Excerpt of Included!

DOWN RIVERoff. She wrapped me up and said it meant that good still moved in the world.Plain and simple. I tried my best to believe her, but there was a hole in me. Soshe said it again, whispered with the voice that I loved, Good still moves.But that’s not what it meant.There was something behind those trees, some secret place, and I thoughtI knew what I might find there.When my mother killed herself, she killed my childhood, too. She took themagic with her. It was too much for me to forgive, too destructive, and in theabsence of forgiveness, the anger filled me up, twenty years’ worth, and onlynow was I beginning to understand. She did what she did, but hers was a sin ofweakness, as was my father’s; and while the repercussions of his misdeed wereenormous, the sin itself was one of human frailty. That’s what Dolf tried to tellme, and I knew now that his words were not just for my father’s sake, but alsofor mine. My father’s failing is where the anger started, that’s what set the glassspinning, and every day it seemed a smaller thing. So, I held my woman close,and I told myself that when next I dreamed, I would follow a flash of white. Iwould walk the dark trail, and I would look at what I feared to see.Maybe it was magic.Or forgiveness.Maybe it was nothing.At dusk the next Sunday, Robin said that she was going for a walk. Shekissed me hard and put the phone in my hand.I stood at the window and looked at the river. It was not the one I loved. Differentcolor. Different shores. But the water moved. It wore things down and itrestored itself, emptied into the same vast sea.I thought of my own mistakes and of my father, then of Grace and of thethings that Dolf had said; how human is human and the hand of God is in allthings.The phone would ring in ten minutes.I wondered if tonight I would pick it up.325