”

She went into the bedroom and came back, a sweater over one arm, a book in another. A homemade sandwich was wrapped on her kitchen counter next to an apple, a bottle of water. She packed them into a carry-on bag on her kitchen table.

“Clay, would you set those flowering pots in the sink and run some water into them? Run it good, dear, until it comes out the bottom.”

“Are you leaving town?” I asked with growing alarm.

“My son had an accident this morning on his way to work. I need to go help take care of my grandchildren.”

“I’m so sorry. Is he all right?”

“He’s in the hospital, and I need to get to their house so Beth, my daughter-in-law, can be with him. On second thought, can you just take those plants with you? And will it be much trouble for you to collect the paper and mail for me while I’m gone? I don’t know how long it will be, but I’ll let you know if I’ll be more than a few weeks. I might have to trouble you to send me my bills.”

I assured her that it was no problem, that I was glad to help. And while I tried to be as helpful as possible, I felt desperately alone at the thought of her impending departure.

“Why don’t you just call me when you know more? And if you think of anything else, I have my key.”

“Thank you, dear. I meant to knock on your door earlier, but then I realized if I hurried, I could catch a train tonight, and I got distracted.” She looked around, lost, but then fixed her eyes on something—a worn Bible on her coffee table, which she added to her bag.

I loitered, like a child watching a parent pack for a business trip. “I meant to ask if you’d been to that little church down the street, the Gospel Room.”

“No, I haven’t, which is a shame since it’s so close.” She looked around as though searching for anything she might have forgotten.

“Maybe,” I said awkwardly, “we could go there together after you get back.”

She paused to give me a wondering smile. “Why, I’d like that very much, Clay. I would like very much to visit that little church.”

Somehow, in that moment, I knew that what I’d thought was true, that within her lay wisdom to counter Lucian’s knowledge and answers I had been afraid to ask for.

“I’ll enjoy our Sunday outing when I’m back. Especially if those grandkids of mine don’t do me in before then.” She chuckled.

THAT NIGHT I ATE a sandwich with some of the lettuce and tomato from Mrs. Russo’s stash of “perishables.”

I found myself thinking of Aubrey more and more, practically by the hour, as I once had. And I felt inexplicably guilty for the days I had forgotten her, for my mental absence, as if I had been taken in by someone new, like an interesting new friend in school who makes our old loyal standbys fade in comparison. Or a new fling, next to whom old relationships seem stale, familiarity having bred its inevitable contempt—only to discover that the luster of the new face had grown thin or, worse, that I had become the one passed over in favor of a new infatuation.

Never mind that she had been the one to leave. When I was truthful about it, when I was honest with myself, I could admit that I had left her first—in spirit if not in deed.