The Storyteller Read online

  *

  Genevra the historian is arriving in Boston rather than Manchester, because that was the quickest flight she could book. That means a five-hour round-trip drive for Leo, but he says he doesn't mind. He will use the time to fill her in on the aspects of the case that she's missed.

  I stand behind him, watching him knot his tie in the bathroom mirror. "Then," Leo says, "I will drop her off at the Courtyard. From what I understand the beds are pretty comfortable."

  "Are you going to stay there, too?"

  He pauses. "Did you want me to?"

  In the mirror, we look like a modern American Gothic. "I thought you might not want your historian to know about me."

  He folds me into his arms. "I want her to know everything about you. From the way you are the consummate double agent to the way you rock out to John Mellencamp in the shower, and sing all the wrong words."

  "They're not the wrong--"

  "It's not 'you pull off those Barbie books.' Trust me on this. Besides, Genevra's going to get to know you when we go out after work in the District . . ."

  It takes me a moment before the words sink in. "I don't live in the District."

  "Technicality," Leo says, shyly. "We have bakeries in D.C."

  "It just . . . doesn't feel right, Leo."

  "You're having second thoughts?" He freezes. "I come on strong. A hundred and forty percent. I know that. But I just found you, Sage. I don't want to let you go. It can't be a bad thing to know what you want, and run with it. One day, years from now, we can read the press release about Reiner Hartmann aloud to our babies and tell them that Mommy and Daddy fell in love because of a war criminal." He looks at my face and winces. "Still too over the top?"

  "I wasn't talking about moving. Although that's still up for discussion . . ."

  "Tell you what. If you can find a Department of Justice job up here, I'll move--"

  "It's Josef," I interrupt. "It just doesn't feel . . . right."

  Leo takes my hand and leads me out of the bathroom, sits me on the edge of the bed. "This is harder for you than it is for me, because you knew him as someone else before you knew him as Reiner Hartmann. But this is what you wanted, isn't it?"

  I close my eyes. "I can't remember anymore."

  "Then let me help you out. If Reiner Hartmann is deported or even extradited, it's going to be news. Big news. Everyone will hear it--not just in our country, but all over the world. I'd like to think that maybe, the next person who is about to do something horrific--the soldier who is given an order to commit a crime against humanity--will remember that press release about the Nazi who was caught, even at age ninety-five. Maybe in that moment, he'll realize that if he carries out his order, the United States government or some other one is going to hunt him down for the rest of his life, too, no matter how far he runs. And maybe he'll think, I'm going to have to be looking over my shoulder forever, like Reiner Hartmann. So instead of doing what he has been told to do, he'll say no."

  "Doesn't it count for anything if Josef wishes he hadn't done it?"

  Leo looks at me. "What counts," he says, "is that he did."

  *

  Mary is in the shrine grotto when I arrive. I'm a sticky mess; the air is so humid that it seems to be condensing through my skin. I feel like I've replaced all my hemoglobin with caffeine, I'm that jittery.

  I have a lot to do before Leo gets back tonight.

  "Thank God you're here," I say, as soon as I reach the top of the Holy Stairs.

  "That means a lot, coming from an atheist," Mary says. She is silhouetted against the dusk, in the kind of light that would make a painter swoon: fingers of purple and pink and electric blue, like the salvia she is weeding. "I tried to call you, to see how you were doing, with your grandmother and all, but you don't answer messages anymore."

  "I know; I got it. I've just been really busy . . ."

  "With that guy."

  "How did you know that?" I ask.

  "Honey, anyone with two functional brain cells who was at the funeral or the gathering afterward could have figured that out. I have only one question for you about him." She looks up. "Is he married?"

  "No."

  "Then I already like him." She strips off her gardening gloves and sets them on the edge of the bucket she's using to collect the weeds for composting. "So where's the fire?"

  "I have a question for a priest," I explain, "and you're the closest thing around."

  "I'm not sure if I should be flattered by that or if I should find a new hairstylist."

  "It's about Confession . . ."

  "That's a sacrament," Mary replies. "Even if I could grant penitence to you, you're not Catholic. It's not like you can sashay into a confessional and wipe your slate clean."

  "It's not me. I was asked to do the forgiving. But the sin, it's truly, truly awful."

  "A mortal sin."

  I nod. "I'm not asking about how Confession works, for the person who's confessing. I want to know how the priest does it: hears something he can barely stomach, and then lets it go."

  Mary sits beside me on the teak bench. By now, the sun has sunk so low that everything on the shrine's hill is glowing and golden. Just looking at it, at so much beauty in one place, makes the tightness in my chest loosen a little. Surely if there's evil in the world, it's counterbalanced by moments like these. "You know, Sage, Jesus didn't tell us to forgive everyone. He said turn the other cheek, but only if you were the one who was hit. Even the Lord's Prayer says it loud and clear: Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. Not others. What Jesus challenges us to do is to let go of the wrong done to you personally, not the wrong done to someone else. But most Christians incorrectly assume this means that being a good Christian means forgiving all sins, and all sinners."

  "What if, even tangentially, the wrong that was done does have something to do with you? Or with someone close to you, anyway?"

  Mary folds her arms. "I know I've told you how I left the convent, but did I ever tell you why I entered it?" she says. "My mother was raising three kids on her own, because my father walked out on us. I was the oldest, at thirteen. I was full of so much anger that sometimes I woke up in the middle of the night with the taste of it in my mouth, like tin. We couldn't afford groceries. We had no television and the lights had been turned off. Our furniture had been reclaimed by the credit card company, and my brothers were wearing pants that hit above the ankle because we couldn't afford to buy new school clothes. My father, though, he was on vacation with his girlfriend in France. So one day I went to see our priest and I asked what I could do to feel less angry. I was expecting him to say something like, Get a job, or Write your feelings down on paper. Instead, he told me to forgive my dad. I stared at the priest, convinced he was nuts. 'I can't do that,' I told him. 'It would make what he did seem less awful.' "

  I study Mary's profile as she speaks. "The priest said, 'What he did was wrong. He doesn't deserve your love. But he does deserve your forgiveness, because otherwise he will grow like a weed in your heart until it's choked and overrun. The only person who suffers, when you squirrel away all that hate, is you.' I was thirteen, and I didn't know very much about the world, but I knew that if there was that much wisdom in religion, I wanted to be part of it."

  She faces me. "I don't know what this person did to you, and I am not sure I want to. But forgiving isn't something you do for someone else. It's something you do for yourself. It's saying, You're not important enough to have a stranglehold on me. It's saying, You don't get to trap me in the past. I am worthy of a future."

  I think of my grandmother, whose silence all these years had accomplished the same goal.

  For better or for worse, Josef Weber is part of my life. Of my family's story. Is the only way to edit him out of it to do what he's asked; to excuse him for his actions?

  "Does any of that help?" Mary asks.

  "Yeah. Surprisingly."

  She pats my shoulder. "Come on down with me. I know