The Wonder(83)

Byrne didn’t say, Such things happen. He didn’t point out that Lib’s loss was only a drop in the ocean of human pain. “Was that when Wright left?”

Lib nodded. “Nothing to stay for, was how he put it.” Then she added, “Not that I much cared, at that point.”

A growl: “He didn’t deserve you.”

Oh, but none of it was a matter of deserving. She hadn’t deserved to lose her daughter; Lib knew that even on her bleakest days. She’d done nothing that she shouldn’t have, for all Wright’s dark hints; had left nothing undone that she should have done. Fate was faceless, life arbitrary, a tale told by an idiot.

Except at rare moments such as this one, when one glimpsed a way of wrestling it into a better shape.

In her head, Miss N. asked: Can you throw your whole self into the breach?

Lib held on to Byrne’s arm like a rope. She found her mind hadn’t been quite made up till this minute. She told him, “I’m going to take Anna away.”

“Away where?”

“Anywhere but here.” Her eyes scoured the flat horizon. “The farther the better.”

Byrne turned to face her. “How would that persuade the child to eat?”

“I can’t be sure, and I can’t explain it, but I know she must leave this place and these people.”

His tone was wry. “You’re buying the damn spoons.”

For a moment Lib was confused, then she remembered the hundred spoons at Scutari and almost smiled.

“Let’s be clear,” he said, urbane again. “You mean to kidnap the girl.”

“I suppose they’d call it that,” said Lib, her voice rough with fright. “But I’d never compel her.”

“Would Anna go with you willingly, then?”

“I believe she just might, if I can put it to her the right way.”

Byrne was tactful enough not to point out the unlikelihood of this. “How do you propose to travel? Hire a driver? You’ll be caught before you get to the next county.”

All at once, Lib felt her tiredness catching up with her. “Odds are I’ll end up in prison, Anna will die, and none of it will have made any difference.”

“Yet you mean to try.”

She struggled to answer. “Better to drown in the surf than stand idly on the shore.” Absurd to quote Miss N., who’d be appalled to hear that one of her nurses had been arrested for child abduction. But sometimes the teaching held more than the teacher knew.

What Byrne said next astonished her. “Then it must be tonight.”

When Lib arrived for her shift, at one o’clock on Saturday, the bedroom door was closed. Sister Michael, Kitty, and the O’Donnells were all on their knees in the kitchen; Malachy held his cap in one hand.

Lib went to turn the door handle.

“Don’t,” snapped Rosaleen. “Mr. Thaddeus is in the middle of giving Anna the sacrament of penance.”

Penance; that was another word for confession, wasn’t it?

“Part of the last rites,” murmured Sister Michael to Lib.

Was Anna dying? She swayed on her feet, and thought she might fall.

“It’s not only to help a patient make a bona mors,” the nun assured her.

“A what?”

“A good death, that is. It’s also for anyone in danger. It’s even been known to restore health, if God wills it.”

More fairy tales.

A high bell rang in the bedroom and Mr. Thaddeus opened the door. “You may all come in for the anointing.”

The group got off their knees and shuffled in after Lib.

Anna was lying with her blankets off. The dresser was spread with a white cloth on which was a thick white candle, a crucifix, golden dishes, a dried leaf of some kind, little white balls, a piece of bread, dishes of water and oil, and a white powder.

Mr. Thaddeus dipped his right thumb in the oil. “Per istam sanctam unctionem et suam piissima misericordiam,” he intoned. “Indulgeat tibi Dominus quidquid per visum, auditum, gustum, odoratum, tactum et locutionem, gressum deliquisti.” He touched Anna’s eyelids, ears, lips, nose, hands, and, finally, the soles of her misshapen feet.

“Whatever’s he doing?” Lib whispered to Sister Michael.

“Wiping away the stains. The sins she’s committed with each part of her body,” the nun said in her ear, eyes still faithfully on the priest.

Anger surged in Lib. What about sins committed against Anna?

Then the priest took the dish of white pellets and dabbed each spot of oil with one of them; cotton? He set down the dish, rubbed his thumb on the bread. “May this holy anointing bring consolation and ease,” he said to the family. “Remember, God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes.”

“Bless you, Mr. Thaddeus,” cried Rosaleen O’Donnell.

“Whether it be in a little time, or not for many years to come”—his voice was lullingly musical—“we will all meet again to part no more forever, in a world where sorrow and separation are at an end.”

“Amen.”

He washed his hands in the dish of water and dried them on the cloth.

Malachy O’Donnell went over to his daughter and bent as if to kiss her forehead. But then he stopped himself, as if Anna were too holy to touch now. “Anything you need, pet?”