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 goddamn well. What the fuck 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 bitch!” 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 shell 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 God 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 space. 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 passed 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 assured 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 château there, in Périgord.