Sister Angela and a dozen of the nuns were there as well. She said, "Oddie, may I show you something?"

I went to her as she unrolled a tube that proved to be a large sheet of drawing paper. Jacob had executed a perfect portrait of me.

"This is very good. And very sweet of him."

"But it's not for you," she said. "It's for my office wall."

"That company is too rarefied for me, ma'am."

"Young man, it's not for you to say whose likeness I wish to look upon each day. The riddle?"

I had already tried on her the fortitude answer that Rodion Romanovich had made sound so convincing.

"Ma'am, intellectually I've run dry."

She said, "Did you know that after the Revolutionary War, the founders of our country offered to make George Washington king, and that he declined?"

"No, ma'am. I didn't know that."

"Did you know that Flannery O'Connor lived so quietly in her community that many of her fellow townspeople did not know that she was one of the greatest writers of her time?"

"A Southern eccentric, I suppose."

"Is that what you suppose?"

"I guess if there's going to be a test on this material, I will fail it. I never was much good in school."

"Harper Lee," said Sister Angela, "who was offered a thousand honorary doctorates and untold prizes for her fine book, did not accept them. And she politely turned away the adoring reporters and professors who made pilgrimages to her door."

"You shouldn't blame her for that, ma'am. So much uninvited company would be a terrible annoyance."

I don't think her periwinkle eyes had ever sparkled brighter than they did on the guesthouse steps that morning.

"Dominus vobiscum, Oddie."

"And also with you, Sister."

I had never been kissed by a nun before. I had never kissed one, either. Her cheek was so soft.

When I got into the Cadillac, I saw that Boo and Elvis were sitting in the backseat.

The brothers and sisters stood there on the guesthouse steps in silence, and as we drove away, I more than once looked back at them, looked back until the road descended and turned out of sight of St. Bartholomew's.

CHAPTER 56

THE CADILLAC HAD BEEN STRUCTURALLY reinforced to support Ozzie's weight without listing, and the driver's seat had been handcrafted to his dimensions.

He handled his Cadillac as sweet as a NASCAR driver, and we flew out of the mountains into lower lands with a grace that should not have been possible at those speeds.

After a while, I said to him, "Sir, you are a wealthy man by any standard."

"I have been both fortunate and industrious," he agreed.

"I want to ask you for a favor so big that I'm ashamed to say it."

Grinning with delight, he said, "You never allow anything to be done for you. Yet you're like a son to me. Who am I going to leave all this money to? Terrible Chester will never need all of it."

Terrible Chester was his cat, who had not been born with the name but had earned it.

"There is a little girl at the school."

"St. Bartholomew's?"

"Yes. Her name is Flossie Bodenblatt."

"Oh, my."

"She has suffered, sir, but she shines."

"What is it that you want?"

"Could you open a trust fund for her, sir, in the amount of one hundred thousand dollars, after tax?"

"Consider it done."

"For the purpose of establishing her in life when she leaves the school, for establishing her in a life where she can work with dogs."

"I shall have the attorney specify it exactly that way. And shall I be the one to personally oversee her transition from the school to the outside world, when the time comes?"

"I would be forever grateful, sir, if you would."

"Well," he said, lifting his hands from the wheel just long enough to dust them briskly together, "that was as easy as eating cream pie. Who shall we set up a trust for next?"

Justine's profound brain damage could not be restored by a trust fund. Money and beauty are defenses against the sorrows of this world, but neither can undo the past. Only time will conquer time. The way forward is the only way back to innocence and to peace.

We cruised awhile, talking of Christmas, when suddenly I was struck by intuition more powerful by far than I had ever experienced before.

"Sir, could you pull off the road?"

The tone of my voice caused his generous, jowly face to form a frown of overlapping layers. "What's wrong?"

"I don't know. Maybe not anything wrong. But something… very important."

He piloted the Cadillac into a lay-by, in the shade of several majestic pines, and switched off the engine.

"Oddie?"

"Give me a moment, sir."

We sat in silence as pinions of sunlight and the feathered shadows of the pines fluttered on the windshield.

The intuition became so intense that to ignore it would be to deny who and what I am.

My life is not mine. I would have given my life to save my lost girl's, but that trade had not been on Fate's agenda. Now I live a life I don't need, and know that the day will come when I will give it in the right cause.

"I have to get out here, sir."

"What-don't you feel well?"

"I feel fine, sir. Psychic magnetism. I have to walk from here."

"But you're coming home for Christmas."

"I don't think so."

"Walk from here? Walk where?"

"I don't know, sir. I'll find out in the walking."

He would not remain behind the wheel, and when I took only one bag from the trunk of the car, he said, "You can't just walk away with only that."

"It has everything I need," I assured him.

"What trouble are you going to?"

"Maybe not trouble, sir."

"What else would it be?"

"Maybe trouble," I said. "But maybe peace. I can't tell. But it sure is calling me."

He was crestfallen. "But I was so looking forward…"

"So was I, sir."

"You are so missed in Pico Mundo."

"And I miss everyone there. But this is the way it has to be. You know how things are with me, sir."

I closed the lid of the trunk.

He did not want to drive away and leave me there.

"I've got Elvis and Boo," I told him. "I'm not alone."

He is a hard man to hug, with so much ground to cover.

"You have been a father to me," I told him. "I love you, sir."

He could say only, "Son."

Standing in the lay-by, I watched him drive away until his car had dwindled out of sight.

Then I began to walk along the shoulder of the highway, where intuition seemed to lead me.

Boo fell in at my side. He is the only ghost dog I have ever seen. Animals always move on. For some reason he had lingered more than a year at the abbey. Perhaps waiting for me.

For a while, Elvis ambled at my side, and then he began to walk backward in front of me, grinning like he'd just played the biggest trick ever on me and I didn't know it yet.

"I thought you'd have moved on by now," I told him. "You know you're ready."

He nodded, still grinning like a fool.

"Then go. I'll be all right. They're all waiting for you. Go."

Still walking backward, he began to wave good-bye, and step by backward step, the King of Rock and Roll faded, until he was gone from this world forever.

We were well out of the mountains. In this California valley, the day was a mild presence on the land, and the trees rose up to its brightness, and the birds.

Perhaps I had gone a hundred yards since Elvis's departure before I realized that someone walked at my side.

Surprised, I looked at him and said, "Good afternoon, sir."

He walked with his suit jacket slung over one shoulder, his shirtsleeves rolled up. He smiled that winning smile.

"I'm sure this will be interesting," I said, "and I am honored if it's possible that I can do for you what I did for him."