Bonnie - Iris Johansen [81]
“No.” He pulled out his knife and cut the ropes binding her wrists. “This will make it easier for you to walk. You’re slowing me down.”
“You’re not afraid I’ll manage to escape?”
“I’d catch up with you before you went a quarter mile.” He turned away. “But you’re not going to run away. You’re willing to take any punishment that comes along. You want to go with me.”
“How could you know that?”
“I saw your face at the priest’s study. You were … eager.”
And he was very perceptive. “You could be mistaken.”
He shook his head. “And I saw you earlier in the garden with her.”
She lost her breath. “Her?”
He turned away. “The child. Let’s go.”
“Oh, no.” She took two steps and her hand closed on his arm. “You don’t leave me like that. You saw Bonnie.”
“I told you I saw the child.”
“No, stop that crap. Why won’t you say her name? You saw Bonnie.”
“It hurts me.”
“Then let it hurt you. My daughter is dead, and you saw her. You just told me so. Why would you see a dead child, Danner? This dead child. Did you kill her?”
“Stop talking about her. It hurts me.”
“I won’t stop talking about her. I can see her spirit because she’s my daughter, and she wants me to do it. But why you, Danner?”
He tore his arm away from her grasp. “Why do you think? She wants me to see her, too. She wants to torment me. She doesn’t understand … I have to make her understand.”
“Understand what?”
“That I’m not fighting her, that I’ll give her what she wants. But I had to find out what that was first. Even Father Barnabas couldn’t tell me. I asked him, and he said to pray about it. I had to know.”
“And now you do?”
“She wants you,” he said simply.
“What?”
“In that garden I could see that there was so much love between you. She wants her mother. All little girls want their mothers. That’s what she wants me to do. Not to kill any demons. She wants me to give you to her.”
She stared at him, stunned. Then she realized the words had stunned her but not the basic thought behind them. The hints had been there to be read.
And, he was right, she had been eager to read them.
“It won’t be bad,” he said softly. “I won’t hurt you. She wouldn’t like that.”
“Stop that. Say her name. She’s not an anonymous ‘child.’ She’s Bonnie. Say it.”
He didn’t speak for a moment. “Bonnie.”
It was hurting him. She could tell. Then she realized why. “It’s because you don’t want to recognize her as a person, you want to keep her at a distance. Well, she is a person, a wonderful, wonderful person. From the moment she was born, she was special. I could tell you stories.”
He shook his head. “Don’t do it.”
“Then don’t ever let me hear you call her anything but her name.”
“Okay. It doesn’t matter. I can stand it. It’s all going to be ending anyway.” He turned away. “It’s time to go.”
Ending. Bonnie had spoken about the ending, and now Danner was doing it, too. But it might not mean the same thing to him. “What do you mean?”
“If I give you to her”—he paused, then said with an effort—“to Bonnie, then it’s over for me. I can stop running from them.”
“Them?”
He turned away. “Enough talk.”
“Not nearly enough. One question. Did you murder my daughter?”
He ignored the question and was heading back toward the path. “Come on, you’ve had enough rest. I’ll let you sleep a couple hours later.”
He wasn’t even looking back at her over his shoulder. He was sure that she would come with him. How could he be that sure she wouldn’t run for her life?
In that garden there was so much love between you.
Had he been able to see more than the love that bound Bonnie and her together? Had he seen a guideline that Bonnie had drawn for him? Eve had been totally shocked that he had been able to see Bonnie. Bonnie had come to her and to Gallo and to Joe and no one else. Not even Jane. It was reasonable to guess that it was the love that had drawn her to them. The love was always there and clearly visible when she was with Bonnie.
But Danner felt no love. He was afraid of Bonnie. He only wanted to get rid of her.
And offering