Part 9: A Spiritual Experience

She comes back inside, and she's sweatier than than she was from even the fever, and bleeding---long, deep scrapes on her knuckles, the blood snaking down her palm and up around to her right wrist, which she's holding gingerly at her side when she drops her boxing glove on the table.

First, sickness. Now, sprains. He is all for working through one's stress in a constructive manner, but surely there are saner options here...

He pulls an alcohol wipe out of the medical bag he got from Edward, stretches it between his fingers and slaps it onto her hand as he comes up behind her.

She shrieks and nearly falls. "What the hell are you doing?"

"I could ask you the same thing."

She lays her hands out on the table and lets him mop up the blood. "You really tire me out, you know that?" she complains. "You want to *talk* all the time."

"No. I want to talk properly, once, and get it out of the way. But you keep shutting me out."

"I shut everybody out. It isn't personal."

"Is that supposed to be funny?"

"No. None of this is funny. That's what I've been trying to tell you."

He considers his next words carefully. "Look, Sarah...have you ever thought about talking to somebody about this? I mean, really talking? A lot has happened, and you must be..."

She shivers, and he can practically see her back go up. "Stop. I'm not crazy."

"I didn't mean..."

"I'm not." There is ice in her voice. "I'm not. Don't ever go there, James."

So he has found another trigger. He wants to push anyway---he can't help thinking that she needs some kind of breakthrough if she's going to get past what's happened, whether she realizes it or not herself---but before he can formulate a comeback, she's talking again, in a voice so quiet, so sad that he can barely make her out.

"I did tell once. And you know where it got me."

"Yes," he says. "I read about your time at Pescadero State."

"Reading about it is not the same thing."

"So tell me about it."

"Telling's not the same thing either. Oh, look at you. You feel sorry for me now. Well, you know what? I'm sick of sorry." She picks off the antiseptic wipe, fingers curling, fist-like, as she talks. "I'm sick of it, James. You want to talk. You want to process. You want to *understand.*"

"Is there something wrong with understanding?"

"There is something impossible about it. Honestly, did you really think that you could swoop in and *talk* and I was just going to process 16 years of this into some neat little catharsis, then ride off into the sunset and be okay? With you?"

Hearing her say it that way, it embarrasses him to admit that yes, that is exactly what he thought. But he can't let go of this. "You learned to rely on yourself," he tells her. "Then you taught John and you learned to rely on him. Is it so hard to think you might teach me also, and learn to rely on me?"

She looks at him, her eyes suddenly softening as she sees the sincerity in his persistence. But then the moment passes, and he expects her to be angry again. But to his surprise, she is more baffled than anything else.

"But why?" she asks.

"Why what?"

"Why are you doing this, James? She's safe with me. You know she is. Safer than she'd be with you, anyway. You have a window here, where you can still walk away. Why aren't you taking it?"

"Look, Sarah, I..."

"No. Now I'm the one who wants to understand, and I just don't get it. Don't you see, it isn't too late for you. You can still run. But you're not leaving. Why? Why won't you go?"

"Because I know what's out there now," he says.

"Do you? Do you really? Because I'll tell you something, knowing, and...and *really* knowing, it's not...explain it to me. Explain it to me, James Ellison. What exactly do you *know* is out there that's so hard for you to walk away from?"

"God," he says.

She stares at him, dumbfounded. Then turns and walks away. He isn't sure if he has repulsed her, or finally, at last, won her over for good.

--

He heats up some leftovers, makes both of the girls eat. But Sarah is quiet, thoughtful, restless. She still won't talk to him, but she lets him change the bandage on her hand. He wonders if she'll keep the wall up indefinitely, but when Savannah gets underfoot while they are doing dishes, she finally explodes. She's edgy, but she has sense enough to know it at least, and after calming the little girl down again, she apologetically declares herself 'tired' and retreats under a cocoon of blankets, away from other people.

"Don't be mad," Savannah tells him. He's fired up the laptop again and is loading another movie when she climbs onto his lap. "I'm okay. It's not your fault, you know. She's sad."

"Yes. We talked about that already."

"Well, she isn't better yet. She loved her son, and then he went away and she misses him."

"Yes."

"I think they hurt her."

"Who, Savannah?"

"The ones who tried to hurt me. That's how she knew about them, isn't it? That's how she knew to come and get me?"

He hesitates, then realizes that if he is to be in this, really in this, Savannah is going to need the truth. "Yes," he says. "They hurt her. John is not the only one she lost."

"Well, she still has us," Savannah declares. "And we're not going to leave her. Are we, Uncle James?"

"No," he says. "We are not."

"So, what do we do next?"

He holds up the dvd case. It's brightly coloured, the robot on the front of it a cartoon. "We watch," he says. "We watch, and learn."

He is crying by the end of it, but not from terror this time. The movie is magical. It's about a lone little robot who is all alone on Planet Earth, trying to make it a better place, trying to undo humanity's damage. He tootles around mankind's wasteland doing his small bit to turn things around, and then a girl robot arrives, and he falls in love...

He follows her to the ends of the Earth and beyond, and the villains of the film almost destroy them before they get their happy ending, as lovers do in film. And the villains? They are the people. God help them all, it's the people. And as Savannah's little hand touches his cheek and comes away again, wet with his tears, he realizes that it's joy he is crying from. He has finally found Sarah her good one.