“Constance?” Father Rattigan sank back. “Hell burned twice, that perfume.”
Last night, I thought. So close. If Crumley and I had only come then.
“You’d better go, Father,” I said.
“The cardinal will wait.”
“Well,” I said, “if she returns, would you call me?”
“No,” said the priest. “The confessional’s as private as a lawyer’s office. Are you that upset?”
“Yes.” I twisted the wedding ring on my finger, absently.
Father Rattigan noticed.
“Does your wife know all this?”
“Approximately.”
“That sounds like delicatessen morality.”
“My wife trusts me.”
“Wives do that, God bless them. Does my sister seem worth saving?”
“Doesn’t she to you?”
“Dear God, I gave up when she claimed mouth-to-mouth resuscitation was a Kama Sutra pose.”
“Constance! Still, Father, if she shows up again, could you call my number and hang up? I’d know you were signaling her arrival.”
“You do know how to split hairs. Give me your number. I see in you not so much a Baptist but a fair Christian.”
I gave him my number as well as Crumley’s.
“Just one ring, Father.”
The priest studied the numbers. “We all live on the slope. But some, by a miracle, grow roots. Don’t wait. Your phone may never
ring. But I’ll give your number to my assistant, Betty Kelly, too, just in case. Why are you doing this?”
“She was heading fast off a cliff.”
“Watch out she doesn’t take you with. I’m ashamed I said that. But as a child she skated out and stopped in mid-traffic to laugh.”
He fixed me with a bright needle eye. “But why do I tell you this?”
“It’s my face.”
“Your what?”
“My face. I look in mirrors but never catch myself. The expression always changes before I can trap it. It’s got to be a blend of the Boy Jesus and Genghis Khan. It drives my friends crazy.”
This relaxed some of the priest’s bones. “Does idiot savant sound right?”
“Almost. The school bullies took one look and beat the hell out of me. You were saying?”
“Was I? Yes, well, if that screaming woman was Constance, and her voice seemed different, she gave me orders. Imagine, orders to a priest! Gave me a deadline. Said she’d be back in twenty-four hours. I must give complete forgiveness for all her sins, twenty thousand strong. As if I could assign such mass-market absolution. I told her she must forgive herself, and ask others for forgiveness. God loves you. ‘But He doesn’t,’ she said. And then she was gone.”