that had cost several lives and caused so many people pain. She wanted to reach out and touch him, and as Norm had said, the idea of sending him to prison with adult men seemed suddenly wrong. He didn’t appear insane either, just desperately lost. She wanted to ask him why he had done it, but she didn’t know him, and there was no chance to talk.
His terrified face haunted her all the way home, and she was ashamed to have gone there at all. He was in a hell all his own, and no good would come of it, whatever they decided to do with him. He was precisely what Norm had guessed, a lost soul who had slipped through the system at an early age, and needed help. She might have felt differently if she’d lost her home as a result of his crime, but she hadn’t, and the steam had gone out of everything she had thought about him before. She couldn’t imagine a life like the one he had led as a child, and the punishment he had ahead of him now, either confined to a mental hospital or in prison. Either way, he had hard times ahead, little or no future, and had led a hard life until then. Seeing him had opened her heart to forgiveness.
It struck her again that the arsonist was only a year older than Robbie would have been, and the same age she was when her mother died and she became her sister’s surrogate mother and was fully responsible for her within a year. What if her own anger at her mother had expressed itself in a life of crime? Instead she had written about it and transformed it into a lucrative career. But this was a helpless, sick boy, unable to surmount his own pain except by starting fires, damaging property and causing people’s deaths. Her heart ached for the tragedy of his life, and it made her own anger at her mother’s coldness seem so small. The young arsonist’s life was sure to get worse now instead of better. It was truly tragic, and she felt only grief and compassion for him.
It made her think of her sister when she got home. Her worst crime, in Melissa’s eyes, had been joining a religious order, which Melissa had been deeply critical of at the time. But apparently it suited her, if she was still there eighteen years later. Her two years in Africa nursing orphans and life as a nurse in a hospital were admirable. Suddenly Melissa wanted to see her again. Even if they had nothing in common now, they had a shared history, and still loved each other, even though things had gone so wrong.
She sent her an email, and invited her to come up. Hattie’s response came through on Melissa’s computer in less than an hour. She accepted the invitation gratefully, said she wouldn’t spend the night, but would make the round trip the same day. It was a four-hour drive from New York, which meant they wouldn’t have too many hours together, which might be for the best for a first visit after so long. They were almost strangers to each other now.
Hattie wrote again later in the day, and said she could come up on a Saturday in ten days. She was working every day until then. Melissa responded that the date was fine with her. She sat thinking about it for a long time after she had sent Hattie her response. She was half excited to see her, and half afraid. Being with her would open so many doors of memory again, some of them so painful, but she suddenly longed to see her and Hattie had said the same.
She promised to arrive as early as she could. They were going to let her use one of the convent cars. Melissa thought about her almost constantly for the next ten days, and dreamed of her at night. In her dreams, they were both still children in New York, Hattie six or seven, and Melissa twelve and thirteen, always feeling responsible for her. And then, she thought about taking care of her when their mother was sick and after she died, and feeling so maternal toward her once they were alone after their father’s death. They had been so close, and then suddenly it was all broken when Hattie disappeared from her life, and gave up the world. Melissa had her own