Help for the Haunted(58)

“Not in a long while. I’m the only one who can open this place now.”

I saw a quick flash of silver as he slipped his keys into the pocket of his jeans and headed for the Buick. I knew he didn’t want me to follow, but I did anyway. On the backseat of his car, I could see stacks of boxes. Whatever was inside must have been heavy, since the car looked sunken in the rear.

“Just getting rid of some things from the rectory,” he said when he saw me looking. He opened the door, got inside. I worried he’d drive off without answering my earlier question. But then he said, “The reason your father never went to the bishop had to do with that girl.”

“Abigail?”

“Yes. She came to the rectory one night.”

“When?”

“At the end of her time with your family. I opened the door and there she was, looking bedraggled and troubled. In some ways, she appeared just as she had when you first brought her to church. Only now there were two wounds on her palms, like stigmata.”

I knew about those wounds. I remembered the shock and confusion I’d felt seeing blood pool on her skin without warning. “What did she want?”

“A place to spend the night. I welcomed her inside. Isn’t that a priest’s job, after all, to take in the needy? The girl spent much of the time begging me not to contact your parents or her father. Maura made her something to eat then made up the old couch in the basement. After we attended to her wounds, she went down to bed. While she slept, I lay awake, praying about the best thing to do. Times like that I missed Father Vitale. He always seemed to hear God’s voice when I didn’t, which is more often than I care to admit.”

“What did you decide to do?”

“I made up my mind to track down her father. It only seemed right.”

“And so Albert Lynch came and got her?”

“No. I never had the chance to contact him. In the morning, Maura took tea downstairs and found the couch empty. The girl had slipped out during the night.”

“I don’t understand. What does that have to do with my parents not coming to church anymore?”

“Abigail told me things, Sylvie.”

“What things?”

“Things about what went on that summer she lived with you. Things I don’t think your father wanted getting out. That’s why he went quiet. That’s why he walked away.”

“Because you threatened him?”

“He was the one who threatened me, remember? I simply let him know what I’d been told.”

“And what did Abigail tell you?”

Again, he ran his fingers back and forth beneath the rim of his turtleneck. This time, I noticed his nails were chewed, his cuticles raw. “We really do need to stop here. I’ve taken this conversation too far. You should get your answers from someone else. Now good-bye, Sylvie. Please come see me again, though not about this. I think it’s better to let the past stay where it is.”

“Who?” I asked as he pulled the door shut and started the engine. “Who should I get answers from?”

He rolled down his window. “I meant what I said before. You have a great deal of your mother in you. I can sense it. That’s probably what got me talking so much.”

“Who should I go to for answers?” I asked again, ignoring the comment.

“Your sister, of course. Rosie. I’m certain she can tell you things that I cannot. It’s not my place. I’m sorry.”

With that, he said good-bye one last time. I stepped back from the car, watched him drive out of the lot and away down the road, his trunk drooping with the weight of those boxes. When he was gone, I walked to the Jeep. The moment I opened the door, Dereck started talking, “I got here just as that guy was walking into the church.”

“That guy,” I told him, “is the parish priest.”

“Oh. Well, I saw him head inside, then I started in too. But it sounded like you were having a pretty heavy conversation, so I waited out here until you were done.”

So my ear wasn’t playing tricks after all, I thought. I had heard the church door open and close. “But how did you know I was here?”

“I didn’t. After I left your sister, I stopped at the farm to grab another pair of boots. I kept thinking about you, Sylvie, wondering what you’d done after we drove off. So I went to that field, only you were gone. When I was driving back and passed the church, I remembered asking if you’d been back here so I wondered if this is where you might have gone.”

By then, it was completely dark. The air carried a chill. I glanced at the clock on Dereck’s dashboard. Sixty-one hours and forty minutes remaining. Walking home would be a waste of time, and if the conversation with Coffey had done anything, it heightened my sense that I needed to stop wasting it. I climbed up onto the passenger seat and was about to buckle my seat belt when I felt something beneath me. A pair of gloves, I saw when I pulled them out. The interior lights glowed enough for me to make out flecks of something on the material. Before I could look closer, Dereck reached out his hand with the missing fingers and snatched those gloves from me, shoving them under his seat. I said nothing, leaving my seat belt unbuckled instead. As we pulled out of the lot, streetlamps cast shifting shadows over our faces. For some time, that Jeep rolled along, neither of us speaking. Finally, Dereck said, “It’s turkey blood. I left my regular gloves in the pockets of the coat I gave you. So I grabbed a spare pair at the farm.”