The Paris Mysteries (Confessions #3)(12)

I took a breath and croaked out, “If there’s a God, he knows I’m doing the best I can.”

I was winded and a little bit weepy because I’d never told this story in this way to anyone before. It was plenty of stuff, maybe enough to give Father Jean-Jacques a heart attack.

But I didn’t hear a heavy thunk on the stone floor.

The man behind the screen said, “Is that all, child? Is that supposed to be—a dare? Are you daring God to love you?”

I pondered that for a long time. “Yes, I suppose so, Father.” My voice was so small.

The priest said, “He loves you. Don’t worry about that.”

I told the priest I had nothing to be contrite about and added, “I don’t do penance and I never will.”

I could almost hear the priest thinking what to do with me, maybe throw me out and kick my butt for good measure.

After a long pause, Father Jean-Jacques said, “While God loves you and forgives you, you must still acknowledge the sin in your heart, and I believe you are doing this, child. I heard how you listed those sins. So I have an idea.

“For now, rather than penance, please meditate for fifteen minutes a day on things you have done to hurt other people, and I think this may help you heal from your parents’ betrayal against nature. And against you.”

I was quiet. Choked up, actually, but I didn’t want Father to know.

“Everyone at the Sisters of Charity is praying for you. God bless you,” he said.

About five minutes later, I got into our hired car, and my brothers followed at fifteen-minute intervals, each of them looking quite sober. As if we’d been thrown into cold showers and then rubbed down hard from head to toe with warm towels.

I don’t know what that looks like, actually.

But call me surprised. I felt pretty okay.





After blowing up our enrollment at the International Academy, we knew enough to follow the overly strict and somewhat arbitrary rules at the convent school.

Our first school week was short, but sooooo boring, it seemed like it went on forever. We knew the course work, yeah, even Hugo knew his. Our parents, with all their faults, hadn’t raised stupid children.

One good thing is that I’ve been following the priest’s orders to meditate on how I’ve hurt people. It’s helped me recognize that we can’t help but make mistakes, even when our intentions are good. Of course, my parents took that way too far, but maybe I’ll be able to completely forgive them one day. I never thought I’d say that, so that’s progress.

And that is absolutely all I can say for the start of my junior year under the heavy thumbs of the Sisters of Charity.

That Friday afternoon, after making sure Jacob wasn’t home, I took Harry down to the basement. I jerked the chain on the light fixture that lit up the empty cellar, and Harry pulled out a joint from his back pocket. Before I could stop him, he lit up.

“Are you crazy?” I shrieked at him.

“Well, yeahhhhhh. It runs in the family,” he said mildly. “I thought you knew that.”

“Put it out. It’s going to stink down here. Jacob is going to know, and he’s going to make us very sorry.”

Harry inhaled deeply, then pinched out the end of the joint and put it back in his pocket. I glared at him as he finally exhaled, but he wasn’t contrite.

Recently, I’d sensed that Harry was becoming bolder, more sure of himself. He was writing a lot, definitely composing music, and given his extraordinary talent, he was probably creating something quite special. When I asked him what he was working on, all he said was “Stuff is cooking, sis. But it’s not done yet.”

“Weed is bad for you,” I went on, stating what I was pretty sure was obvious. “I can cite you a hundred articles on the deleterious effects of marijuana on the adolescent brain.”

He looked at me and then cracked up.

That idiot said, “I think the damage was done before I smoked this.”

He checked out the room. Then he walked up to the closed door on the left, the one with the old strap hinges. And as I had done earlier, he pried open the latch.

“Whatever you want me to see is in here, right?” he said.

I pushed him aside, pulled open the door, and grabbed the lightbulb chain.

Harry went directly to the hand-hewn table and the three cartons with Katherine’s name written in bold black marking pen. He sucked in air and said, “Whoa, Tandy. Katherine? Not our Katherine? I’m not sure about this.”

With my twin right beside me, I opened the first box and pulled out our sister’s chart.

“Take a look,” I said.

His eyes got huge and focused. I could see that his dope high was largely gone. He stared at the chart, took it out of my hands, and read the symbols and dates on both the X and the Y axis of the graph. Then he looked at me, completely sobered—and there was no question about what we both knew.

Katherine had been on the pills, some of the same ones I had been on, some of the same ones that had been fed to Harry and to Hugo. And she’d been dosed with the pills for speed and agility that Matthew had gobbled down all his life.

Harry’s voice cracked right down the middle when he said to me, “We should have guessed. They did it to her, too.”

I put my finger on the trend lines and traced their jagged upward climb. “Look at this, Harry. She was smarter than Stephen freaking Hawking. She was stronger than Matty and Hugo.”