2
“Of course. I would have told him myself, but …” My voice trails off.
“That’s my job,” she finishes, saving me from speaking the truth: Now that I have forgiven Caleb, I do not know if he will forgive me.
I busy myself with the dishes—rinsing our mugs, squeezing dry the tea bags and putting them into the trash. I have specifically tried to focus on Nathaniel since leaving Dr. Robichaud’s office—not only because it is the right thing to do, but because I am a terrible coward at heart. What will Caleb say, do?
Monica’s hand touches my forearm. “You were protecting Nathaniel.”
I look directly at her. No wonder there is a need for social workers; the relationships between people knot so easily, there needs to be a person skilled at working free the threads. Sometimes, though, the only way to extricate a tangle is to cut it out and start fresh.
She reads my mind. “Nina. In your shoes, he would have reached the same conclusions.”
A knock on the door captures our attention. Patrick lets himself in, nods to Monica. “I’m just on my way out,” she explains. “If you want to reach me later, I’ll be in my office.”
This is directed to both Patrick and me. Patrick will need her, presumably, to be kept abreast of the case. I will need her, presumably, for moral support. As soon as the door closes behind Monica, Patrick steps forward. “Nathaniel?”
“He’s in his room. He’s okay.” A sob hops the length of my throat. “Oh, my God, Patrick. I should have known. What did I do? What did I do?”
“You did what you had to,” he says simply.
I nod, trying to believe him. But Patrick knows it isn’t working. “Hey.” He leads me to one of the stools in the kitchen, sits me down. “Remember when we were kids, and we used to play Clue?”
I wipe my nose with my sleeve. “No.”
“That’s because I always trounced you. You’d pick Mr. Mustard every time, no matter what the evidence said.”
“I must have let you win.”
“Good. Because if you’ve done it before, Nina, it’s not going to be that hard to do it again.” He puts his hands on my shoulders. “Give over. I know this game, Nina, and I’m good at it. If you let me do what I have to, without messing yourself up in the process, we can’t lose.” Suddenly he takes a step away from me, stuffs his hands into his pockets. “And you’ve got other things to work on, now.”
“Other things?”
Patrick turns, meets my eye. “Caleb?”
It’s like that old contest: Who will blink first? This time, I can’t bear it; I am the one to look away. “Then go lock him up, Patrick. It’s Father Szyszynski. I know it, and you know it. How many priests have been convicted of doing just this— shit!” I wince, my own mistake hammering back. “I talked to Father Szyszynski about Nathaniel during confession.”
“You what? What were you thinking?”
“That he was my priest.” Then I glance up. “Wait. He thinks it’s Caleb. That’s what I thought, then. That’s good, right? He doesn’t know that he’s the suspect.”
“What’s important is whether Nathaniel knows it.”
“Isn’t that crystal clear?”
“Unfortunately, it’s not. Apparently, there’s more than one way to interpret the word father. And by the same logic, there’s a whole country full of priests out there.” He looks at me soberly. “You’re the prosecutor. You know this case can’t afford another mistake.”
“God, Patrick, he’s only five. He signed priest. Szyszynski is the only priest he even knows, the only priest who has any contact with him on a regular basis. Go ahead and ask Nathaniel if that’s who he meant.”
“That’s not going to stand up in court, Nina.”
Suddenly I realize that Patrick has not come only for Nathaniel; he has also come for me. To remind me that while I’m being a mother, I still have to think like a prosecutor now. We cannot name the accuser for Nathaniel; he has to do it himself. Otherwise, there is no chance of a conviction.
My mouth is dry. “He isn’t ready to talk yet.”
Patrick holds out his hand to me. “Then let’s just see what he can tell us today.”
Nathaniel is on the top bunk, sorting his daddy’s old collection of baseball cards into piles. He likes the feel of their frayed edges, and the way they smell gray. His dad says to be careful, that one day these could pay for college, but Nathaniel couldn’t care less. Right now he likes touching them, staring at all the funny faces, and thinking that his dad used to do the same thing.
There’s a knock, and his mom comes in with Patrick. Without hesitation, Patrick climbs up the ladder—all six-feet-two inches of him squashing into the small space between ceiling and mattress. It makes Nathaniel smile a little. “Hey, Weed.” Patrick thumps the bed with a fist. “This is comfy. Gotta get me one of these.” He sits up, pretends to crack his head on the ceiling. “What do you think? Should I ask your mom to buy me a bed like this too?”
Nathaniel shakes his head and hands Patrick a card. “Is this for me?” Patrick asks, then reads the name and smiles broadly. “Mike Schmidt, rookie. I’m sure your dad will be thrilled you’ve been so generous.” He tucks it into his pocket and takes out a pad and pen at the same time. “Nathaniel, you think it would be all right if I asked you some questions?”
Well. He is tired of questions. He is tired, period. But Patrick climbed all the way up here. Nathaniel jerks his head, yes.
Patrick touches the boy’s knee, slowly, so slowly that it doesn’t even make Nathaniel jump, although these days everything does. “Will you tell me the truth, Weed?” he asks softly.
Slower this time, Nathaniel nods.
“Did your daddy hurt you?”
Nathaniel looks at Patrick, then at his mother, and emphatically shakes his head. He feels something open up in his chest, making it easier to breathe.
“Did somebody else hurt you?”
Yes.
“Do you know who it was?”
Yes.
Patrick’s gaze is locked with Nathaniel’s. He won’t let him turn away, no matter how badly Nathaniel wants to. “Was it a boy or a girl?”
Nathaniel is trying to remember—how is it said again? He looks at his mother, but Patrick shakes his head, and he knows that, now, it is all up to him. Tentatively, his hand comes up to his head. He touches his brow, as if there is a baseball cap there. “Boy,” he hears his mother translate.
“Was it a grown-up, or a kid?”
Nathaniel blinks at him. He cannot sign those words.
“Well, was he big like me, or little like you?”
Nathaniel’s hand hovers between his own body, and Patrick’s. Then falls, deliberately, in the middle.
That makes Patrick grin. “Okay, it was a medium guy, and it was someone you know?”
Yes.
“Can you tell me who?”
Nathaniel feels his whole face tighten, muscles bunching. He squeezes his eyes shut. Please please please, he thinks. Let me. “Patrick,” his mother says, and she takes a step forward, but Patrick holds out a hand and she stops.
“Nathaniel, if I brought you a bunch of pictures”—he points to the baseball cards—“like these … do you think you could show me who this person was?”
Nathaniel’s hands flutter over the piles, bumblebees choosing a place to light. He looks from one card to the other. He cannot read, he cannot speak, but he knows that Rollie Fingers had a handlebar moustache, Al Hrabosky looked like a grizzly bear. Once something sticks in his head, it stays there; it’s just a matter of getting it back out again.
Nathaniel looks up at Patrick; and he nods. This, this he can do.
Monica has been in accommodations far worse than the efficiency suite where she finds Caleb Frost, but this is almost more jarring, and she thinks it is because she has seen the sort of home where he is supposed to be. The minute Caleb recognizes her face through the keyhole of the door, he throws it open. “What’s the matter with Nathaniel?” he asks, true fear washing over his features.
“Nothing. Nothing at all. He’s made another disclosure. A new ID.”
“I don’t understand.”
“It means you’re no longer a suspect, Mr. Frost,” Monica says quietly.
Questions rise in him like a bonfire. “Who,” Caleb manages, the word tasting of ash.
“I think you should go home and speak to your wife about it,” she answers, then turns briskly and walks away, her purse tucked primly beneath her arm.
“Wait,” Caleb calls out. He takes a deep breath. “Is … is Nina okay with that?”
Monica smiles, lets the light reach her eyes. “Who do you think asked me to come?”
Peter agrees to meet me at the district court, where I’m going to have the restraining order vacated. The process takes all of ten minutes, a rubber stamp, with the judge asking only one question: How is Nathaniel?
By the time I come into the lobby, Peter is racing through the front door. He immediately comes toward me, concern drawing down the corners of his mouth. “I got here as soon as I could,” he says breathlessly. His eyes dart to Nathaniel, holding my hand.
He thinks I need him to twist the letter of the law for me, squeeze blood from the stone heart of a judge, do something to stack the scales of justice in my favor. Suddenly I am embarrassed by the reason I called him.
“What is it?” Peter demands. “Anything, Nina.”
I slip my hands in my coat pockets. “I really just wanted to get a cup of coffee,” I admit. “I wanted to feel, for five minutes, like everything was back the way it used to be.”
Peter’s gaze is a spotlight; it sees down to my soul. “I can do that too,” he says, and loops his arm through mine.
Although there are no seats left at the bar at Tequila Mockingbird by the time Patrick arrives, the bartender takes one look at him and hints strongly to a visiting businessman that he take his drink to a booth in the back. Patrick wraps his black mood around him like a parka, hops onto the vacant stool, and signals to Stuyvesant. The bartender comes over pouring his usual, Glenfiddich. But he hands Patrick the bottle, and keeps the glass of scotch behind the bar. “Just in case someone else here wants a shot,” Stuyv explains.
Patrick looks at the bottle, at the bartender. He tosses his car keys on the counter, a fair trade, and takes a long swig of the liquor.
By now, Nina has been to the court and back. Maybe Caleb has made it home in time for dinner. Maybe they’ve gotten Nathaniel to bed early, and are even now lying in the dark next to each other.
Patrick picks up his bottle again. He has been in their bedroom before. Big king-size bed. If he was married to her, they’d sleep on a narrow cot, that’s how close to her he would be.
He’d been married himself for three years, because he believed that if you wanted to get rid of a hole, you filled it. He had not realized at the time that there were all sorts of fillers that took up space, but had no substance. That made you feel just as empty.
Patrick pitches forward as a blond woman hits him hard on the shoulder. “You pervert!”
“What the hell?”
She narrows her eyes. They are green, and caked with too much mascara. “Did you just touch my ass?”
“No.”
Suddenly, she grins, insinuating herself between Patrick and the elderly man on his right. “Well, damn. How many times will I have to walk by before you do?”
Sliding her drink beside Patrick’s bottle, she holds out her hand. Manicured. He hates manicured hands. “I’m Xenia. And you are?”
“Really not interested.” Patrick smiles tightly, turns back to the bar.
“My mom didn’t raise a quitter,” Xenia says. “What do you do for a living?”
“I’m a funeral director.”
“No, really.”
Patrick sighs. “I’m on the vice squad.”
“No, really.”
He faces her again. “Really. I’m a police officer.”
Her eyes widen. “Does that mean I’m busted?”
“Depends. Did you break any laws?”
Xenia’s gaze travels the length of his body. “Not yet.” Dipping a finger in her drink—something pink and frothy—she touches her shirt, and then his. “Wanna go to my place and get out of these wet clothes?”
He blushes, then tries to pretend it didn’t happen. “Don’t think so.”
She props her chin on her fist. “Guess you better just buy me a drink.”
He starts to turn her down again, then hesitates. “All right. What are you having?”
“An Orgasm.”
“Of course,” Patrick says, hiding a smile. It would be so easy—to go home with this girl, waste a condom and a few hours’ sleep, get the itch out of his blood. Chances are, he could fuck her without ever telling her his name. And in return, for just a few hours, he would feel like someone wanted him. He would be, for a night, someone’s first choice.
Except this particular someone would not be his first choice.
Xenia trails her nails along the nape of Patrick’s neck. “I’m just going to carve our initials in the door of the ladies’ room,” she murmurs, backing away.
“You don’t know my initials.”
“I’ll make them up.” She gives a little wave, then disappears into the crowd.
Patrick calls over Stuyvesant and pays for Xenia’s second drink. He leaves it sweating on a cocktail napkin for her. Then he walks out of Tequila Mockingbird stone sober, facing the fact that Nina has ruined him for anyone else.
· · ·
Nathaniel lies on the lower bunk while I read him a book before bedtime. Suddenly, he jackknifes upright and fairly flies across the room, to the doorway where Caleb stands. “You’re home,” I say, the obvious, but he doesn’t hear. He is lost in this moment.
Seeing them together, I want to kick myself again. How could I ever have believed that Caleb was at fault?
The room is suddenly too small to hold all three of us. I back out of it, closing the door behind me. Downstairs, I wash the silverware that sits on the drying rack, already clean. I pick Nathaniel’s toys up from the floor. I sit down on the living room couch; then, restless, stand up and arrange the cushions.
“He’s asleep.”
Caleb’s voice cuts to the quick. I turn, my arms crossed over my chest. Does that look too defensive? I settle them at my sides, instead. “I’m … I’m glad you’re home.”
“Are you?”
His face gives nothing away. Coming out of the shadows, Caleb walks toward me. He stops two feet away, but there might as well be a universe between us.
I know every line of his face. The one that was carved the first year of our marriage, by laughing so often. The one that was born of worries the year he left the contracting company to go into business for himself. The one that developed from focusing hard on Nathaniel as he took his first steps, said his first word. My throat closes tight as a vise, and all the apologies sit bitter in my stomach. We had been na?ve enough to believe that we were invincible; that we could run blind through the hairpin turns of life at treacherous speeds and never crash. “Oh, Caleb,” I say finally, through the tears, “these things, they weren’t supposed to happen to us.”
Then he is crying too, and we cling to each other, fitting our pain into each other’s hollows and breaks. “He did this. He did this to our baby.”
Caleb holds my face in his hands. “We’re going to get through it. We’re going to make Nathaniel get better.” But his sentences turn up at the ends, like small animals begging. “There are three of us in this, Nina,” he whispers. “And we’re all in it together.”
“Together,” I repeat, and press my open mouth against his neck. “Caleb, I’m so sorry.”
“Ssh.”
“I am, no, I am—”
He cuts me off with a kiss. The action arrests me; it is not what I have been expecting. But then I grab him by the collar of his shirt and kiss him back. I kiss him from the bottom of my soul, I kiss him until he can taste the copper edge of sorrow. Together.
We undress each other with brutality, ripping fabric and popping buttons that roll under the couch like secrets. This is the anger overflowing: anger that this has happened to our son, that we cannot turn back time. For the first time in days I can get rid of the rage; I pour it into Caleb, only to realize that he is doing the same to me. We scratch, we bite, but then Caleb lays me down with the softest touch. Our eyes lock when he moves inside me; neither one of us would dare to blink. My body remembers: This is what it is to be filled by love, instead of despair.
The last case I worked on with Monica LaFlamme had not been a success. She sent me a report, stating that a Mrs. Grady had called her. Apparently, while drying her seven-year-old off after a bath, Eli grabbed the Mickey Mouse towel and began to simulate sexual thrusting, then named his stepfather as the perp. The child was taken to Maine Medical Center, but there were no physical findings. Oh, and Eli suffered from something called oppositional defiance disorder.
We met at my office, in the room we use to assess children for competency exams. On the other side of a one-way mirror was a small table, tiny chairs, a few toys, and a rainbow painted on the wall. Monica and I watched Eli run around like a hellion, literally climbing the curtains. “Well,” I said. “This should be fun.”
In the adjoining room, Mrs. Grady ordered her son to stop. “You need to calm down, Eli,” she said. But that just made him scream more, run more.
I turned to Monica. “What’s oppositional defiance disorder, anyway?”
The social worker shrugged. “My guess?” she said, gesturing toward Eli. “That. He does the opposite of what you ask him to do.”
I gaped at her. “It’s a real psychiatric diagnosis? I mean, it’s not just the definition of being seven years old?”
“Go figure.”
“What about forensic evidence?” I unrolled a grocery bag, and pulled out a neatly folded towel. Mickey’s face leered up at me. The big ears, the sideways grin—it was creepy on its own merits, I thought.
“The mother washed it after the bath that night.”
“Of course she did.”
Monica sighed as I handed the towel to her. “Mrs. Grady’s intent on going to trial.”
“It’s not her decision.” But I smiled as Eli’s mother took a spot beside me and the police officer who was investigating the case. I gave her my spiel, about seeing what information Ms. LaFlamme could get out of Eli, for the record.
We watched through the mirror as Monica asked Eli to sit down.
“No,” he said, and started running laps.
“I need you to come sit down in this chair. Can you do that, please?”
Eli picked up the chair and threw it in the corner. With supreme patience, Monica retrieved it and set it down beside her own. “Eli, I need you to come sit in this chair for a little while, and then we’ll go get Mommy.”
“I want my mommy now. I don’t want to be here.” But then he sat down.
Monica pointed to the rainbow. “Can you tell me what color this is, Eli?”
“Red.”
“That’s very good! How about this color?” She touched her finger to the yellow stripe.
Eli rolled his eyes in her direction. “Red,” he said.
“Is that red, or is it a different color than the other stripe?”
“I want my mommy,” Eli shouted. “I don’t want to talk to you. You are a big fat fart.”
“All right,” Monica said evenly. “Do you want to go get your mommy?”
“No, I don’t want my mommy.”
After about five more minutes, Monica terminated the interview. She raised her brows at me through the glass and shrugged. Mrs. Grady leaned forward immediately. “What happens next? Do we set a date for court?”
At that, I took a deep breath. “I’m not sure what happened to your son,” I said diplomatically. “Probably, there was some abuse involved; his behavior seems to indicate that. And I think you would be wise to assess your husband’s involvement with Eli. However, we can’t prosecute this case criminally.”
“But … but you just said it. There was abuse. What more does there have to be?”
“You saw Eli now. There’s no way he’s going to be able to come into a courtroom and sit down on a chair and answer questions.”
“If you spend more time with him—”
“Mrs. Grady, it’s not just me. He’s going to have to answer questions posed by the defense attorney and the judge, and there’s going to be a jury a few feet away staring at him, too. You understand better than anyone does what Eli’s behavioral issues are, because you see them on a daily basis. But unfortunately, the legal system doesn’t work for people who can’t respond within its framework.”
The woman’s face was white as a sheet. “Well … what do you do, then, with cases like this? How do you protect children like Eli?”
I turned to the one-way mirror, where Eli was breaking crayons in half. “We can’t,” I admitted.
I bolt upright in bed, my heart racing. A dream. It has only been a dream. My heart is pounding, sweat covers me like a veil, but my house is still.
Caleb lies on his side, facing me, breathing deeply. There are silver tracks crossing his face; he has been crying in his sleep. I touch my finger to a tear, bring it to my mouth. “I know,” I whisper, and then lie awake for the rest of the night.
I doze off as the sun comes up, and wake to the first frost of the winter. It comes early in Maine, and it changes the landscape. Hoary and barbed, the world is a place that might shatter the moment you step into it.
Caleb and Nathaniel are nowhere to be found; the house is so quiet it throbs around me as I dress and make my way downstairs. The cold sneaks in through the crack beneath the door and wraps itself around my ankles while I drink a cup of coffee and stare at the note on the table. WE’RE IN THE BARN.
When I find them, they are mixing mortar. Well, Caleb is. Nathaniel crouches on the floor of the workshop, using bits of brick to outline the dog sleeping on the cement slab floor. “Hey,” Caleb grins, glancing up. “We’re building a brick wall today.”
“So I see. Has Nathaniel got a hat and gloves? It’s too cold out for—”
“I’ve got them right here.” Caleb jerks his chin to the left; there are the blue fleece accessories.
“Well. I have to go out for a little while.”
“So go.” Caleb drags the hoe through the cement, mixing it.
But I don’t want to. I’m not needed here; I know that. For years, I’ve been the main breadwinner; the odd wheel out. Lately, though, I’ve gotten used to my own house. Lately, I haven’t much wanted to leave.
“Maybe I—”
Whatever I’m about to say is interrupted as Caleb leans down and yells right into Nathaniel’s face. “No!” Nathaniel quails, but not before Caleb grabs his arm and pulls him away.
“Caleb—”
“You don’t touch the antifreeze,” Caleb yells at Nathaniel. “How many times do I have to tell you that? It’s poison. It can hurt you badly.” He picks up the bottle of Prestone he’s been mixing into the mortar to keep it from freezing in this temperature, and then covers the mess Nathaniel’s made with a cloth. A stain, alien green, seeps through and spreads. The dog laps at the sweet spill, until Caleb shoves it away. “Get out of there, Mason.”
In the corner, Nathaniel’s on the verge of tears. “Come here,” I say, opening up my arms. He flies into them, and I kiss the top of his head. “Why don’t you go get a toy from your room to play with while Daddy’s working?”
Nathaniel runs off to the house with Mason at his heels, both of them smart enough to know a reprieve when it comes up and grabs them. Caleb shakes his head in disbelief. “Just undermine me, Nina, you go right ahead.”
“I’m not undermining you. I’m … well, look at him, Caleb, you scared him to death. He wasn’t doing it on purpose.”
“It doesn’t matter. He was told and he didn’t listen.”
“Don’t you think he’s been through enough lately?”
Caleb wipes his hands on a towel. “Yes, I do. So how’s he going to take it when the dog he loves drops dead, because he broke the rules and did something he was expressly told not to do?” He caps the Prestone, sets it high on a shelf. “I want him to feel like a normal kid again. And if Nathaniel had done this three weeks ago, you can bet I would have punished him.”
This logic I can’t even follow. Biting down on my response, I turn and walk out. I am still angry with Caleb by the time I reach the police department and find Patrick asleep at his desk.
I slam the door of his office, and he nearly falls out of his chair. Then he winces, holds his hand to his head. “I’m just glad to see that you public servants are really earning all my tax dollars,” I say sourly. “Where’s the digital lineup?”
“I’m working on it,” Patrick responds.
“Oh, yeah, I can see that you’re really exerting yourself.”
He stands up and frowns at me. “Who peed in your coffee?”
“I’m sorry. Just some domestic bliss spilling over. No doubt I’ll find my manners by the time you find probable cause to lock up Szyszynski.”
Patrick looks me right in the eye. “How’s Caleb?”
“Fine.”
“Doesn’t sound like things are fine …”
“Patrick. I’m here because I need to know that something’s going on. Anything. Please. Show me.”
He nods and takes my arm. We move through corridors I have never navigated at the Biddeford Police Department, and finally wind up in a back room not much bigger than a closet. The lights are off, a green screen hums on a computer, and the boy who sits in front of the keyboard has acne and a fistful of Munchos. “Dude,” he says to Patrick.
I turn to Patrick, too. “You’re kidding.”
“Nina, this is Emilio. Emilio helps us with digital imaging. He’s a computer whiz.”
He leans over Emilio and hits a button on the keyboard. Ten photos appear on the screen, one of them Father Szyszynski’s.
I lean forward, look close. There is nothing in the priest’s eyes or his easy smile that would make me believe he is capable of such an abomination. Half of the people in the photos are dressed in the vestments of priests; the other half are wearing the standard issue jumpsuit of the local jail. Patrick shrugs. “The only picture I could find of Szyszynski was in his clerical collar. So I have to make the convicts look like priests, too. That way there won’t be any cause for question later on, after Nathaniel makes his ID.”
He says it like it is going to happen. For that, I adore him. As we watch, Emilio superimposes a collar over a picture of a ham-faced thug. “Got a minute?” Patrick asks me, and when I nod, he leads me out of the little makeshift office, through a side door, and into a courtyard.
There is a picnic table, a basketball hoop, and around this, a high chain link fence. “All right,” I say immediately. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong.”
“If nothing was wrong, you would have been able to talk to me in front of your teenage hacker.”
Patrick sits down on the bench of the picnic table. “It’s about the lineup.”
“I knew it.”
“Will you just stop?” Patrick waits until I sit down, then looks right into me. Those eyes, they’ve got a history with mine. They were the first things I saw when I came to, after being hit in the skull with a baseball thrown by Patrick at Little League. They were the fortification I needed at sixteen to ride the chair lift at Sugarloaf, although I am terrified of heights. For almost my whole life, they’ve told me I’m doing all right, during moments when it was not in my own power to answer. “You need to understand something, Nina,” Patrick says. “Even if Nathaniel points right to Szyszynski’s picture … it’s a weak disclosure. Surveying a lineup isn’t something a five-year-old can really understand. It could be he picks the only familiar face; it could be he points to anyone, just to get us to leave him alone.”
“Don’t you think I know that?”
“You understand what it takes to secure a conviction. We can’t lead him into making an ID just because you want this case to move faster. All I’m saying is that Nathaniel might be able to talk a week from now. Maybe even tomorrow. Eventually, he’s going to be able to say the name of the perp, and that’s going to be a much stronger accusation.”
Leaning forward, I bury my hands in my hair. “And then what am I supposed to do? Let him testify?”
“That’s the way it works.”
“Not when my child’s the victim,” I snap.
Patrick touches my arm. “Nina, without Nathaniel’s testimony against Szyszynski, you have no case.” He shakes his head, certain I haven’t really thought this through.
But I have never been more sure of anything in my life. I will do what it takes to keep my son from being a witness. “You’re right,” I tell Patrick. “And that’s why I’m counting on you to get the priest to confess.”
Before I realize it, I’ve driven to St. Anne’s. I pull into the parking lot and get out of my car, avoiding the front walk to tiptoe, instead, around to the back of the building. The rectory is here, attached to the main body of the church. My sneakers leave prints in the frost, the trail of an invisible man.
If I climb onto the ridge of a drainage well, I can see into the window. This is Father Szyszynski’s personal apartment, the living room. A cup of tea sits, the bag still draining, on a side table. A book—Tom Clancy—is cracked open on the couch. All around are gifts he’s received from parishioners: a handmade afghan, a wooden Bible stand, a framed drawing by a child. All of these people believed him, too; I have not been the only sucker.
What I am waiting for, exactly, I don’t know. But as I stand there I remember the day before Nathaniel had stopped speaking, the last time we had all gone to Mass. There had been a reception for the two clergymen who’d come to visit, a banner hung from the serving table wishing them a safe journey home. I remember that the flavored coffee that morning was hazelnut. That there were no powdered sugar doughnuts left, though Nathaniel had wanted one. I remember talking to a couple I had not seen in several months, and noticing that the other children were following Father Szyszynski downstairs for his weekly storytime. “Go, Nathaniel,” I’d said. He had been hiding behind me, clinging to my legs. I fairly pushed him into joining the others.
I pushed him into it.
I stand here on the drainage ditch for over an hour, until the priest comes into his living room. He sits down on the couch and picks up his tea and he reads. He doesn’t know I’m watching him. He doesn’t realize that I can slide into his life, just as surreptitiously as he has slid into mine.
As Patrick has promised, there are ten photos—each the size of a baseball card, each with a different “priest” portrayed on the front. Caleb examines one. “The San Diego Pedophiles,” he murmurs. “All that’s missing are the stats.”
Nathaniel and I come into the room, holding hands. “Well,” I say brightly. “Look who’s here.”
Patrick gets to his feet. “Hiya, Weed. Remember when I talked to you the other day?” Nathaniel nods. “Will you talk to me today, too?”
He is already curious about the photos; I can feel it in the way he’s tugging toward the couch. Patrick pats the cushion beside him, and Nathaniel immediately climbs up. Caleb and I sit on either side of them, in two overstuffed chairs. How formal we look, I think.
“I brought some pictures for you, just like I said I would.” Patrick takes the rest from the manila envelope and arranges them on the coffee table, as if he is going to play solitaire. He looks at me, and then at Caleb—a silent warning that now this is his show. “You remember telling me that someone hurt you, Weed?”
Yes.