The three of us went out to buy Danny’s new dresser. Back at home, we worked together to assemble it and put his clothes away.

Christina was so happy I’d gone back to Danny on Saturday night that when I first walked in, she’d thrown her arms around me and squeezed me for more than a minute. She hadn’t even mentioned the destroyed furniture. She knew Danny’s temperament, and anyway, it probably wasn’t the first time he’d reacted that way to an emotional situation. It was his way of dealing with the rage he carried around in the pit of his stomach.

That Friday, I drove straight over to the martial arts center after work. A few of Danny’s students were taking the orange-belt exam the following day, and he wanted to go over everything with them once more. Christina was coming to watch as well.

I didn’t see her in any of the chairs surrounding the main ring, so I figured she was in the back, in the area Danny reserved for his students.

I spotted him from across the room. He was standing on a mat, surrounded by his students. “Feint left, kick right. No, don’t step in between,” he said. “Feint, down, kick. No step. Good, just like that. Make sure to hit with your shin…” Once he was more or less satisfied with his students’ side kicks, he turned to give me a kiss. “Hey. Tina’s back there somewhere.”

Danny’s training style was the exact opposite of Dogan’s. He never raised his voice or showed impatience. He used positive reinforcement to motivate them, not pressure. Not one of his students had failed a test yet.

I saw Christina sitting on a mat near the wall. She was wearing black shorts and a light-colored training jacket, which was zipped up all the way to her chin. I went over and dropped down beside her.

After exchanging greetings, we sat in silence for a while, watching Danny. He was standing on his right leg and had his left raised high above his head, kicking it into the air to demonstrate how to shoo an opponent back. He was left-handed and preferred to kick with his left leg as well, so at times he had to rethink a little when showing his students how to do things. At first, I’d been completely baffled by the idea of anyone being able to kick almost vertically in the air like that, but by now it was normal to me. We often spent evenings at the center, with Christina and I sitting comfortably on a mat in the corner while Danny either worked with his students or practiced on his own.

He’d taken on so many new students and added classes to his schedule so quickly that it had become a full-time job. Even so, he still went off to do photoshoots almost every weekend, sometimes for two or three days at once. His phone rang constantly during the week—students were always calling to ask him questions, and his agent often called to tell him when his next shoots were, how to get there, and what to wear to them.

“I wanted to thank you again,” Christina said, seemingly out of the blue.

I blinked in surprise. “For what?”

“For coming back to him.”

I couldn’t help smiling. “You don’t have to thank me for that.” I gave her a long look. “To be honest, I didn’t do it for you.”

“Of course not, but I’m still incredibly happy about it. Please don’t be mad at him for not telling you sooner. He wanted to tell you right from the start, but Jörg and I both worked to convince him not to. We wanted so badly for it to work out for him for once.”

“I’m not mad at him, Tina,” I assured her. “He warned me often enough, and he tried to keep me away. But I wanted to be with him.”

“Well, thank you,” she said again. “For accepting me. Any other girl probably would have made him choose.”

“Tina, if I’d made him choose between you or me, he’d have chosen you.”

Christina regarded me thoughtfully, as though trying to decide whether she could tell me the truth. “Maybe in the beginning,” she conceded at last, “but those days are over, and you know that. If you asked him to choose right now, he’d pick you.”

I thought about it for a moment and realized she was probably right. “Tina,” I said, reaching for her hand, “I would never force him to pick between us. I wouldn’t force him to do anything. How could I?”

She still had that scrutinizing look on her face “So he’s told you everything? About his past?”

“Yeah, I think so.” At least, I hoped that was all of it.

She looked pleased. “Good. Then you’ll be hearing about it often. In detail. Talking about it is important to him.”

“I’ll always listen,” I promised. “Do you guys discuss it a lot, too?”

She nodded. “Yeah, we talk about everything. He knows my past, and I know his. We don’t have any secrets from each another.” She fell silent for a moment. “I want to let you in, too,” she said suddenly. “I mean, I don’t want to have any secrets from you anymore, either. Can I tell you my story?” She gripped my hand tightly.

“Of course you can.”

She pulled me a little farther into the corner and turned so that her back was to the rest of the arena. I did the same. Christina bit one of her fingernails uncertainly. “It’s not easy for me to talk about,” she whispered. “But I’ll try.”

“Okay,” I said. “I won’t interrupt. I’ll just let you talk.”

She gave me a grateful smile. “The funny thing is,” she began, “everyone always says I have nothing to be ashamed of, but I still can’t manage to look people in the eye when I talk about it.” Still chewing on her nail, she looked down at the ground and said in a monotone voice, “I was seven, my sister was ten. My mom didn’t know anything about it at first. My dad would wait until she left the house. She’d go out with her friends every Thursday, and then he’d come and get us and take us to the bedroom with him.

“At first, he only did it to Caroline, but he’d make me take all my clothes off, sit in a chair beside the bed, and watch. Later, he started touching me, too—putting his fingers between my legs, making me touch him, forcing his penis into my mouth. But he only took my sister to bed with him. Until one day, she ran away and left me behind.”

I wanted to ask why her sister hadn’t taken her along, but I didn’t want to interrupt.

Christina seemed to read my mind, though. “You’re probably thinking that going through something like that would create a deep bond between two sisters, but it was just the opposite for us. She hated me, because she had to get in bed with him every time, and I got to just watch. When she was thirteen, she ran away and never came back. I haven’t seen her since.

“After that, I had to take her place in bed with him. My mother began to suspect something was wrong, but she didn’t do anything about it at first. She stopped going out in the evening, but he still found opportunities to be alone with me—when she went shopping or to the doctor or whatever. And she was in contact with Child Protective Services a lot, searching for Caroline, but there was no sign of her anywhere. Never has been.”

As if a dam had burst, tears began running down her cheeks. Her large eyes narrowed, and her mascara began to smear. She was still staring at the section of mat between her feet, clutching my hand tightly.

“He made me undress completely every time,” she went on tonelessly. “My father never hit me the way Danny’s did, but he took photos. He’d make me sit on a chair with my legs spread, and then he’d take pictures of me from every angle for what seemed like forever…” Hearing quiet footsteps, she fell silent and quickly wiped her tears away. Danny had come up behind us, and now he reached out to touch Christina’s hair.

“Everything okay?” He looked worried.

I knew he was exceptionally sensitive and had incredible emotional radar, but this still completely astonished me. He couldn’t have seen from the training area that Christina was crying—it was too far away, and we were facing the wall. And yet here he was, as if we’d called out for him. The emotional connection between the two of them must have been so strong that he’d felt her pain, or at least suspected it somehow.

“Everything’s okay,” I assured him, giving him a look to indicate he could leave. “She was just telling me—”

Grasping the situation immediately, Danny nodded and disappeared as quickly as he’d arrived.

Sniffling, Christina cleared her throat to continue. “I had to put on my mom’s heels and bras.” She struggled to get the words out. “It was all much too big for me, but he loved seeing me walking around in it. He took pictures of that, too…” Her thumbnail was already bleeding, but she kept biting it anyway. I closed my eyes. I’d actually thought that nothing could shock me after Danny’s story, but now I knew better.

“Did your mother do anything about it?” I asked quietly.

She nodded. “She found out three years later. She divorced him and left with me. But she hated me from that day on. For destroying her marriage, and for the fact that my sister had run away.”

I snorted in fury. Unbelievable. You’d think a mother would stand by her children unconditionally.

“I was at the end of my rope, I was dead inside. I started cutting myself, with razors, just so I could feel that I was still alive. Sometimes I even poured salt into the wounds so they’d hurt more. And then, when I was fourteen, I ran away. Hung around the train station, got into drugs. Just hash at first, but I graduated to heroin pretty quickly. That started a whole vicious cycle: I’d sleep with some sleazeball in order to get heroin, and that would disgust me so much that I’d take even more heroin.

“Back then, I was firmly resolved never to go through something as horrible as sex unless it was for money. If I had to put up with all of that, I thought I should at least get paid for it. Eventually, Child Protective Services found me, but I ran away again and again. They found me a group home and a therapy group for severely traumatized children. I refused to stay put in the home, but for some reason I gave the self-help group a chance, and that’s where I met Danny.”

She turned and looked at me intently. Her eyes were red from crying. “He probably saved my life. As we became friends, he hounded me into rehab and took me back to the group home. Then he helped me press charges against my father…who ended up only getting six years.” She swallowed hard. “Can you imagine? Six years! They couldn’t prove what he’d done to my sister, and they hadn’t been able to find the photos. And the fact that I hadn’t pressed charges until much later made it even more difficult. He might parole out even sooner for good behavior.”

My thoughts turned to Danny for a moment. After the whole nightmare of his own father’s trial had finally ended, he’d gone through the same crap all over again with Christina.

She closed her eyes and wiped her face with both hands before continuing. “I moved in with Danny two years later. Back then, I was already almost totally off the drugs, but he still stuck me in inpatient rehab for nearly eight months. I hated him for it, begged him not to do it, threatened to end our friendship, but he insisted. Today, I’m grateful he did. When I got out, I was totally clean, but he still took me back there this year to reinforce it all. But you know that part of the story.”

Cautiously, I drew her close, buried my face in her hair. “Thank you, Tina,” I whispered. “Thank you for telling me. Ever since I met you guys, I’ve wished I could be part of what you have.”

She jerked away from my embrace and stared at me, looking baffled. “Jessica,” she said. “You’ve been part of it for a long time. You’ve become just as much my family as Danny is. I love you, too.”

I grinned and pulled her back in. “I love you, too, Tina.” After a while, I added, “And I love Danny. With all my heart. You don’t have to worry—I’ll never leave him. Promise. No matter what happens, I’ll stay with him.”

It was the truth. I loved Tina, and I loved Danny more than anything. I would travel this road with him until the end, even if it was the last thing I did in my otherwise-meaningless life.

 

***

 

I’d been having a hard time concentrating on work all week long, so I left early on Friday and went out riding before going to Danny’s. Silently, I closed the front door behind me and stepped into the hallway. I’d been expecting Danny to be home as well, but he didn’t come out to meet me, which wasn’t like him at all. “Hello?” I called.

Christina came out into the hall. “Jessica, come in. Danny’s still at work.”

“His car is parked outside.”

She walked over and hugged me. “Really? He didn’t come inside. Maybe he’s in the yard?”

“I’ll go check.”

Christina disappeared into her room again, while I set my purse on Danny’s dresser and walked through the living room to the terrace. The deck chairs were positioned neatly around the outdoor table, and there was nobody on the lawn, either.

A soft whistle let me know that I wasn’t alone. I looked around, curious. It took me a while to find Danny. “What the hell are you doing on the roof?” I called. “Come down!”

“No,” he said. “You come up.”

I barely suppressed a sigh and wondered how he’d gotten up there. Then the green trash can beside the attached garage caught my eye. I climbed up onto it and then onto the garage roof, one knee at a time. From there, I hoisted myself up one level higher, to where Danny was sitting, on the roof of the apartments. It was easier than I’d expected.

The gabled roof wasn’t especially steep, but I still crawled over to Danny on all fours, too afraid to stand up. The tiles were very warm, but tolerably so. If the sky hadn’t been cloudy half the day, I’d probably have gotten blisters on my hands. “What are you doing up here?” I repeated as I settled in beside Danny.

“Watching the sunset,” he said, kissing me on the cheek.

“From here? Funny, I could have sworn your apartment had windows.”

“But you can only see the spot from here.” He pointed between two trees, out into the distance. He was right. The view was breathtaking. We could see past all the rooftops and far out into the fields. But what was the spot?

“What are you talking about?”

“Over the hill to the left of the cemetery, there’s this one place where it looks like the sky and the ground are connected. The Gateway to Heaven.” He scooted closer and turned my chin in the right direction. “There.”

I had to admit he was right. There was a place where the horizon seemed to fade gradually until it disappeared altogether. “I see it,” I breathed.

“And my soul spread far its wings, and sailed o’er the hushed lands as if gliding home.” Danny’s whisper sent a shiver down my back, and the hair on my arms stood up.

“Sad, but beautiful,” I said quietly.

“That’s my favorite part of ‘Night of the Moon.’ It’s a poem by Eichendorff. It’s about reuniting those who have been separated. The boundary between Heaven and Earth dissolves, allowing passage back and forth between the two worlds. The dead can come to the living, and vice versa. But it only works when the horizon comes close enough to the ground, like it does out there.”

“I don’t believe it.”

Danny gave me a questioning look. “Um, it is just a legend.”

“Not that.” Confused, I tried to sort out my thoughts. “The day we met, while I was on the Ferris wheel, I recited the first verse of that exact poem! And you came over and talked to me half an hour later. And now here we are, talking about that poem. Crazy, huh?”

Danny only shrugged. “I don’t think so. People get premonitions all the time. They just don’t realize it because they’re busy thinking about a bunch of other crap.”

“A premonition?” This was getting far too spiritual for my taste. “About what? This conversation? Or meeting you?”

“Who knows? Or maybe it was—”

At that moment, the roof window a few feet away from us opened, and a woman with wild, curly hair poked her head out. “Good Lord, Danny, why can’t you sit under the roof like normal people?”

“It’s nicer up here,” he said. “Want to join us, Britta?”

She rolled her eyes. “Oh, sure! Should I bring tea and cookies, too?”

“Yeah, great idea!” Danny agreed merrily.

I heard her mumble “You get down from there!” as she closed the window.

“Is she serious?” I asked.

“I hope not.” Danny grinned. “I hate tea.”

“Bullshit. Everyone likes tea.”

“I don’t.” He gave me an apologetic look. “Bad experiences.”

“With tea?” I looked at him doubtfully.

“Long story,” he said with a dismissive wave before turning to me. “Anyway, you should remember what you thought about all this today, and then pay closer attention in the future. Then you’ll notice things like that more often. Premonitions, signs, moments of serendipity, whatever you want to call them. Maybe they’ll help you someday.”

“I don’t understand. Help me with what?”

Danny was silent for a while. The light around us began to change, becoming reddish and somehow surreal. “Someday,” he said, “when I’m not around anymore. When you’re near the horizon, you’ll be near me, too..”

“Stop it,” I broke in, a shade too gruffly. “You’re giving me chills.”

“Just remember it, Ducky. Just in case.”

“We shouldn’t even be thinking about stuff like that.”

“I know.”

The window opened again, and Britta leaned out. She had neither tea nor cookies. “Get down from there, now!” she called, waving her hands in our direction. “If our landlord sees you up there, you’ll be in a lot of trouble.”

“We’re going!” I said, to placate her. I gazed out one last time toward the horizon, toward the blood-red sun, and then dropped to my knees and crawled back to the garage.

Danny lay down on the warm roof tiles. “I’ll be right there. Give me five minutes.”