me in a warm hug. “Where’s the rest of your crew?”
“We had to split up,” I said.
“Sorry to hear that. Still got your harmonica?”
I showed him and then asked about Sister Eve.
“Last I saw her, she was headed to the cook tent. Sticking around, son?”
I told him I didn’t know, then hurried to the cook tent but didn’t find Sister Eve there either. Dimitri crushed my hand in his eager grip and nearly knocked my lungs out with a hearty slap to my back.
“Where’s the big Indian?”
I didn’t want to go into it with everyone I met, so I gave him the same nonexplanation I’d given Whisker. When I asked about Sister Eve, he directed me to her dressing tent, but she wasn’t there either. I thought about how, in New Bremen, she’d told me that wherever she went, she sought out a quiet place a little removed from all the crusade activity so that she could listen to God.
On a rise overlooking the river stood a pavilion that, from a distance, appeared empty. I found Sister Eve sitting on a bench there, in full sunshine, her eyes closed. To me, a kid desperate for some kind of salvation, her face seemed to glow.
Because she appeared so deep in reverie, I said in a whisper, “Sister Eve.”
She opened her eyes. As if she’d been expecting me all along, she said simply, “Odie.”
We talked. I told her everything that had happened since we’d fled New Bremen and ended with my final discovery about Aunt Julia.
“You believe that’s the whole truth of who she is, Odie?”
“She’s . . .” But I couldn’t haul up a word harsh enough for what I felt about Aunt Julia. “She’s not what I imagined at all.”
“What did you imagine? That she would be a saint and take you in?”
“Well . . . yes.”
“And hasn’t she taken you in?”
“She stuffed me away in the attic.”
“Did you ever pray about making it safely to Saint Louis, Odie?”
“Sure, I guess.”
“But what you’ve found here wasn’t the answer to your prayer?”
“Home, Sister Eve. I prayed for home. Aunt Julia’s house isn’t home. It’s not what I prayed for at all.”
“I told you once that there’s only one prayer I know absolutely will be answered. Do you remember?”
Because it had sounded simple and so soothing, I’d never forgotten it. “You said to pray for forgiveness.”
“Do you think maybe Aunt Julia might be in need of forgiveness? And do you think you can find it in your heart to offer that? From what you tell me, under the circumstances, she’s tried her best.”
The view of the river from the pavilion was deceptive, the foul color of the water hidden under the reflection of the blue sky. I stared at it, wanting to forgive, but my heart was stone.
“I can’t live in that house,” I said.
“You can rejoin the crusade, if you like. Whisker has certainly missed you and your harmonica.”
Her words were the salvation I’d been seeking. I said yes, yes, and hugged her with such gratitude.
“I need to be sure about Emmy,” she said, darkly serious. “She’s special, Odie.”
I believed I understood what she meant. Alone on the bum from Saint Paul, I’d thought a lot about Emmy, stringing oddities together. How she’d been waiting for us in her room at the Brickmans’, already dressed as if she understood that she’d be leaving. How she’d known before the distraught man had threatened Sister Eve with his shotgun that “Beautiful Dreamer” would save the day. And how, long, long ago, she’d known the importance of those five-dollar bills in my boot. I believed I finally saw what Sister Eve had seen from the moment she first took Emmy’s hand.
“You see the past,” I said. “She sees the future.”
Sister Eve gave a little nod but said, “Maybe even more special, Odie.” She folded her hands and composed herself. “What I’m going to say may sound impossible. But I’ve seen impossible things before, so here goes. Those fits she suffers? I think they may be her attempt at wrestling with what she sees when she looks into the future. I think she might be trying to alter what she sees there.”
That knocked me over. “She changes the future?”
“Maybe just tweaks it a little. Like a good storyteller rewriting the last sentence.”
I let that sink in and thought about Emmy’s fits. She’d had one before Jack grabbed us, and when she’d come out of it, she’d said, “He’s not dead, Odie.” And when she’d come