Of Love and Evil Read Online Free PDF Page A

come between you and talking to God.”
    He thought about this very gravely and then he nodded. “I’m going to talk to Him now,” he said. “You might want to wait outside.”
    I was amazed. I got up, kissed him again on the forehead and told him that I’d be right outside whenever he wanted to join me.
    About fifteen minutes later he came out and we started walking down the garden paths together, and he was taking pictures again, and he didn’t say too much. But he walked right close to me, next to me, as if he was with me, and when I saw Liona sitting on a bench just smiling at us as we walked together, I felt such happiness I couldn’t find words myself to contain it. And I knew I never would.
    We walked back, Toby and I, to the giant shell of the ruined church, the largest part that had been left by the old quake.
    For the first time, I saw Malchiah, over to one side, leaning rather casually, for all his fine clothes, against the dusty brick-and-mortar wall.
    “There he is again,” said Toby.
    “You mean you’ve seen him before?” I asked.
    “Yeah, he’s been watching us. He was in the chapel when we were in the chapel. I saw him when I was going out.”
    “Well, you could say I work for him,” I said. “And he’s keeping a bit of an eye on me.”
    “He’s young to be somebody’s boss,” said Toby.
    “Don’t let him fool you,” I said. “Hang here a minute. I think he wants a word with me and doesn’t want to interrupt.”
    I crossed the broken ground until I caught up with Malchiah and I drew in close so that none of the tourists would hear what I had to say.
    “I love her,” I said. “Is that possible? For me to love her? I love him, yes, he’s my son, and that’s what I’m meant to do, and I thank Heaven for him, but what about her? Is there world enough and time to love her?”
    “ ‘World enough and time,’ ” he repeated smiling. “Oh, those are such beautiful words, and how you make me mindfulof what it is I ask of you. World enough and time is what you have to give me,” he said.
    “But what about her?” I insisted.
    “Only you know that answer, Toby,” he said. “Or maybe I should say that the two of you know it. I think she knows it too.”
    I was about to ask about the other angel, but he left me.
    How it looked to others I had no idea.
    I found my son busy at the koi pond with his camera, determined to catch one fish which didn’t want to be caught.
    The afternoon went fast.
    We shopped in San Juan Capistrano, and then I drove them along the coast. Neither of them had seen the Pacific and we found some breathtaking vantage points and Toby wanted to take as many pictures as he could.
    Dinner was in the dark and atmospheric Duane’s steak house, at the Mission Inn, and mother and son were suitably impressed. When nobody was looking Liona gave Toby a sip of her red wine.
    We talked all about New Orleans the way it was these days after the horrors of Hurricane Katrina and how difficult the storm had been. I could tell it had been a great adventure to Toby, even though his grandfather made him do his homework in the motels they’d had to rent for the worst part of the aftermath, and that for Liona something of the old New Orleans was still gone.
    “You think you’ll ever come home to live there?” Toby asked.
    “I don’t know,” I said. “I’m a creature of the coast now, I think, but there are different reasons why people live in different places.”
    And very quickly, heartbreakingly fast, he said, “I could live just fine out here.”
    There was a sudden flash of pain in Liona’s face. She looked off, and then at me. I could scarcely disguise what I was feeling. Impulses, hopes, a sudden volcanic flow of dreams obliterated my thinking. There was a tragic quality to it. A grim pessimism took hold of me.
No right to her, no right to this.
    In the hazy gloom of the restaurant, I saw nothing. And then I realized I’d been looking at a pair of men at the