“Good,” the priest said, as if the officer would show up, playing out the pretense his own mother maintained back in Milwaukee when she waited until after eleven on the Sabbath to phone his brother, as if Joe had actually gone to a ten o’clock Mass. Father Gervase waited until he had gone, then shifted the car into gear, pulled back onto the street, and headed, as was inevitable, to Holy Apostles.
The church rose on the hill, visible even from the harbor, and the priest was pleased by the sight of it. It had been built by Italian stonemasons at the turn of the century and seemed to him to be what a church should be—solid and traditional with the patina of age and prayer. There was nothing modern or stark about it, unlike the new cathedral in the city, whose interior was all steel arches and ribs and seemed to the priest like the innards of a ship before the deck was in place. It was this exact echoing starkness that concerned the archbishop, whose solution was to fill the walls with canvases of the saints. “Paintings of saints,” he’d told the Arts and Furnishings Committee. “In the tradition of Catholic wall art. And aren’t we fortunate to have one of the most noted portrait artists in the country living not a half hour away, a man whose work has been compared to the Flemish masters.”
The committee’s vote had been unanimous.
Now the only one who wouldn’t cooperate was Will Light.
Father Gervase realized his approach to Will had been ineffective, weak, lacking the details that might have made the artist accept. He should have explained why Will had specifically been chosen by the archbishop and the head of the committee. And although matters of finance would naturally be the purview of Cardinal Kneeland, he could have hinted at the size of the commission.
Father Gervase sat for a moment outside the rectory. The next time they must select someone else to approach Will Light, for without a doubt there would be another attempt. The archbishop was a man accustomed to getting his way, and he was determined to have his way on this business. But with a sinking heart, the priest suspected he would be directed to return. The heft of his own failures and weaknesses weighed heavily.
At last, he got out of the sedan, uncharacteristically slamming the door behind him, a sound that echoed on and on.
CHAPTER FOUR
Again, the slamming of a car door broke into my focus, reminding me why I usually kept the window shut, the outer world completely muted.
I assumed it was Father Gervase returning on the transparent pretext of picking up the book he had so conveniently left behind. Well, I thought, I’ll be damned if I’ll answer the door. I waited for the chime, wondering how persistent the priest would prove to be. Minutes passed, and when the bell did not sound a trace of concern shadowed my irritation. Had he fallen? Had a heart attack? Stroke? I hoped the hell not, but I remembered the priest’s ashy complexion and pictured him slumped on the steps. I set down my brush and crossed to the window, but when I looked down on the drive I saw not Father Gervase’s car but Sophie’s green VW Bug and again was taken by a clutch of emotions too complicated to separate.
Sophie was nowhere in sight. But she was home, and the tight fist beneath my ribs released. And why shouldn’t she be here? This was still her home too. So far we had avoided speaking about what the future held. At least she hadn’t spoken to me of it. I had no idea what she told others, what she confided to her friends and her therapist any more than I had a clue of what our future held, but it was clear that our marriage was undergoing a slow and sad erosion, and I felt unequal to the chore of shoring up the ground, making it solid again. Although I knew better than to hope we could return to how we had once been—hope, that sucker’s emotion, the resort of fools that led only to more heartbreak and in the end proved as useless as saints—I couldn’t still the flicker of possibility at the sight of her car in the drive. For the second time that day, I wrapped my brush and descended, remembering to switch off the fan and close the window before I left. The stair runner muffled my steps, and when I reached the first-floor landing I saw that Sophie had not heard me. She stood in the foyer holding The Illustrated Book of the Saints. I watched her, attentive as a spy, as she leafed through several pages. She wore faded gray tights and a matching T-shirt with a purple logo across the chest that I didn’t recognize. Some abstract design, as I remember. In the past week she’d had her hair cut, and the style struck me as too severe. Still, in spite of the hair and our rift, heat tightened my belly. I couldn’t remember the last time we’d had sex. What I remembered was how in the first days following Lucy’s murder when I sought, needed the connection and comfort of sex, I had reached for her and her shocked rejection in response. Was that the beginning, the first crack in the mortar that had connected us, too swift and silent to be noted for what it was?
Finally she sensed me and looked up. “Hi.”
“Hi.” My awkwardness was a third presence in the hall. I didn’t know how I was supposed to be, how to be natural with her. Should I have hugged her? Kissed her? The moment passed.
“I rang, but you didn’t answer,” she said. “I didn’t want to surprise you, but I won’t take long. I just stopped by to pick up a couple of things.”
“No problem.” I was irritated by my uncertainty, by my complicated emotions, and by her composure, the way the ball now always seemed to be in her court.
“I won’t be long.”
So. Not coming home. “I was finishing up anyway,” I said. Christ, we were so goddamn formal, it absolutely killed me, but I was determined to stay calm and to be civil. To prove to her that I was changing, that I could be what she needed. If she needed her space for a while—her space, we used to joke about couples who talked like that—well, then I would go along with it. Whatever it took so that space wouldn’t turn into an unbreachable rift. Mortar not just cracked but crumbled. In spite of everything, what it came down to was I couldn’t stand to lose her too.
“How’s it going? The work?”
“Okay,” I said. “It’s going.”
“Good. That’s good. I’m glad for you.”
What’s happening here? What’s happened to us? “Look, I really was about ready to knock off for the day. Why don’t we have a glass of wine?”
She lifted an eyebrow. For Christ’s sake, it’s just wine, I wanted to say. But I’d be damned if I’d start justifying. “Or tea if you prefer.”