"Leah, please," Riley said rolling her eyes yet again. "This is not something new, and you know it. I was hoping that at this point we'd be in a post-feminist world where everyone would be equal and these petty fights would be replaced by efforts to save the planet."
"Where do you come up with this stuff?" I laughed as I marveled at her brilliant assessment of the
world around her and her desire for something better.
"Leah, I watch television," she said matter-of-factly. "It's all there, ready to be consumed. Did you know that fifty-two percent of the population on earth is female, and yet they make up more than seventy percent of those in poverty?"
"I had no idea," I said shaking my head.
"It's because over 1.3 billion women don't have access to bank accounts or credit, Leah," Riley said solemnly. "The petty acts of slut-shaming are covering up a far bigger travesty and taking attention away from what we could be doing to solve the problem."
"Where do you learn these things?" I asked with a combination of concern and awe.
"Leah, we are living in the twenty-first century, in a first world country," she said looking at me seriously. "I have access to the internet."
I burst out laughing as I realized that she was right. Riley grinned and shook her head with mock sadness as she piled more cheese and lettuce on top of the ground beef in her taco shell.
"Sometimes I worry that you know too much, kiddo," I said reaching out and ruffling her already messy hair. She ducked away with a lopsided grin and bit into her taco.
"Knowledge is power, Leah," she said with a mouth full of food. I shook my head as I bit into my own taco and chewed.
The image of Jack Yates staring at me as we toured the warehouse was on my mind as I cleaned up the dinner dishes. I'd excused Riley from dish duty so that she could finish her homework before bedtime, and she'd been grateful for the pass. I thought about Jack's broad shoulders and the brief contact I'd had with his bare skin while I'd worked to remove the blood from his shirt. It had been a very long time since I'd been that close to a man and felt that kind of animal attraction.
"Stop it, you fool," I muttered to myself as I scrubbed the frying pan. "He's the head of the company you work for, not a guy in a neighborhood bar."
I finished up the dishes and swept the kitchen before I stuck my head into Riley's room and told her I was going out for a bit.
"Oooh, hot date?" she teased as she looked up from her homework.
"Something like that," I smiled. "I'll be back in a few hours. I've got my phone if you need me. Just leave Gram alone for now, okay?"
"Gotcha," she said, pointing her finger at me and winking. I laughed and shook my head as I grabbed my purse and keys and headed out the door.
*
It wasn't a long walk to the parish where Patrick lived now that he’d returned to town, so I used it to clear my head and organize my thoughts. It had been two years since Patrick and I had been in the same room together, so this conversation felt heavy before it even began.
I stopped at the foot of the stairs leading up to the church and looked up at the building. The spire reached up into the sky as if it were stretching out to touch God, or at least that's what we'd been told since we’d started attending mass there. Every Sunday, we'd get up and get dressed in time to walk to mass with my parents, who would drop us off in Sunday school despite our protests that we'd be good, just this once.
Patrick, Molly, and I would sit together in the back row as the Sunday school teacher quizzed us on the Bible verses we were supposed to have memorized. Patrick was the only one who actually knew his verses, and he'd always be rewarded with a toy or a cookie or a piece of candy for his effort. Molly and I would often commandeer his treats before he got a chance to enjoy them, but he never really seemed to mind. For Patrick, the reward was in the knowledge.
Molly and I had teased him about being so well versed that he'd have no choice but to become a priest. I don't think it ever occurred to us that he'd actually do it. It wasn't until he graduated from high school and sat my parents down to tell them that he'd decided to join the seminary that the reality of our brother, the priest, hit us, and we'd all responded in very different ways.
My mother had spent the following week attending Mass every day so she could personally thank God for choosing her son to become his apostle. My father had cursed God and then dropped dead of a heart attack a few weeks later. My mother said it was God's vengeance for having left his family and cursed his son’s decision. None of us believed her because they’d been split up for years and my father had been sick for a long time at that point. But she insisted that it was deserved punishment, and she dealt with it by drinking more heavily.
Molly and I had spent many nights lying in twin beds in our shared room debating the reasons why Patrick had chosen to enter the seminary, but neither one of us wanted to be the one to ask him why he'd done it. We were happy for him because he'd found his calling, but we were worried about what it would mean in terms of losing our older brother.
Two years older than Molly and four older than me, Patrick was our protector. He'd watched over us and kept us out of harm’s way the best he could, which often meant taking a beating from my father rather than letting one of us girls suffer the physical consequences of our actions. As a result, Patrick had a complex relationship with my father that ended with his sudden death.
I took one last look at the church and then walked a little further down the street to the parish house that Patrick had recently returned to after having lived abroad for several years. I rang the doorbell and waited.
"Good evening. Is the Father expecting you?" the plump nun asked. She was wearing a modern habit, which only covered part of her head. She was wearing a grey dress that was more of a shift than a fitted garment, but she radiated warmth and brightness when she smiled.
"He is," I nodded. I wasn't sure how much Patrick had told her, so I didn't say anything about being his sister.
"My, you look like the spitting image of Father Patrick!" she declared as she motioned me into the parsonage. "Are you related to him, or is it just a lucky coincidence?"
"I'm his youngest sister," I said, looking down at the floor before looking back up to meet her friendly eyes. "Leah."