The Water Keeper

by Charles Martin

‘We don’t love because people love us back. We love because we can. Because we were made to. Because it’s all we have. Because, at the end of the day, evil can take everything save one thing: your love. And when you come to realize that, that the only thing you really control in this life is your love, you’ll see, maybe for the first time, that we’re all just lost.’

“A long time ago, I gave my heart away. And I spent something like twenty years without one. I mean I had the organ, but part of it was missing. Then, here recently, it came back to me. And I have it again. The problem is that it doesn’t fit in me anymore. While it was gone, it grew. The place in me where it used to go is too small to hold it. So it needs a home. And I was wondering if . . . you’d hold on to it. Maybe take care of it. I’m wondering if you’d be the keeper of my heart.”