"Lavi?" Lenalee asked softly.

Lavi dared a glance at her. She wasn't angry or disgusted, only confused. He took a deep breath and tried to will his body to stop shaking. "I'm sorry," he said. "I'm so sorry."

"Lavi, tell me what happened." She set the tissue box down, her own tears forgotten.

He closed his eyes, going back to another time and another continent. "How much do you know about the situation in Israel?"

"Not much," she admitted.

"I'll try to give you the most relevant short version," he said, "which is that there's an area called the West Bank. The population is mostly Arab, but it's under Israeli occupation. What's to be done with it has been a subject of debate since the 1960s. The Arabs want it for Palestine, and we want it for Israel.

"I was born in Hebron," he continued, "which is in the West Bank. It's not a peaceful place, but we were happy. My father was an oncologist, and he didn't care who he treated. He wasn't Orthodox or very political, he just wanted people to live."

"My parents," he said, then he stopped for a while, swallowing back tears. "We were driving home from a friend's wedding, me and my parents, and people—Arabs—started throwing rocks at the car. My father lost control and we crashed. I lost my eye, but my father was killed instantly. My mother died a week later. My grandfather and I…we both went a little crazy."

She said nothing as he paused, trying to figure out what words to use to explain what happened next. "We didn't intend to hurt anyone. We only wanted to make a point, that they couldn't do that kind of thing without paying for it. My dad had treated Arabs, and this was how they thanked him? So we went after a mosque. We didn't know there would be people inside at that time of night."

"Oh!" Lenalee whispered.

"I swear, we didn't know! We didn't mean to hurt anyone, but there were people there, cleaning I think, and they didn't get out in time."

"What did you do?" she asked.

"Homemade incendiary bombs," he said. "I didn't set them, but I helped build them." He'd always been good with his hands.

"How many people were inside?" she asked.

"Five," he said, cringing internally at the horror in her face. "Three died. This kind of thing happens a lot in the city," he added quickly. "There's a lot of harassment back and forth and sometimes it escalates to violence. I won't say that no one gets hurt because that's not true, and when people get killed, the authorities take notice. Given the nature of this one, an attack on a mosque with casualties, the Israeli authorities decided to make an example of us. They got a lot of crap for coming down harder on Arabs than on Jews, and they wanted to prove they could be fair."

Lenalee waited.

"There were about a dozen people involved, and we scattered like rats. My grandfather went to Jerusalem, and I went to live with my cousin in one of the settlements. It seemed like a good place for a kid to hide."

He closed his eyes, remembering the wind on his face as they drove north into the hills. "My cousin's a radical. He's one of what they call the Hilltop Youth, groups of friends who build outposts on the hilltops in the West Bank. The outposts are illegal, and the IDF usually tears them down, but they keep rebuilding."

"IDF?" she asked.

"Israeli Defense Forces," he said. "Our military."

"If they tear it down, then why keep building?" Lenalee asked.

"Because after a while, chasing us out became a waste of time and money, and then we could start building for real, put the community on the grid, become a recognized settlement, that kind of thing." Even now, after three years away, he still thought of himself as one of them.

"It sounds really stubborn," she said, "but not so bad."

"That's because it's not really that simple," Lavi said. "First of all, it's illegal. The ultimate fate of that territory hasn't been decided yet. Second, every time anyone took action against the settlement or the outpost, whether it was the Arabs or the IDF, we'd strike back. They called them price tag attacks. It was usually vandalism, painting things on buildings, but sometimes it got more serious, like burning cars or destroying olive trees. Even if people didn't get hurt directly, they still got hurt."

"Oh," she said. "Why? Why go through all of that?"

Why. The answer seemed obvious, but he couldn't formulate a response that he thought she would think was sane. "Homes and families are hard to uproot. We thought that if we could live there, really live there, it would be harder for the Arabs to take it back, and if we were going to do that, we needed to make it clear that we couldn't be messed with."

"Oh," she said quietly.

"There was also the history, the belief that the land was promised to us by God. By then, I was really Orthodox," he said. "I went to religious school during the day and slept at the outpost at night. My cousin and his wife lived out there permanently, with a few others. We weren't on the grid, but there was a generator if we really needed power, and we could charge things like phones at the settlement. It was a real change for a city boy, but it was safe. Nobody was going to look for me there." And no one questioned the rightness of his actions in Hebron. Some had even looked at him as a hero.

"Safe?" she asked dubiously. "That was safe?"

"Safer than turning myself in," he said. "I would be tried in juvenile court, but I would still be tried, and there was also my grandfather. He's an old man. He won't do well in prison."

"Did you like living like that, with no power or anything?" Lenalee asked.

He thought of the kippa Rivka crocheted for him, his welcome gift, and of trading evening television for Yitzi's crappy guitar that was never in tune. He thought of sleeping on the pallet on the living room floor under a pile of dusty blankets, of walking to the settlement for school, of learning to drive a nail, milk a goat, build a rock wall, and clean Yitzi's Smith and Wesson pistol. "Yes."

"Why did you leave?"

Lavi sighed. "The Rouvelliers found Gramps. I don't know how. They said if I didn't go, they'd turn us both over to the authorities. By then, I'd committed more crimes. The outpost was illegal, and I'd taken part in some of the price tag attacks, plus our papers were fake. If I would dance, they'd give us better papers, get Gramps a better job. You know how it goes. So here I am."

She smiled. "You're seriously Jewish."

"You knew that, didn't you?"

"I didn't know you were that intense about it," she said. "You don't make a big deal out of it."

"I can't. I'm supposed to be hiding. Can't really hide with side locks and a terrible beard. Can't perform with them, either."

Lenalee giggled. "You had side locks?"

"Lena, I was Orthodox. I had side locks, grew a lame excuse for a beard, and even wore a silly hat." He sent a silent apology to Rivka, because it was really a great hat. "Actually, I still feel kind of naked without it. Headbands aren't the same." He also felt a little naked without his tallit, but no matter what he did with it, it stuck out like a sore thumb.

"Is that why you only eat vegetarian pizza?"

"Yes. It's not really kosher, because there's more to kosher than just avoiding certain foods, but yes. Eating meat and milk together seems disgusting to me."

She grinned. "No cheeseburgers, then."

He made a face. "No! No cheeseburgers. I don't know how people can eat those."

"Do the monks know?"

"Yes. I don't have classes on Jewish holidays, but they give me study hall on Christian ones."

She laughed. "No Christmas for you unless you convert!" Then she sobered. "That must have been so hard, giving up your religion."

"I didn't," he said. "I gave up certain observances, but not my faith or my heritage."

"What was it like moving here from the outpost?"

How long had it taken him before he could walk into the common room when someone was making popcorn and not hear automatic weapon fire? "Not bad. Keep in mind that I grew up in Hebron. It's a modern city." In a different world.

"What will happen if you go back?" she asked.

"I don't know," he said. "My only crime as an adult is traveling with a false passport. Of course I'd have a lot of explaining to do, and I don't know how well those explanations would go over."

"Can you stay here?" she asked.

"With papers the Rouvelliers gave me? I so much as sneeze, and they'll know. Plus there's my grandfather. At the very least, he'll lose his job. I have to go back to take care of him."

"What are you going to do?"

If he flew from Paris to Tel Aviv, with the rest of the competition to buy him time, he might be able to clear Israeli customs before the Rouvelliers could alert them. From there, he could retrieve his real identity...and then what? His only family besides his grandfather was his cousin at the outpost and people in Beersheba who would probably disown him, and he hadn't been to school in any way he could explain without confessing to everything else.

He also had a new problem. He had no intention of leaving Lenalee to the not-so-tender mercies of Rouvellier and whoever kept knocking on her door. He was responsible for two people now. Both were in danger, and they were nowhere near each other. "I'm working on it."

"What's your name?" she asked.

"What?" he asked, startled.

"Your real name. Your papers are fake, right? So Lavi isn't your name, is it."

He laughed. "No, but it's what you call me. If you used anything else, I don't think I'd know to answer."

"All right. But tell me someday, okay?"

"I will." Someday.

"Can I ask you something? Something personal?"

"Anything," he said. She was still speaking to him. He owed her any answer she wanted.

"Are you sorry? I mean really sorry."

"Am I...?" Lavi laughed, well aware that he was a little hysterical. "Am I sorry? Sorry doesn't begin to cover it! I can't just go to those people in Hebron and say, 'Sorry I killed your family members, friends, whatever they were to you.' I don't think that would go over well, nor would the Arabs who lived near the settlement accept sorry. Being sorry won't undo anything. What I really wish is that I could go back and bitch-slap myself until I told my grandfather that he was acting like a lunatic and I wasn't going to help him. Not only would that have saved those people in the mosque we hit, it would have headed off what happened at the outpost, but..."

He remembered the gold-washed light on his prayer book as the sun rose over the Samarian hills, he and the other men of their tiny community davening Shacharit, reciting the morning prayer before tending the animals, chickens pecking the ground at his feet for feed while the goat butted at his leg, demanding milking. Only afterward, when the chores were done, would there be breakfast, strained yogurt, diced salad, and eggs cooked on an oil stove. The land was his life, his past, his present, his future, it was his redemption and he would redeem it in turn. There was a clarity and purity of purpose to life on the outpost that he had never felt before or since, a feeling that his parents would not have died in vain.

Lenalee would hate it. She would hate the long skirts, three-quarter sleeves, and scarves worn by the women of the community, and she probably wouldn't think much of his beard, either. She would hate it that they would be forbidden to dance together no matter how sedate the piece. The constant presence of the IDF would terrify her, and she would deplore the casual violence that grew out of the friction between the outpost, the IDF and the nearby Arab community whose land they were trying to appropriate. She would never learn to sleep through distant weapon fire, or allow her children to be raised where they could hear it. Nor would she convert. Why should she? She had a heritage as ancient and venerable as his own.

She would be right. His mother, both of his parents, would have agreed with her if they'd lived. Somehow, without them, he'd gone off on a detour so full of pitfalls it was amazing he was still alive, and he was too far from the main road now to get back to it in one piece.

And yet...

He felt tears well up in his eye and under the patch. "I miss the land," he said.

"Lavi!" she said, and she sat on his lap, pulling his head against her shoulder. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

He allowed himself the luxury of relaxing against her shoulder where she couldn't see his face, pulling the patch aside so his tears could flow freely. For the most part, he didn't permit himself to grieve. He didn't have time. St. Ignatius was supportive, but it was also rigorous, and the Order was extremely demanding. Meeting those demands was the price he paid for his grandfather's safety as well as his own. He had no idea what the consequences of his actions would be for himself, but he knew that prison was no place for an old man.

It was all falling apart. If he left, he'd abandon Lenalee, and there would be no guarantees as to what would greet him when he stepped off the plane. If he stayed, they would turn both him and his grandfather over to whatever authorities they could find.

Either way, he was going to lose Lenalee.

He had to pull himself together. He took a few deep breaths and began detaching himself from her.

"Are you okay?" she asked.

"Yes," he said, then he remembered that his eye socket was exposed and he clapped his hand over it. "I'm sorry! You don't want to see that. Let me use your bathroom."

"No," she said, handing him the tissues. "It's okay. I know you're missing your eye. You don't have to protect me from that. I didn't know you could still cry on that side."

"The eye is gone, but the tear ducts work fine."

She gave a small laugh. "You can't see, but you can still cry."

He had to laugh with her, but it was the best description of himself he'd ever heard. "That's about it, yeah."