Arianna lifted her eyebrows. “What do you expect them to tell you?”
Trent spun around to face her. “How can something unknowable be the goal of my existence?” He lifted his hands in frustration. “But what’s the alternative? Nothing? What kind of life is it to hold nothing sacred?”
“It’s no kind of life,” she said. “But you can still hold something sacred without religion—in fact, I think you should.”
“What?” He felt empty, like pretense personified and exposed.
“Your own happiness here on earth.”
The image of Emma’s defeated face popped into his mind; he nodded the slightest bit.
She took a deep breath and looked straight at him. “I believe that following your own happiness is what life is all about. What makes religion so bad is that it condemns you for caring about exactly that.”
“But they say you should devote your life to others.”
“And look where it’s gotten you! Denying yourself is fighting yourself, sacrificing yourself, and for what? Nothing in the end.”
“What do you mean nothing?”
Her tone softened. “People have faith, but no proof, no reason, to believe there is anything or anywhere to go after we die, so that makes our life here on earth all the more precious.”
He shook his head. “Why do you think I’ve doubted for so long?”
“Why are you doubting your own doubt? When you abandon your reason for faith in God, you succumb to the notion that you’re a pawn of some higher being. But you are the only one in control of your life—of what you love and who you love.” She paused, looking up at him.
“That’s all I’ve really ever wanted,” he said honestly. “Not to need permission from anyone else to live my life.”
“And you don’t! They make you believe you were born a sinner and must spend your life making up for it. But the irony is that your only sin was belief in the first place. Which was hard for a mind like yours, and why you’ve felt uneasy for so long.”
Trent stared at her as the words popped in his brain, exploding with clarity, shedding light on new roads he had only begun to glimpse.
“This is what I’ve been trying to understand,” he said. “I’ve been trying to buy in to something that I always knew, on some level, didn’t make sense.… That’s my whole problem, and yet all these years, I thought there was something wrong with me.”
She shook her head sympathetically.
“Everything you said makes perfect sense,” he continued. “I’ve always worried deep down that God wasn’t listening or didn’t care, or even—didn’t exist.” Speaking the words—a fear he had pondered in his darkest moments—felt like heresy, and he automatically braced. But nothing happened, except for a deep ache that burned in his chest. He realized it was sadness. “All the time I spent at church, all the guilt over the years—for nothing.”
“That’s not true,” she said. “It was painful, but you had to go through those years to get to where you are now—to your own understanding.”
“I think I’ve been in denial,” he admitted. “It’s so hard to accept that much of my life has been a lie.…”
Her eyes glistened with empathy. “But not anymore.”
“No,” he whispered. She looked so gratified that the pain in his chest expanded until he felt he would burst. He backed away and began to pace. How could he have gotten so sidetracked from the mission? Damn his emotions for getting in the way, when he was so close to the truth.
He stopped in front of her. “I knew you weren’t really Christian. But why did you say you went to church?”
And I know you’re going there, but why?
She smiled as if he had whipped back a curtain on a private window, but one always meant to be found. “I wanted to test your real attitude toward religion, and that night, when you were incredulous that I could be a supporter of religion and science, I kissed you, because I saw you understood the issue. Now you need something from me. You asked for proof about the possibilities of embryonic stem cells; you just haven’t had a chance to see what they can do.”
His heart thumped wildly as he watched her take a breath, as though she were gearing up for a long-awaited announcement. She put a hand on his arm and stared up into his eyes.
“I will give you the proof you need to become committed to science, which far from making demands on your life, could save it one day, as it may save mine—”
He gasped. “What did you just say?”
She reached up and touched his cheek. “Yes—I’ve been wanting to tell you so badly. The truth is, I brought you here to screen your reaction to this exhibit and to have this conversation, because what I really want to do is take you somewhere else.”
The mysterious steel door materialized in Trent’s mind, along with the sinister voice behind it, and he knew—before they hailed a cab, drove in silent suspense to the East Village, and tiptoed through the dark alley—that she was finally taking him there.
PART TWO
ELEVEN
Arianna knocked.
“Well?” demanded a familiar male voice from behind the door. Trent shivered on the concrete slab next to her. In the shadows, she had become a silhouette, her cane appearing as a natural extension of her fingers. The air felt sapped of all warmth. Trent wrung his hands, knowing that the truth was imminent—a truth he didn’t know if he wanted to know, but had no power to stop.
He saw her reassuring smile in the darkness as she answered the voice: “Sad face.”
He was too distracted to process the random words as he heard three bolts unlock. Then the knob turned and the door swung back
