Chapter 19
Alice
The front door of the church is unlocked and as I enter it, the pleasantly warm evening outside disappears, replaced by the dank cold and oppressive air inside.
Even though this church is much newer, much smaller and much less ornately furnished, I feel like I just walked into St. Peter’s Church on Sycamore Road. The place where my life ended.
Inwardly, I’m still shaking from seeing Gael’s latest victim playing Dorothy on stage and from finding the candy room downstairs. The candy room. I’d forgotten I used to call the basement room where my nightmares started that. As I walk between the pews to the altar, I start outwardly shaking too.
I haven’t been inside a church since the last time my mother dragged me there the day before I turned eighteen.
The smell of burning candles and the rich, spicy aroma of the incense is ingrained in the very walls and the wood of the pews here as well.
I swear I can also smell the tangy, sweet scent of the candy he used to bring me too. It all makes bile rise in my throat.
But I’m here to do a job.
I’m not a scared, clueless, defenseless little girl anymore. No matter how much seeing Gael and being in his church again is threatening to turn me into one.
While taking deep, relaxing breaths, I place the microphones strategically in a few of the pews. Skye, our intel officer assured me that one of these mics is enough to cover a whole church, but I want to be sure.
I would dearly like to place a few bugs in the confessional booths, but that would be too big a sin, even in the pursuit of the higher good that I’m trying to achieve here. The confessional is sacred, the secrets revealed there are only between the confessor and God.
Gael spent a lot of time telling me that what he was doing to me was right and good inside the confession booth. But I still can’t violate the privacy of the others who come here to get absolution from their sins.
My phone stars ringing as I’m standing by the altar trying to decide if placing a camera there would violate anyone too gravely.
“He’s left the room,” Nico whispers as I pick up. “There’s at least twenty minutes left in the play.”
I turn back to the front door and stride towards it. But I’m only half way there when a side door opens and footsteps of leather against stone sound somewhere to my left. I recognize these footsteps.
“Were you looking for me?”
And there he is. Gael. In his black shirt and black pants, his eyes burning bright like they always did, even back then. The fiery eyes of the devil in a benevolent man’s clothing.
I want to run. I want to throw up. I want to fall to my knees and scream.
Instead, I smile at him. Because he’s absolutely right. I am looking for him. Just not in the way he’s thinking right now.
“I just wanted to see the church,” I say.
He comes closer and I feel color rise in my cheeks as the shakes that have been plaguing me since I got to this town start again. I hope he doesn’t notice. The light in the church is dim enough that I have some hope that he might not.
He’s standing less than a foot away from me now, I can smell the incense on him, and his body odor—sour like rotten wood and sweet like candy—which I’ve known all too well once. My shakes grow worse.
“I can give you a tour, if you’d like,” he says, the inflection in his voice and the inquisitive way in which his pale grey eyes are studying my face making me think he’s starting to recognize me. Or at least that he thinks he knows me from somewhere.
I turn away from him to look at the statues lining the walls. As if that’s going to help anything. I need to get away from him. Coming this close to him was a bad idea.
“Sure,” I say in a high-pitched voice. “You have a very richly decorated church here. I’d love to know more about it.”
He laughs. It’s a sound at once pompous and humble. I remember he could do that combination very well. Had everyone fooled. Especially with the humbleness.
The church door opens and Nico comes striding in. I can’t remember the last time I was so relieved to see someone. Possibly never.
“There you are,” he says, smiling at me, but his voice is breathless and his eyes very serious, shooting daggers at Gael.
Nico walks over to me and wraps his arm around my shoulders. “I see you’ve met the Father. It’s a very lovely church you have here.”
“Yes, we’ve met,” Gael says. “But I don’t know your names. I’m Father Gael.”
He extends his hand to Nico, who shakes it, introducing us as Alice and Trent Baxter again. He keeps his other arm wrapped around my shoulders and my shakes are subsiding as the warmth of Nico’s body seeps into me. He’s holding me very close. I wish he were holding me closer still.
I shake hands with Gael too and feeling his clammy, cold hand in mine brings up a whole new slew of memories I wish I could forget. Good thing Nico is holding me so tight because otherwise I might very well collapse down to my knees, which are very weak right now.
“I was just about to give your wife a tour of the church,” Gael says. “As I understand it, you’re thinking of moving to the area? And I am assuming you are Catholics.”
“Yes, you are correct on both points,” Nico says, while I just nod. “And while we’d love to see your church, we have to be somewhere right now.”
He turns to me. “The real estate lady called. She has a house to show us.”
I nod and he smiles at me, with his eyes too. But they’re back to being as hard as moss-covered stones when he fixes them back on Gael.
“We’ll see you for Mass on Sunday,” Nico tells him. “We can talk more then.”
“Yes, yes, of course,” Gael says. “I’m looking forward to it.”
The aggression in Nico’s eyes and voice seems to be lost on Gael. He walks us to the door, holding it open for us, nodding his head benevolently as we exit.
Nico keeps his arm firmly around my shoulders as we walk to the car. I miss it after he helps me into the passenger seat, wish he were still holding me as he gets behind the wheel and we drive off.
“Thank you for coming to get me,” I say in a quiet voice. “It was hard being alone with him.”
I don’t think I’d admit this to anyone else. I can hardly admit it to myself.
He takes my hand and squeezes. His hand is so warm, so nicely strong, so much different than the snake-like grip of Gael’s.
“I told you, I’m here for you.”
“I’m glad you are,” I say and turn my hand so I can hold his. And irrational as it is, I know I will be just fine as long as I can do that. Hold his hand, have him close. But how long can that last, when there’s nothing other than my pain and fear I can give him? Probably not long.
I don’t know a lot about Nico, but I don’t think he’s the kind of guy who does hard things. He likes it easy. And I’m anything but.