Then she saw it, touched it, and her heart sped up. Excitement brought a quick, furtive smile.
A thin tube of Lash Intensifier in a clear plastic package.
Lina glanced around, saw no one. Her heart sped up even more, started thundering in her chest. A damp, itchy sweat broke out on her palms. The first, niggling sense of fear crept in, muttered that she couldn’t do it, that she wasn’t good enough.
Then came the other emotions—the cocky self-confidence she could only find in the overlit aisle of a drugstore, the pulse-pounding jolt of adrenaline.
Can you do it, can you?
She walked around for a while, just casually holding the mascara. Her fingers were so slick with sweat, she had to change hands three or four times. Once or twice she pretended to replace the mascara on the shelves—once with the deodorants, once with the aspirins.
In the toothpaste aisle she made her move.
She slipped the makeup in her pocket and yanked her hand back out.
It was done.
Breathing hard, heart pounding, she forced herself to keep moving casually down the store. She paused in front of the videos, flipped through a few horror books. The magazines captured her interest, so she stood there, leafing through the current issue of Rolling Stone.
Then, very calmly, she walked down the aisle, past the checkout counter toward the door. With a quick sideways glance, she saw that she was alone, and a grin broke across her face as the automatic doors whooshed open.
At the last second, a hand grabbed her shoulder and squeezed hard. A loud male voice said, “Just a minute, miss.”
Chapter Nine
Francis walked slowly along the cracked stone path that led to the Fiorellis’ modest white home. He couldn’t help noticing the weeds and grass that furred the walkway and crept stubbornly through the autumn flowers.
Last summer this garden had been elegant and tended; now it ran wild, the rosebushes clinging to their dead and dying blossoms, the ground stained with multicolored petals, their edges curled and brown and split.
He reached the front door and paused. A small overhang blocked the midday sun from his eyes and cast him in the welcoming cool of shadow. In a niche on the right side of the door stood an old, weathered statue of Christ, His mildew-stained palms outstretched in greeting.
For a second, Francis was reluctant to go in. He felt the statue’s painted eyes on him, silently condemning his cowardice. The Fiorellis had been friends for as long as he could remember. Back when he and Angel were kids, they had played in this yard, thrown a thousand baseballs back and forth with the Fiorellis’ grandsons.
But those days were gone, and he was back for another reason. He took a long, last breath of the rose-scented air and finally knocked.
There was a rustle of sound from within, and then the plain white door swung open, revealing a thin, stoop-shouldered old man in the entryway. His creased face split in a wide, toothy grin. “Hello, Father Francis. Come in, come in.” The old man stepped aside.
Francis plunged into the cool, dark interior. The first thing he noticed was the smell—the vague, musty scent of a house in disrepair, a house in which the roof needed tending as badly as the rose garden. The tiny entry gave way immediately to a small, oval front room, defined on three sides by once-elegant plaster arches. Dozens of family pictures hung, cockeyed and dusty, from sagging nails, school photographs of children who now had children of their own. An old RCA television was tucked in the corner, its sound a dull, muted hush in the otherwise silent room.
Just last year, a beautiful Victorian settee and table had graced this room; they were gone now. In their place a hospital bed stood stark and threatening in the tiny space. A wheelchair huddled in the corner, waiting for use.
Ah, but even the time for that had passed.
Francis felt it again, the reluctance to intrude on their grief. “Hello.” It was all he could say past the lump in his throat
The old man looked up, his face pinched and pale. For a split second Francis remembered the man who’d once lived behind those dark eyes. He used to laugh all the time, even had difficulty keeping a smile off his face when he took Communion. And he’d always had a joke for Francis in the confessional, a “sin” that could be counted on to cause a young priest to grin behind the safety of the wooden shield. Bless me, Father, for I put tuna in the chicken salad.
“Can I get you something to drink, Father?” Mr. Fiorelli asked in a respectful voice. No smile now.
Francis shook his head, pressing a comforting hand on the man’s shoulder, noticing how rail-thin he’d become. “No, thanks, Edward. How is she today?”
Edward looked up again, and in the pale light his face seemed to cave in on itself, collapse in a morass of folds. “Not good.”
Francis came up to the side of the bed and sat down on the creaky wooden stool, scooting close. His knees hit the metal frame with a dull clang.
The woman in the bed, Ilya Fiorelli, blinked slowly awake. At the sight of him, she smiled. “Father Francis.”