All These Things I've Done (Birthright #1)(14)

I sighed.

‘The offer still stands for me to be your escort on your college tour.’

‘Thanks, Mr Kipling. I’ll keep that in mind.’ If I even went on such a thing, I’d probably take Leo with me.

‘It would be my pleasure, Anya.’

I hung up the phone. Talking to Mr Kipling always managed to make me feel less lonely and more alone at the same time. I sometimes imagined that Mr Kipling was my father. I imagined what it would be like to have a father who had a respectable profession like a lawyer. I imagined what it would be like to have the kind of father who took you on college tours. The kind of father who was still alive. Even before Daddy died, I sometimes imagined asking Mr Kipling to adopt me.

But Mr Kipling already had a daughter. Her name was Grace and she was studying to be an engineer.

I had finally opened my history reading when there was a knock at the door. It was Leo. ‘Annie, I’m hungry,’ he said.

So I put away my slate and went to tend to my family’s needs.

I I I. i confess; contemplate mortality & teeth; lure a boy under false pretences; disappoint my brother

I WENT TO CONFESSION Friday morning before school.

If you were wondering, my father wasn’t Catholic. He, like everyone in the Balanchine family, had been born into the Eastern Orthodox faith. Not that Daddy was observant anyway. I never saw him in a church except for Natty’s christening, or family weddings. Of course, my mother’s funeral, too. I certainly never heard him mention God.

My mother was the Catholic, and she talked about God regularly. Actually, she said she talked to Him. She’d even wanted to be a nun when she was little but, obviously, that hadn’t worked out for her. One might even say she’d gone in the complete opposite direction, marrying the head of a notorious crime family and all. But my point is, I was a Catholic because of my mother. Sure, I wanted to believe in the possibility of an afterlife and of redemption and salvation and reunion and maybe, most important, a forgiving God. But when I chose Holy Trinity School (and yes, I had been the one to choose it for me and Natty), it was not God I was thinking of. It was my mother and what she would have wanted. And when I went to church and smelt incense burning in the priest’s vessel, I felt close to her. And when the worn velvet brushed my knees in the confessional, I knew she had felt the same thing. And when I sat in a pew and looked up at the pietà bathed in soft, coloured light, I almost saw her sometimes. And there was nowhere else in my life that this even came near to happening. For this reason, I knew I could never entirely walk away from the Catholic faith.

There were, of course, things that bothered me about my faith, but they seemed a small price to pay when you considered what it gave me in return. So what if I would be a virgin until I was married? Gable had never even had a chance.

‘How many days has it been since your last confession?’

‘Four,’ I said, and then I recited my sins, which if you’ve been paying any attention you ought to know already. Bribery, wrath, a few repeats from Monday, etc. I was assigned another minor penance, which I accomplished in time to make it to first period: Forensic Science II. This was my favourite subject, partly because I found it interesting and partly because it was the only thing I took that seemed relevant to the crime-ridden world I lived in and partly because I was better at it than anything else. I had inherited my aptitude. Some time after she’d given up on her ambition to become a nun and before she’d married the Godfather, my mother had been a crime scene investigator for the NYPD. That was how she’d met Daddy, of course.

It was my second year having Dr Lau, and she was by far the best teacher I’d ever had in school. (She’d been my mom’s first FS teacher, too, and she was old though not as old as Nana. Fifties or sixties.) I appreciated that she wouldn’t tolerate any squeamishness, no matter how disgusting what we were studying was. Even if it was a week-old chicken corpse or an ominously stained mattress or a menstrual pad. ‘Life is messy,’ Dr Lau was fond of saying. ‘Deal with it. If you’re judging it, you’re not really seeing it.’

‘Today and for the next several days, you’ll all be dentists!’ Dr Lau announced gleefully. ‘I have seven sets of teeth, and there’re thirteen of you. Who wants to be odd person out?’

I was the only one to raise my hand. It might seem weird but I actually liked working with the evidence by myself.

‘Thanks for stepping up, Annie. You’ll have a partner next time.’ She nodded towards me and then began distributing trays with teeth in them. The assignment was pretty straightforward. Using only the teeth, we were to come up with a detailed profile of the person in life (e.g. had he or she been a smoker?) and, based on this, come up with a likely narrative for cause of death.

I put on a fresh pair of rubber gloves and began to contemplate my teeth. They were small and white. No fillings. A bit of asymmetric wear on the right molar as if the person had ground his or her teeth in sleep. The teeth seemed delicate – not like a child’s but somehow feminine. I noted my findings on my slate: Wealthy. Young. Stress. Female?

Almost could have been describing myself.

Dr Lau put a hand on my shoulder. ‘Good news. We found a partner for you, Annie.’

It was Win. Mr Too Smart for His Classes had transferred out of Forensic Science I into FS II.

‘Can’t seem to stop running into you,’ he said.