Home Again

She thought of the dozens of children who’d hunched over tiny desks, cutting and pasting and coloring. Francis had been so proud to tape their creations on his bedroom window….

Grief rippled through her, one wave after another after another, leaving her shaken and cold. She couldn’t seem to make herself move. She just stood there, seeing a hundred moments pass before her eyes, a dozen times she’d loped up this path, her arms full of pizza or flowers or champagne. Like the time she’d passed her first biochemistry exam … or the day Francis had heard his first confession … Lina’s baptism… Madelaine’s last birthday …

She shuddered and forced herself to think about other things—Lina and Angel and the days that lay ahead.

Madelaine couldn’t go on as she had been. It had been a week since Francis’s death, and she’d been stumbling in a fog ever since, speaking only when spoken to, and not always even then. She knew that Lina needed her, needed her desperately, but Madelaine felt as if she had nothing inside her, just a gaping hole where Francis had once been. He’d been her rock, her lifeline, for more than half of her life. Without him, she felt lost.

She took a deep breath and tilted her chin up. She knew there was no point in putting this off, in pretending she didn’t need to walk up this path, open that door, and pack up his things. His housekeeper had taken care of the household goods, but Madelaine had asked to pack up his personal possessions. She would have put it off forever, but a new priest would be moving in soon.

She went to the door and opened it wide, letting a swath of sunlight cut through the gloom. Gripping the empty box, she moved woodenly through the common room toward his bedroom.

When she opened his door and flicked on the light switch, memories hit her so hard that she staggered backward. The cardboard box slid from her fingers and hit the floor with a thud.

Tears blinded her. With a tiny, gulping sound of grief, she moved numbly around the tiny bedroom, touching things—photographs, books, the favorite baseball cap he wore on Saturdays. The rosary wound neatly on his Bible.

She saw a picture on the dresser and picked it up, letting her fingers trace the cool surface of the glass. It was her and Francis on the day they’d brought Lina home from the hospital. They were smiling, but there was such worry in their eyes, such grown-up fears on those adolescent faces….

Heya, Maddy-girl, you’re on the wrong side of town.

“Oh, Francis …” She pulled his pillow from the bed and smoothed her hands over its rumpled cotton. The Star Wars sheets she’d given him as a joke last Christmas.

She’d told Angel that they had to learn to live without Francis—but how could she do that? How could you learn to live without the sunshine on your face?

The tears came again, stinging and hot, and she gave in to them. She sank slowly to her knees, sobbing into the pillow that smelled of her best friend in the world.

Chapter Nineteen

Lina stared out at the glassy surface of Lake Union. A huge black shadow slithered across the flat water. It reminded her of the monster that had lived behind the louvered doors of her closet when she was a little girl. Francis and her mom had told her that the monster existed in her imagination, and mostly she had believed them. But some nights when it was especially dark outside and rain fell like salt in the circle of the streetlamp outside her bedroom window, she’d known that the monster wasn’t only in her mind. She’d heard it moving, scraping, rustling her metal clothes hangers.

By the time she was twelve, she’d begun to understand that whatever lived in the closet was part of her. She felt it inside her, moving every now and then, rearing its ugly head with a sort of formless, wordless dissatisfaction that colored her perceptions, her dreams, her nightmares. It was a loneliness that no amount of family Monopoly games or Disneyland vacations could fill.

It had started as a few bad nights in her thirteenth year and graduated to bad weeks by the time she was fifteen. She remembered the beginning so well—it had coincided with her first period, and no matter how many books her mother had showed her, no matter how many photographs of uteruses and ovaries Lina had seen, she knew the truth. The goodness was bleeding

out of her, leaving its brownish stain on her underwear. After she’d started bleeding, the sleepless nights had begun. She’d found herself alternately crying over nothing and throwing temper tantrums that left her shaken by their sudden violence. In her black moods, everything upset her. Especially her mother.

But it had never been this bad before. The dissatisfaction and unhappiness had always come and gone, moments that set her on a path and then left her standing somewhere she didn’t really want to be.

Now it wouldn’t leave her. The blackness sat on her chest and filled her mouth with a bitter taste. It wrapped itself around words she’d never had a chance to say—good-bye, I love you, I’m sorry.

Without Francis, Lina felt lost and alone. So alone that sometimes she woke in the middle of the night unable to breathe, unable even to cry. She would turn her bike toward the rectory, then remember he wasn’t there.

She was falling apart. Nothing satisfied her or made her happy, and she couldn’t seem to concentrate on the simplest thing. All she felt was guilt and more guilt for how she’d treated Francis. She wanted to talk to her mother about it, but she couldn’t find the words. And what was the point, anyway? Mom was as much the walking wounded as Lina was. They drifted side by side in that big old house that didn’t feel like home, saying nothing, never smiling.

And now, into all that pain, her mother had produced the father.

Lina winced and drew her legs into her chest, staring sightlessly at the flat silver surface of Lake Union. The big, rusted pipes that gave Gasworks Park its name were a huge hulking shadow to her left.

A light rain started to fall, pattering the lake, pinging off the metal structure.

Just thinking about the day of the funeral made her blood boil. She couldn’t believe her mom had picked that moment to give her the big news about her mysterious father.

She curled into a tight little ball and rolled onto her side. Tiny shoots of dead grass poked her cheek and rain splattered the sides of her face, falling in icy streaks down her collar.

She wanted to hate her mother for bringing it up, and a part of her did, but there was so much more inside her right now. Hate and anger and, worst of all, that niggling hope that wouldn’t grow and yet couldn’t quite die.

She lay there until her clothes were soaked and her hair was plastered to her face. She needed Francis to make everything all right.

But Francis was gone and he wasn’t coming back.