I asked him to do it. A year ago I wouldn’t have, I would have paid to believe in anything. But Elena gets worse every night. She fell asleep in my bed and when I checked on her I thought she wasn’t breathing because her little three-year-old face was so gray. It turned out to be nothing but the shadow of the quilt, though. I moved her stuffed sea lion closer to her and she rolled over on it dragging it down to the deep. Moments like those are more than I can take. The doctors just tell me to love her. Someone else suggested I pray. But belief of any kind at this point feels like being rocked in the arms of an insane mother—faith, that great and breaking bough—not with Elena at stake, I’m done with that. When Lyle gave me his card, I thought it was a joke. It had a picture of a beach on it with that poem about the footsteps. He had crossed out the words and written: You can be alone again. According to his website, he can extract the finest strands of transcendent hope.
