Woman of God

Chapter 64

I WAS sweating hard under my coat and so anxious that my stomach hurt.

When I got to the customs inspector’s window, he asked me to lower my hood. Then he compared my passport photo to the actual me, standing in front of him.

The pictures didn’t match.

My face was gaunt, and my head was shorn. I had deep circles under my eyes, and my hooded coat had only added to my appearance as a suspicious person planning to blow up a plane.

I was taken out of the line by two armed guards, brought to a small, windowless room where my bags were unpacked again, the linings pulled apart, my electronic devices turned on. I was shunted into a second room, and this time, I was strip searched. I was struck by the wretched memories of the last time I’d been publicly stripped, but I complied.

When the female guard told me I could put my clothes back on, I said, “My husband and baby died suddenly. I went to Jerusalem to pray. I was on Yafo Street yesterday when the bomb blew up.”

She scrutinized my expression, looking to see if I was telling her the truth. She nodded. I was cleared for flight.

The only remaining empty seat was in the middle of a three-person row in the midsection of the plane. The overhead rack was full, so I balled up my coat, and when the man on the aisle stood up, I did my best to pack myself and my belongings into and under the narrow seat.

While we waited for takeoff, the news came over the individual media players in the seat backs. I don’t speak Hebrew, but I understood enough. Hamas was taking credit for the bomb. The death toll had risen to forty-five. Pictures of the dead flashed onto the screen. One of them was of the woman I had tried to save with a strip of tire. One was of the precious five-year-old boy who’d had his legs blown off. And then there was Nissim.

I sucked in my breath, put my hands over my face, and shook as I tried to suppress my sobs. The woman in the window seat to my left asked me, “Dear, dear. Can I help you?”

I shook my head, and the tears came. I dug under the seat, went through my coat pockets, and found tissues. I clapped a wad of them to my face, but I couldn’t stem the flow. I tried to stand so that I could get to the bathroom, but the seat-belt sign was on. The man in the aisle seat gave me an angry look, so I collapsed back into my middle seat, bent over, and just cried into my hands.

I’d gotten a brief glimpse of the woman beside me. She looked to be in her fifties, had silver-streaked blond hair, and wore a muted flower-print top over beige pants, and she smelled nice. She put her arm around my shoulder in the most welcome of awkward hugs and kept it there as the plane sped up the runway. When we were airborne, I mopped my face some more, then said, “Thank you. You are very kind.”

“I’m Katharine Dunlop,” she said.

“Brigid Fitzgerald.”

“Are you American?” she asked.

“Yes. And you?”

“Yep. I’m going home to Boston.”

“Me too.”

“It’s a long flight,” said Dunlop. “I’m a good listener.”

I didn’t have to be asked again. I blurted, “My husband and baby died just last week.”

She said, “Oh, my God, Brigid. I’m so sorry.” She asked me what had happened, and I was ready, more than ready, to talk. I took Tre’s rattle from my handbag and held on to it with both hands. We hadn’t yet reached cruising altitude, and I was telling Katharine about my sublime marriage to Karl and about his and Tre’s sudden deaths.

This woman didn’t stop me. She didn’t pull back or look at me as if I were insane. I kept talking.

I skipped back in time to Kind Hands, and when she asked, “What made you go to South Sudan?” I told her that I’d always wanted to be a doctor.

I explained that I had been only nineteen when I had graduated from Harvard. I had planned to go to med school there, but when my mother died, I couldn’t stay in Cambridge any longer, and I got my MD at Johns Hopkins. I checked her expression to see if she was still with me.

True to her word, she was a good listener.

As we flew above the clouds, I told this stranger in the window seat about the bomb that had gone off in Jerusalem yesterday. That I had been right there.

“I’m lucky to be here, I know that. But I’m very depressed.”

She said, “Of course. One tragedy compounding another and another. For this to happen while you’re grieving-who has more right to depression than you?”

When the cart came up the aisle, I bought Katharine a drink. We talked about baseball over dinner, and we both slept for a full eight hours as the jet crossed a continent and an ocean.

When the plane was descending into Boston’s Logan Airport, Katharine gave me her card.

I put it in my baggy coat pocket without looking at it.

She smiled. “Call me anytime.”

I thanked her and hugged her good-bye, and after collecting my bags, I caught a cab and set out to see my father. I leaned back and took Katharine’s card from my pocket.

Katharine Dunlop, Psychiatrist, MD.

My new friend was a professional good listener. She was a shrink. Call me anytime, she had said.

I held the card in my hand throughout the drive home.

Chapter 65

I DIDN’T want to see my father, but I couldn’t move forward without going back.

I directed my cabbie to Harvard, where I had gone to college and my father had tortured his American-literature students from noon to two o’clock for the past thirty years.

I was glad for the long drive from the airport. I mentally rehearsed various approaches to speaking truth to my father and hadn’t yet hit on the one that might open a fruitful conversation.

We took the Mass Turnpike and the Ted Williams Tunnel, which dove under Boston Harbor and the Boston Main Channel, and made our way toward Cambridge Street in Allston. The whole route was deeply ingrained in my memory of growing up in this city, driving on this road at night, wondering how much longer before I could move out of Cambridge and how far I could go.

We entered Cambridge, and as we wound through the Harvard campus, we turned onto Quincy. There was Emerson Hall, on my right. I gathered my travel-worn bags, paid the driver, and entered the three-story redbrick building through the main entrance that had a biblical quote carved in marble overhead: WHAT IS MAN THAT THOU ART MINDFUL OF HIM?

I was mindful of this one particular man, anyway. I continued down the faintly echoing corridor to the end. The door to my father’s classroom was closed, of course, but I peeked through the window and saw that class was in session. The theater-style rows of blue seats were half-full and facing my formidable father, standing at the podium at the head of the room with a whiteboard behind him.

I couldn’t read the board from where I stood, but I knew that it was a list of the chapters in Harold Bloom’s Western Canon, the course outline for the first semester of my father’s freshman class. I’d seen it before.

I opened the door and stepped into the room with my old carpetbag in my left hand, my leather hobo bag over my right shoulder. My father, George Santayana Fitzgerald, aka G.S.F., turned his head a few degrees and wrinkled his brow.

The hood of my coat was down around my shoulders, and he still didn’t recognize me. And then suddenly he did.

I dipped my head in greeting and slipped into the back row and took a seat.

Too soon, Dr. Fitzgerald snapped out the assignment for the next day and reminded the students of an upcoming test.

“Every test is an opportunity to fail,” he said. When there were no questions, he said, “Get out.”

The room emptied quickly, the students grabbing a look at the bald woman in the back row as they streamed past.

My father stood across from and below me with a pointer in his hand. The look on his face was as cold as a blizzard in January. As if I had come here so that I could do him harm.

He spoke to me across the eighteen rows of seats.

“Well. You look bad, Brigid. Why did you shave your head and dress like a monk? What have you done now?”

“I want to stay with you for a week or so. We have a lot of catching up to do.”

“The hot water is out. Your room is all file storage now.”

“I’ll sleep on the couch,” I said. “I’ll call a plumber.”

“If you must,” said my father.

He left the classroom, and I followed him. He didn’t look behind him once as he walked through the parking lot, located the very old, baby-blue BMW that had belonged to my mother. Without being invited, I got into the front seat and sat with my hands in my lap as my father maneuvered the car out to Quincy.

“Have you been well?” I asked him.

“I had my gallbladder removed. I have arthritis. And my arteries are clogged. All that keeps me alive is pure meanness,” he said.

“Whatever works,” I said.

I knew that what worked for him was going to kill him, and that was a good reason to spend time with him while it was possible. I asked him about his medications, his exercise program, if he was writing his memoirs, as he had sworn he would do.

“Who are you? Barbara Walters?” he growled.

We were in our old neighborhood. The asphalt was still potholed. The shabby houses still needed paint, and the overhead lines sagged over the last nongentrified neighborhood in Cambridge. I remembered whipping around the potholes on my bike, staying out as long and as late as I could before going home to the angry house where I lived.

My father jerked the wheel into the driveway and drove the car up to the garage door and braked it a few inches before the hood went through the rotten wood.

I knew the signs.

My father needed his fix. And, as usual, I was getting in the way.

Chapter 66

ON THE inside, the old house where I had lived with my parents now looked a lot like the stacks in a college library or maybe a secondhand bookstore.

My father hadn’t been lying about my room. Books were piled on the single bed, and the walls were lined with banker’s boxes filled with papers. He was famous for flunking up to a third of his students, and it looked as though he had saved their records, possibly to amuse himself.

I found a pillow and a blanket in the hall closet and tossed them onto the sofa. My father was in the filthy kitchen making tea. For himself.

“Yes, I would like some tea,” I said. “I just flew in from Jerusalem. Eleven hours direct flight.”

He got a cup and saucer out of the cupboard and poured tea for me. “Anything else?” he said. He pulled out a chair, sat down at the table, and stared at me.

“My husband died. My baby, too. Your granddaughter.”

He reared back a little in his chair, then settled back down.

“I never had a granddaughter,” he said.

“I sent you a card.”

“Goody. But she wasn’t my granddaughter.”

“I should know,” I said. “I remember quite well that I gave birth to her.”

“How about the DNA test? Did you get that?”

“How’s your mind, Dad?”

“Still as sharp as ever. Want to test me?”

He grabbed a book off the toaster oven and dropped it on the table in front of me. Dante’s Inferno. He said, “Open it to any page. I’ll quote from it.”

“I trust you,” I said. That was a lie.

“You don’t,” he said. “You’ve hated me for most of your life, and I have no love for you, either. You can blame that on Dorothy.”

“My mother, your wife, was a decent and loving person. I don’t have to defend her. But isn’t it bad enough that you killed her? You have to insult her memory, too?”

“I didn’t kill her, Brigid. She killed herself.”

“You were there when she OD’d. Why didn’t you get her to the hospital? Were you so stoned yourself that you couldn’t use a phone?”

He was drumming his fingers, looking past me. He got up from the table and went into the next room, returning a minute later with a framed family photo of the three of us with my paternal grandparents, taken when I was ten. George and Dorothy looked pretty good. Maybe they hadn’t been using then.

My father cleared the table with his forearm, knocking tea out of cups and the book to the floor.

“Look at this picture.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I see it.”

“Look at you. Do you see any resemblance to the Fitzgeralds in your face or your ears or anything else?”

Silence crackled around me, and it went on for a long time.

“What are you saying?” I finally asked him.

“This should please you, Brigid. You’re not my flesh and blood. You’re not my daughter. I wrung the confession out of your mother when you were only six weeks old. But she told me.

“Still, I gave you my name. I put a roof over your head. I put food on your plate. I put up with your shitty attitude. I made sure you got into Harvard. And I kept this to myself all these years because I loved your slut of a mother.

“As for me killing her? She was the first junkie. She got me hooked, not the other way around.”

I wanted to say I don’t believe you, but I did believe him. Maybe it wasn’t entirely true, but it was true enough. My father picked Dante up off the floor. He rinsed out the teapot. There was a Red Sox pennant over the sink. My mother and I both loved our team.

I shouted over the sound of running water, “Who was my father?”

“No idea,” he said, closing the faucet. “That’s between your dead mother and her dead priest.”

I got up from the table and gathered my belongings. As I walked through the kitchen, my father had his works on the table and was tying tubing around his arm, pumping his fist.

He looked up with his first smile since I’d arrived and said, “Let this be a lesson to you. ‘You can’t go home again.’ Thomas Wolfe wrote that.”

I walked through the doorway to the side yard, and the door slammed behind me.

I just kept walking.

Chapter 67

I STUMBLED out onto Jackson Street in shock. It was as if I’d taken a gut shot and my body didn’t yet know that I was dead.

I passed the signs and touchstones of my childhood: the warnings about bad dogs, the rusted mailboxes, and a break in the sidewalk where my roller skates had caught, pitching me forward and skinning my knee to the bone.

In the black light of my titular father’s vicious revelation, I was skating on broken sidewalks up and down the length of my life.

Who was I now?

The bitterness of my “father” had been explained, but it was still inexcusable. I had been a little girl. I had looked up to him. He had pretended to be my father, but he had never loved me. My pathetic girlish attempts to win his approval were appalling to me now. He was worse than I had imagined.

But I truly didn’t understand my mother. She had praised me and loved me-but how could she let me grow up in the house of a man who hated me?

Was it because he had supplied her with the drugs that she needed? Was her husband her ultimate and fatal drug?

I’d been furious with him because I believed that he had first ruined her and then let her die. Now, I thought she was responsible for her addiction. And she hadn’t done her best for me.

I knew that the Christian response was to forgive them for their deceit, but I was too raw and, at the same time, too numb to simply let this betrayal go. Everything I thought I knew about myself had changed into a stream of questions. Who was I? Who was my father? What traits of his did I carry? Had my mother loved him? Had he even known I existed?

Did any of this even matter at this stage of my life?

I walked the streets of Cambridge like a zombie and without a plan in the world.

And yet, my feet knew some of the way.

When I looked around to get my bearings, I was standing across the street from St. Paul’s, the church where I used to go with my mother every Sunday.

I had loved everything about the redbrick church, with its rows of matching columns and the figure of St. Paul in the frieze above the central door. I teared up thinking of Father Callahan, the priest I had loved as young girl. He had kept my mother’s secret. Maybe that was why he had been so kind to the funny-looking redheaded girl sitting with her mother in the front pew.

I went inside the empty church, walked down the aisle and under the barrel-vaulted ceiling with the rounded arches, and took my old place at the end of a front pew. I felt uplifted and expanded when I was in this hallowed place, knowing that God knew and loved me. Coming here with my mother, sitting close to her while we sang and prayed on Sunday, had been the highlight of my week, every week.

I clasped my hands in prayer and let my thoughts go out to God. I had a new understanding of Him. Whether my visions were God-sent or everyone had the ability to communicate with God if they were open to Him, I couldn’t know.

But I had felt His presence here. And today I had brought my faith with me to St. Paul’s, where I had always felt love and safety.

My bad father was wrong.

I had come home again.

Chapter 68

I WAS sitting in the front pew and was deep in prayer when a door slammed behind me. A priest came into the nave wearing jeans and a black shirt with a priest’s collar. He was saying into his phone, “Let him know James Aubrey called. Thanks.”

Then he saw me and said, “Oh. Sorry about that. I didn’t mean to interrupt your prayers.”

“Not a problem,” I said. “I was nattering. God has heard it all before.”

He gave me a big smile and said, “That’s funny.”

The priest was probably in his early thirties. He had a round face, sandy hair, and beautiful blue eyes. Despite the smile, his eyes were sad.

“I’m Father Aubrey,” he said. “James.”

He reached out his hand and I did the same, and we shook.

“Brigid Fitzgerald.”

“Nice to meet you, Brigid. You’re new to the neighborhood?”

“Not exactly. When I was a kid, my mom and I used to sit right here every Sunday.”

He looked at me for a long moment, then said, “Forgive me for noticing, but you look a little lost, Brigid. No judgment. Just, do you want to talk?”

He was a pretty good read. I’d lost my loved ones as well as my father, my father’s entire family, my trust in my mother, and pretty much my identity from the time I was able to say “da-da.” Did I want to talk?

Apparently I did.

“I’m, uh, in mourning. I just lost my husband and baby girl in a terrible accident. I feel kind of dead myself.”

James Aubrey told me that he was very sorry, then sat in the pew across from me and asked questions. I told him a little of the story, but it was hard to talk about Karl’s and Tre’s deaths without melting right down.

I switched the subject, telling him that I’d just come back from Jerusalem and had been yards away when the bomb went off.

“I’m a doctor,” I said. “I tried to help. I couldn’t do anything. It was just a bloody nightmare of a disaster, and after that, I came here. I’m kind of a homing pigeon, I guess.”

“I’m sorry, Brigid. I can hardly imagine the horror you’ve been through.”

I nodded, but I didn’t want to talk anymore. My voice was splintered, and I thought I might just crack up entirely if I kept talking. I managed to say, “I have to go find a place to stay. I’ll be back another time.”

James Aubrey said, “Good. I’m almost always here. God be with you, Brigid.”

Sometimes He was. Sometimes I carried on, on my own.

Chapter 69

A CAB was waiting for the light to change on DeWolfe Street, right outside the church. I grabbed the opportunity, threw myself into the backseat, and asked the driver to take me to the Dinsmore Motor Lodge, right off Route 2.

I knew of the Dinsmore, but I’d never been there.

The driver was a reed-thin man of indeterminate age wearing a knitted cap pulled down to his eyes and a Fitbit on his right wrist. He checked me out in the mirror, then he started the meter.

I watched without seeing as he drove us up Memorial Drive, along the Charles River, through North Cambridge, but I came back to the present when we closed in on my chosen destination, a skeevy motel in the worst part of the city, planted on the verge of a rumbling highway.

My driver stopped his cab in the motel’s forecourt, beside the cracked plastic sign reading Vacancies WiFi Coffee Shop. Happy B’day Sean.

I asked my cabbie to wait, then bolted out of the cab before he could say no and fast-walked to the office.

I asked the towering teenage boy behind the desk if room 209 was available, and he nodded while staring at me.

I was getting a lot of strange looks these days, and I knew why. My black hooded coat looked like a storm cloud, and I was in the center of it, with my shaven head, my pale skin, and my generally deathlike appearance.

Never mind deathlike. I looked like the real thing.

I said, “May I see the room?”

Giant Teen unhooked the key from a board behind him and slapped it on the counter.

“You mind if I ask why 209?”

“Yes,” I said.

I snatched the key.

The parking area around the Dinsmore Motor Lodge looked like a dumping ground for all the drug-addicted, jobless, homeless, hopeless people in Cambridge.

I said to my driver, “I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

“I can’t wait more than five. I need to get back to the garage.”

“Ten minutes, that’s all. I’ll give you a good tip.”

He sighed, then shrugged. I took that to be a yes.

I jogged up the stairs to the second floor, found 209 three doors down from the landing, and opened the door to the room where my mother had died.

I’d seen police photos of the room and expected it to be a hellhole, but it was far worse than that. The windows were opaque with dirt. The bed was covered with a stained spread, the hard surfaces were grimy, and insects scurried when I turned on the bathroom light. The stink of smoke and fifty years of unwashed human beings clung to the carpets and curtains.

I stared at the revolting bedspread and thought of my mother lying there, half-naked, her heart exploding from a heroin overdose. And I saw my father lying next to her, watching her die.

The day after Dorothy Fitzgerald died at the age of forty-five, G.S.F. was arrested and charged with negligent homicide.

The prosecutor was young and determined, but this case was thin on facts, based on circumstantial evidence.

George S. Fitzgerald had signed for room 209 and charged it to his card, and the police had found him in this bed stoned out of his mind. A drug dealer admitted to selling him drugs, but said drug dealer was a very sketchy witness. And, even if he had been a font of truth, that G.S.F. had shared his H with my mother didn’t make her death a homicide.

The case against G.S.F. came down to his statement to me the day before my mother died. He had been sitting on the stoop outside our house when I came home with take-out pizza.

“Your mother,” he had said, “is a waste of oxygen. I wish to hell she was dead. I think I’m going to kill her.”

I’d testified to that, but it was my word against his, and his attorney tore me into small pieces on the stand. Even if the jurors believed me, the proof against G.S.F. never rose above the level of reasonable doubt.

As soon as the case was dismissed, I fled to Baltimore, got my MD, and kept running.

Until now.

My driver was honking his horn, and there was nothing more for me to see. I slammed the door and left room 209 behind me. I had a moment of fright when I couldn’t find my cab in the parking lot, but then I saw it parked on the street.

Giant Teen was trotting toward me.

I shouted, “I changed my mind!” and tossed him the key.

I got into the cab.

My driver said, “I was about to go. Where to now?”

“Portman House,” I said. It was a small and decent boutique hotel about five miles from this spot and near the MIT campus. Parents of college kids stayed there.

“Good choice,” said my driver. He turned the cab around, and as we headed back into the better parts of Cambridge, I wondered what I was going to do, where I was going to live, what my life was going to be like now and from this point forward.

I wondered if God was going to let me in on any plan He might have for me. Or if it was all up to me.

I knew the answer. Up to me.

Chapter 70

THE FRESH images of my mother’s death, combined with the excruciating losses of Karl and Tre, washed over me like a tsunami, overwhelming me and leaving me gasping for meaning that just wasn’t there.

I asked the driver to stop at the closest liquor store and wait for me. He gave me a look that told me he deeply regretted letting me into his cab, but he pulled up to Liquor World on White Street and kept the motor running.

I said, “Anything I can get you while I’m shopping?”

“Just hurry up.”

I did that, and fifteen minutes later, I checked into Portman House. My room was clean. It faced the rear. It suited me perfectly.

I wanted to drink myself into oblivion, and I had a right to do it. I hung the Do Not Disturb sign on the doorknob and closed the curtains. I drank. I slept, and I wrote letters to Karl and to Tre in my digital journal. I spoke out loud to Karl as I wrote, and, of course, he didn’t answer back.

After I’d saved my new pages, I unloaded my anger at my parents and held nothing back. There was a lot to unpack, spanning the first twenty years of my life, and the writing was exhausting. I drank and slept some more.

Three days after checking into Portman House, when I had nothing left to say or drink, I made arrangements for an evening out.

My new girlfriend and I agreed to meet on the corner of Lansdowne and Brookline Avenue in Boston, not far from Fenway Park.

“Let me reimburse you for my ticket,” said Katharine Dunlop, the shrink I had met on the plane.

“No way,” I said. “My treat. I’m so glad you could come.”

It was a great night to go to a ballgame.

The sky was cloud-free. The stands were almost full, and the hotel’s concierge had gotten me two of the best seats in the State Street Pavilion Club, behind home plate, near the press boxes, and with a great view of the game and the ballpark.

I’d never had such good seats in my life.

Katharine and I passed on the fine dining in the clubhouse and each put down two fully loaded hot dogs. I managed to get down a third. Heaven on a bun.

The game itself was a laugher. Despite playing barely.500 ball for most of the season, the Red Sox crushed the second-place Orioles 16-2. Third baseman Francisco Burgos and rookie shortstop Ted Lightwell both homered, while lefty Aaron Jenkins pitched a six-hit complete game, striking out nine. As I’d done at games as a kid, I kept score, which allowed me to stay focused on the action while I chatted with Katharine.

Night games always feel otherworldly, and tonight it was all that and more. The lights blazing down on Fenway Park encapsulated the game, separating it from the blackness of night and everything that had happened before the first ball was thrown.

The game was a great escape, a magnificent emotional release.

When I got back to my room that night, I emptied a bottle and a half of scotch down the sink and started a new journal entry about my mother.

Dear Mom, I wrote.

I wish you had told me about my real father. I guess you had your reasons. Maybe you were protecting me from G.S.F. or from the man you’d been with. Maybe you thought that I’d never find out, but I have found out. And now I have a lifetime of questions that will never be answered.

I will never know if I look like my father, if he was good or bad, if he knew that he had a daughter, and if he would have loved me. I wonder if I have half siblings and a whole other family right here in Cambridge. That hurts, Mom, very badly.

I continued writing, but the secret of my conception made it very hard to close the book on my past. Still, I wanted to forgive my mother for her many poor choices.

I knew that she had loved me.

I had proof.

I made a list of the good stuff: the birthday parties with helium balloons tied to the shrubs in the backyard, and frosted carrot cupcakes, my favorite treat. I added racing skates to the list, the ones I had pined for that my mom gave me for Christmas when I was ten. Sometimes I had even slept with them. I wrote that one of her choices had been to live with a man who hated her. Maybe she had thought she was doing that for me.

I balanced off her high anxiety, inattention, sugar mania, and long zombie absences with the coziness of watching The Late Show under a blanket with her on Friday nights, falling asleep in a hug. And I loved when she braided my hair, as she did before we went to St. Paul’s on Sunday mornings.

All those years of Sunday Mass with my mother had instilled in me the love of God.

I would always be grateful to her for that.

Chapter 71

PRISM WAS a drug-and-alcohol rehab center on Putnam Avenue, only two blocks from St. Paul’s. The director, Dr. Robert Dweck, had run a help-wanted ad for a part-time doctor, and I made an appointment to meet with him.

Prism’s storefront had a rainbow painted on the plate-glass window, and bells chimed when I opened the door.

A psychiatrist, Dr. Robert Dweck was a tall, bearded man in his mid-fifties, with thick glasses and a generous smile. He offered me a seat in his small office, read my résumé, whistled, then asked me, “You sure you want to work for a low-rent, city-funded operation like this?”

“Absolutely. I’m putting down new roots.”

Dr. Dweck said, “You should know what you’d be getting into. Many of our clients are triple-whammied: physical disabilities, mental disorders, and drug or alcohol dependencies. You want to feel needed, Dr. Fitzgerald? This is the job for you. But I need you to know you’d make more money flipping burgers.”

“Not a problem,” I told him.

He said, “Okay, Dr. Fitzgerald. If your references check out, you’ve got yourself a job. Can you start on Monday?”

We shook hands, and I filled out some forms.

When I handed them back, Dr. Dweck smiled. “Is it Monday yet?”

“I’ll see you then,” I said.

After leaving the clinic, I called ahead to the real-estate company that had lined up a few properties for me to see. The agent said, “I don’t know if you’d be interested in a handyman special. It’s a good, old house, very cheap and in a great location. It needs tons of TLC.”

The agent showed me the house, a narrow, two-story redbrick town house, built in the late eighteen hundreds. It hadn’t been cared for in many years. The ceilings in the bathroom and kitchen were falling down. The doors were askew, and the floors sloped toward the street. But the bones were good, and the mechanicals were good enough.

It was equidistant between my church and new workplace. It honestly felt as though the house was calling to me.

I opened a bank account, and while I was still standing in the cool, marble lobby of Boston Private Bank and Trust, I phoned Heinrich Schmidt, Karl’s lawyer in Berlin, and arranged for a fairly hefty wire transfer.

By the end of that week, I was a home owner.

It felt good. I was truly home.

The next three months went by fast.

I ran Prism’s in-house clinic along with Louise Lindenmeyr, a top-notch nurse practitioner who had just returned from a stint of emergency care in hurricane-ravaged Haiti.

It was immediately clear to me that the staff at Prism did whatever was needed, no matter what their job titles. Dr. Dweck, “Call me Rob,” was also a clinical psychologist. He ran group therapy sessions and also refilled the copier’s paper tray and took out the trash. I became proficient at fund-raising, administration, and making soup-and-sandwich lunches for forty people at a time.

When I told Rob about the falling plaster ceilings and iffy wiring in my house, he recruited skilled labor from among the clients at Prism. After that, my weekends were often spent making pasta lunches for the pickup painters and carpenters who buttoned up my little house.

I bought furniture. I hung photos of Karl and Tre in my bedroom and put a miniature one inside a locket that I wore on a chain around my neck. As I worked and feathered my nest, summer became fall.

My hair grew out with renewed vigor, and short curls flattered me. I cut way back on my alcohol consumption and didn’t miss drinking at all. Rob gave me high fives for that.

I gave away my black hooded coat, bought new clothes. Louise said, “Let’s go get your nails done. Maybe splurge for a pedi, too, while we’re at it.” Seeing hot-pink lacquer on the ends of my fingers and toes was unexpectedly hilarious.

I socialized with new friends and wrote to my old, far-flung ones, Sabeena, Tori, Zach. And I went to church every Sunday.

Occasionally, I went during the week at lunchtime.

That particular Wednesday, the church was almost as empty as it was when I stumbled into St. Paul’s on my first day back in Cambridge. I went to “my” end of the first pew and had a one-way, silent conversation with God, and when I opened my eyes, I expected to see Father Aubrey.

I was disappointed that he wasn’t there.

I crossed myself and left the church and almost walked right into him as he was coming out of the rectory.

“I’m heading out for a burger and beer,” James said. “Care to join me?”

So far, I’d only had coffee that day, and I gladly accepted his offer.

Chapter 72

THE PICKLED Hedgehog was an Irish-style pub on Massachusetts Avenue, less than a ten-minute walk from the church. The interior was hunter green, and strip lighting sparkled around the ceiling’s perimeter. Father James Aubrey and I sat down at a table with a view of the street.

James said to the waiter, “Heineken from the tap. Brigid?”

“Same for me.”

When the waiter returned with beer, I told James about my new patient, a man who’d been living in his car until he found his way to Prism.

“Turns out he’s my age,” I said. “We went to middle school together.”

“Meth user?” James asked.

“Yes, sorry to say.”

The burger was perfect. The fries kind of sent me to the moon, and I was enjoying the company.

But James was distracted.

He kept his phone on the table, and when it buzzed, he said, “Excuse me,” and walked outside. I saw him through the glass, looking agitated, and then he got angry. When he returned to our table, he apologized and said, “I have a confession to make.”

“You’re confessing to me? Maybe we should have another beer first?”

“Maybe an IV from the tap.”

“That bad?” I asked.

“The absolute worst,” he said.

The last time a priest had made a confession to me, I had been holding his hand when he died. I looked into James’s sad eyes and said, “Talk to me.”

“I’m about to go on trial for something I didn’t do.”

“What are you charged with?”

“I am seriously afraid of shocking you, Brigid.”

“My shock threshold is pretty high.”

“I’m accused of sexually abusing a boy ten years ago, when he was fifteen.”

“Oh, no.”

Father Aubrey slugged down some beer, then gave me a wry look. “I’m not a pedophile. My accuser is lying. My lawyer is good, but he says we don’t have a bulletproof defense, and priests tend to lose child-abuse cases ninety-nine point eight percent of the time.

“He wants me to settle out of court. Save myself the stress of losing at trial. There’s only so much money my accuser can get from me, but to settle is to admit I’d done something to him. Which I did not do. And if I settle to get this done with, very likely he’ll go after the school and the archdiocese. I did nothing to him, and I can’t let him get away with saying that I did.”

I was shocked, after all.

In 2002, the Boston Globe uncovered a pattern of sexual abuse of minors by Catholic priests, which was followed by a nationwide scandal encompassing accusations in the thousands. The Globe revealed that the archdiocese had protected hundreds of priests, paying off potential litigants, passing the priests on to other parishes. When cases had gone to trial, the Church lost, and it was common knowledge that the Boston Archdiocese had paid out more than a $100 million in damages in the last twenty years.

“The man who is accusing me,” said James Aubrey, “was in one of my classes when I taught history at Mount St. Joseph. He might have had a learning disability. I worked with him after school a few days a week. It was nothing but class work.

“He flunked high school, and when I was charged with sexual assault, I didn’t actually remember him. I hadn’t even thought of him in ten years.

“I called him. I asked him, what the hell? He said, ‘You shouldn’t have done it, Father.’ He lied to me. To me.”

“He may have been taping the call.”

“Probably. These past months have been awful, Brigid. I say, ‘I didn’t do it,’ and people I’ve known for years look at me like I’m filth. That kills me. This whole thing is really testing my faith.”

James paid the check and asked, “Mind coming back to St. Paul’s? I want to show you something.”

Chapter 73

I MUST have hesitated at the entrance to the rectory.

“It’s safe, Brigid,” he said, opening the door for me. “I’m a pedophile, remember?”

He turned on the lights, scooped some magazines off the sofa, and put some food in a bowl for an orange tabby kitten he called Birdie.

He excused himself, leaving me alone in his living quarters. I liked the look of his clutter. I checked out his bookshelves and found books on a wide range of subjects ranging from ancient history to modern poetry. I was studying a primitive painting of Jesus carrying a lamb over his shoulders when James returned to the living room with an armload of books.

“Please have a seat,” he said.

I sat down on the worn, blue sofa, and he sat next to me. He took a photo album off the top of the stack and put the rest of the books on the floor.

The cover page inside the photo album was inscribed with the name Jennifer, and inside were photos of a very young woman in a hospital bed holding her baby, grinning her face off, her dark hair forming long, damp ringlets.

She had just given birth.

“This is my sister, Cassandra. And this,” he said, touching the picture of the baby, “this is Jenny. My niece and goddaughter.

“The point is,” he said, “the worst thing about this phony scandal is that I don’t want Sandy and especially Jenny to think that I’m the kind of person who would rape, touch, or mess with anyone, boy, girl, or anyone.”

He showed me more family pictures, and then he picked up a Mount St. Joseph yearbook. He held the book in his lap and flipped to the pages that were signed by students who had penned notes to him when he taught there.

Dear Fr. Aubrey, I’m headed to Northwestern! Thanks for all your help. I’ll always be grateful.

Yo, Father A. Thx for what I know about WWII and JC.

James opened a yearbook from two years earlier and found a picture of a boy with brown hair and a crooked nose. He said to me, “This is Wallace Brent, my accuser and a pretty convincing liar.”

The page was signed, Father Aubrey, Thanks for all your help. Anyway. Best of luck, Wally.

James said, “Wally flunked out the next year.” He clapped the book shut and paused to catch his breath.

“I did my best to help him, and now he’s determined to destroy my life.”

Chapter 74

I CALLED Karl’s attorney at midnight my time, and he called me back in the morning with good news. He had contacted Kyle Richardson, one of the top criminal-defense attorneys in Boston.

Herr Schmidt said, “Brigid, he’s interested in James’s case. Are you quite sure you want to get involved? This type of case is media candy. The fallout could be messy.”

I thanked Herr Schmidt for his help and concern. And I took his advice seriously. But I was having a gut instinct that I couldn’t explain. I had just met Father Aubrey, but I had faith in him. I found him truthful and authentic, and he needed a friend. In the strongest possible way, I felt that I was that friend.

I called James.

“I have a connection to Kyle Richardson,” I said. “He’s expecting your call.”

“The Kyle Richardson? Brigid, I can’t afford that guy. His clients are all rich and famous.”

“Don’t worry about his fees. Richardson wants to defend you. Let’s see if you like him.”

The next day, James and I had a preliminary meeting at Richardson, Sykes and Briscoe’s skyscraper office on Park Plaza, near Boston Common. Fifteen minutes into it, Richardson leaned across the table toward James and said, “If you want me, I’m taking this case. I believe in you.”

I was moved when Richardson showed that he too believed in James. It felt like the UN choppers coming in. Like might had joined right. As we drove back to St. Paul’s, James queried me about the bills from this expensive firm. He said that he didn’t want to have “obligations to unknown benefactors.”

When he wouldn’t let it go, I said, “Can you just accept that God works in mysterious ways?”

“Fine,” he said. “Who are you, Brigid? Who are you, really?”

“You’re funny,” I said.

We both laughed.

And, finally, he dropped the subject.

But we both knew that he needed first-class help to save his reputation. He was an honest man, a good priest, and he had to clear his name.

Over the next three weeks, James met often with his lawyers, and then, as the date for the trial closed in, Cardinal Cooney of the Boston Archdiocese called Richardson, asking for a meeting with James at his lawyer’s office.

James asked me to be there with him.

The next day, six of us waited in Richardson’s conference room, wondering why Cardinal Cooney had called this meeting.

James said, “I’m encouraged. I think he’s going to tell me that the Church is going to fight this charge all the way. That I’m not being left to deal with this angry lunatic alone.”

A half hour later, Cardinal Cooney, accompanied by three attorneys from the Boston Archdiocese, were shown into the conference room and took seats opposite me, James, and Kyle Richardson’s team.

I have to admit that I was awed.

The cardinal was a strikingly good-looking man, silver haired, with refined features, and he simply radiated purity. He was well known in the very Catholic city of Boston for his active community outreach program on behalf of children molested by priests.

The meeting began, and James told the cardinal and his lawyers about his entirely innocent history with the accuser, Wallace Brent, who was now twenty-five years old and a bank teller.

The lead attorney for the archdiocese, Clay Hammond, spoke for his contingent.

“Father Aubrey. Even if there is no truth to this charge, the right thing to do is to put the Church’s needs above yours. We’re asking you to settle this dispute out of court. We will work with your attorney in writing a binding agreement with the plaintiff, offering him a cash settlement in exchange for his recantation of the charge. He will guarantee that he will never discuss the settlement or the charges again. This scandal will be snuffed out, and you can get on with your life.”

“I’ll be laicized,” James said. “Defrocked.”

“That hasn’t been determined yet,” Cooney said to James.

James said, “I never touched that boy. I’m not going to say that I did.”

Cooney said, kindly, “James, I understand righteous indignation. And I understand honesty. But a sacrifice for the greater good is in order.”

The cardinal went on to make an impressive speech about self-sacrifice, quoting Gandhi, St. Francis of Assisi, and John F. Kennedy. He closed by quoting Ralph Waldo Emerson, who had written, Self-sacrifice is the real miracle out of which all the reported miracles grow.

When the cardinal had finished speaking, James’s attorney said, “You realize, of course, if my client were to admit guilt, it would be an injustice and an indelible stain on this good man’s reputation. His accuser would not only profit; it would encourage him and others like him to bring false claims against the Church.”

Cardinal Cooney said, “James, do you have any money?”

“Very little.”

The cardinal said, “If you let this go to court, we won’t back you. If you lose-and the odds are heavily against you-you will have to pay the damages, and if he comes after us, we will defend ourselves. You will lose your church and our friendship. We won’t say a word in your defense.”

My mounting fury was firing me up. I really couldn’t listen quietly anymore.

“Your Eminence, Father Aubrey is innocent,” I said. “God would want him to tell the truth.”

The cardinal said to me, “Dr. Fitzgerald, what is your relationship with Father Aubrey, anyway? How do you know that he’s innocent? Explain that to me, can you?”

I’d had enough.

I said, “I can’t explain it, but I know it, and so do you, Your Eminence. In your zeal to defend the archdiocese, you’ve betrayed the Church and your conscience.”

The cardinal’s face went white. As if I had slapped him.

When James and I were alone in the elevator, he said to me, “Good of you to stand up for me, Brigid. Thank you for doing this.”

Chapter 75

IT WAS the third day of Father James Aubrey’s trial for child sexual abuse. I’d been sitting in the front row of the packed gallery from the first moment of the trial and had been in constant agony over what James had had to endure.

I had a clear view of the defense table, where James and his three attorneys scribbled notes. A few rows back from me, two of Cardinal Cooney’s legal henchmen watched the proceedings with apparent disdain.

Up ahead, sitting at the bench between two flags, was Judge Charles Fiore. He was in his fifties, a Boston native, and a Catholic. So far, he had shown no emotion and had maintained order in his court.

On day one, I had listened in openmouthed disbelief as Wallace Brent, a young man with a cherubic face and a crisp, gray suit, told his horrible lies. He testified that when he was a sophomore at Mount St. Joseph high school, Father Aubrey had taken him for long walks in the woods behind the school, where he had fondled and kissed him and told him that he loved him.

He said, “Father Aubrey told me that he would deny it if I ever said anything to anyone. And now, that’s what he’s doing.”

Brent concluded by saying, “I trusted Father Aubrey. I knew what he was doing to me was wrong, but I felt helpless to stop him. My grades crashed, and I flunked out of school. I can’t live with the shame of it anymore. Not a day goes by when I don’t think about what Father Aubrey did to me.”

Brent swung his gaze to the defense table and leveled his charge at James. “Father Aubrey. You ruined me.”

Murmurs swept the courtroom, interrupted by Judge Fiore asking Kyle Richardson if he wished to question the witness.

Richardson stood, gave Brent a cutting stare, and then did his best to discredit him.

Do you always tell the truth, Mr. Brent?

Did Father Aubrey write any notes to you?

Did anyone ever see the two of you together?

Did you ever tell anyone about this alleged sexual attention, either at the time or later?

No mention to a friend, a parent, another student, a nurse?

Is there anyone at all who can verify your unsupported accusations against my client?

Richardson was so good, most liars would have folded under his skillful cross. But there was only so much Richardson could do. It was James’s word against Brent’s. And Brent didn’t have to prove what happened. He just needed to convince the jury that he was telling the truth.

If he did that, he stood to cash in, Father Aubrey be damned.

The plaintiff’s attorney, Terry Marshall, was a woman in her thirties, trim, well dressed, with shoulder-length dark hair. She stepped smartly and pivoted like a circus pony as she questioned her next witness, Andrew Snelling, a former colleague of James’s who had worked at Mount St. Joseph at the time of the made-up-for-profit crime.

Snelling was a beak-nosed priest of about forty who grinned inappropriately, his eyes darting around the courtroom as he told the court, “I always thought Aubrey was guilty of something.”

He was going for a laugh, but he didn’t get it.

Richardson jumped to his feet and snapped, “Objection, Your Honor. Speculative, irrelevant, and improper character evidence.”

“Sustained,” said Judge Fiore. “Clerk, please strike the witness’s last remark. The jury will disregard. Father Snelling, facts only, please.”

It was one small point for our side, the first of the day. Terry Marshall had no further questions for Snelling, and Kyle Richardson cross-examined him, asking, “Did you ever see James act in a sexual way toward Mr. Brent?”

Snelling had to admit, “I never actually saw anything with my own eyes.” But the tone and the sordid implications remained like the odor of rotting garbage.

“I have nothing further,” said Richardson, and with that, Marshall stood up and told the judge, “We rest our case.”

When James turned to his attorney, I saw from his expression that all of the plaintiff’s blows had landed. I was worried for James and couldn’t do a damned thing to help him.

That hurt.

Chapter 76

AT HALF past noon, court recessed for lunch.

I went down to the street and saw just how crazy it had gotten outside Suffolk County Superior Court. A restless, chanting mob filled Pemberton Square, clearly enraged by what they had read in the media. James Aubrey, yet another priest, was accused of committing obscene acts with a child. And they just knew he was guilty.

Signs with vile words and James’s face scrawled in black marker pen bobbed over the heads of the riotous crowd. TV news outlets interviewed the loudest, angriest protesters.

I texted James: Courage. The truth will out.

He didn’t reply.

I leaned against the courthouse wall and surfed the news with my phone. The stats of priests found guilty of child abuse were all there on the front pages, including one that claimed that 98 percent of sexual-abuse allegations against Catholic priests were found to be true.

The Boston Globe had scooped the original, shocking priest child-abuse scandal and had a proprietary interest in the subject.

Today, the Globe had profiled the “victim,” Wallace Brent, peppering the piece with ugly quotes from Brent himself. It was disgusting, disgraceful, and the media found it irresistible.

At 2:15, I was back inside courtroom 6F, where the trial began again, this time with Kyle Richardson presenting James’s case.

First up was a grade-school registrar who testified that Wallace Brent had lied about his salary and address in order to get his kids into their private school.

The next witness testified that Brent had lied about the extent of his injuries in a car accident, received a whopping settlement, and had later been photographed snowmobiling.

A third witness, a bank VP, told the court that Brent had forged a college transcript and that he was stunned to learn that, in fact, Brent hadn’t gone to college at all.

Brent was being revealed as not just a liar, but a hard-core, long-term fabricator. At least, that was how I saw it.

Having taken a few shots at Brent’s character, Richardson called character witnesses to speak for James.

Father Harry Stanton had been the dean of students at Mount St. Joseph ten years before. There was a respectful hush in the courtroom as the stately old gentleman took the stand.

When he’d been sworn in and seated, Dean Stanton detailed James’s five years at the school, describing him as a highly regarded and inspirational history teacher. He was a good witness, but his testimony was dry, and the jurors looked bored.

Three sterling members of the St. Paul’s congregation took the stand in succession to say that they would trust James with their money, their wives, their children, and their secrets.

I grew increasingly hopeful that these testimonies were helping James, but the plaintiff’s attorney repeatedly responded, “No questions for the witness, Your Honor.”

This dismissive rejoinder was meant to convey to the jurors that the testimonies of Richardson’s witnesses were meaningless, as none of these people could support James’s claim that he had never touched Wally Brent.

As promised by Cardinal Cooney, no one from the archdiocese testified for James.

The third day was coming to a close when James leaned toward his attorney and whispered to him from behind his hand. Whatever he was saying, Richardson wasn’t going for it.

He shook his head and said, “No, I don’t agree.”

The judge asked what was going on, and Richardson stood up and said, “My client would like to testify in his own defense.”

Fiore asked James if he understood that he was not required to testify and that the jury was not permitted to make any inference or draw any conclusion if he didn’t testify.

James said, “I understand, Your Honor. I need to be heard.”

“Well, Mr. Richardson,” said the judge, “call your client to the stand.”

Chapter 77

JAMES WORE a black suit with his priest’s collar and had brushed his sandy-blond hair back from his face. When he got to his feet, he flicked his gaze toward me, and I nodded my encouragement. I saw the new creases in his forehead and tightness around his eyes and mouth.

He couldn’t hide what this trial was doing to him.

He crossed the thirty-foot distance between the defense table and the witness box, placed his hand on the Bible, and, after being sworn in by the bailiff, took the stand.

Kyle Richardson approached James and asked preliminary questions. Then he said, “Father Aubrey, is it okay for me to call you James?”

“Of course.”

“How do you know the plaintiff?”

“He was a student of mine ten years ago.”

“Have you spoken with him since that time?”

“After I was notified that Wally was taking me to court, I called him and asked him why he was doing this.”

“Did he answer you?”

“He told me to speak with his lawyer.”

“Okay, then, James. Ten years ago, when Mr. Brent was in your tenth-grade history class, did you have occasion to see him after class?”

“I did.”

“Could you describe the nature of these meetings?”

“Sure. Wally was having trouble with reading comprehension. We went over the assignments, and I showed him how the text was organized, how each part had a beginning, a middle, and an end, how the parts related to the whole. But he couldn’t grasp it. He needed more than I could give him. I suggested he take a remedial reading course, but I don’t believe that he followed through.”

“And did you have any social relationship with him?”

“Absolutely not,” James said.

“And his testimony that you had inappropriate physical contact with him about a dozen times during his sophomore year at Mount St. Joseph?”

James snapped, “There’s no truth to it at all.”

“Any idea why Mr. Brent would make up such a story?”

James said, “No idea at all. I’ve never had a personal relationship with Wally Brent, as God is my witness.”

Richardson nodded and said, “Now, we all know you can’t address Mr. Brent directly, but if you could, what would you say to him?”

Terry Marshall was on her feet in a flash, shouting, “Objection, Your Honor!”

“Speak only to your attorney,” the judge said to James. “I’m allowing it for now, Ms. Marshall.”

James leaned forward, directing himself to Kyle Richardson, who stood at an angle between himself and Wally Brent.

James said, “The first thing I would say is, ‘Wally, to say that I’ve been alone with you outside the classroom, that we had any kind of personal relationship, is totally untrue, and you know that.

“‘I cared about you, Wally, of course I did. You were a likable kid, and you were frustrated at Mount St. Joseph. I wanted to help you succeed. I did the best I could.’

“I would tell Wally that I am shocked and very angry that he would make up this vicious story that discredits everything I have done in my life and everything I might do in the future. And I would say, ‘You can’t do this, Wally. I don’t deserve it. Take it back.’”

Before the last word had left James’s mouth, a woman in a blue checked dress sitting at the rail right behind the plaintiff’s table jumped to her feet and screamed, “God knows what you have done to my son, James, you snake! You LIAR! You-”

The bailiff reached the woman at the same time Wallace Brent turned in his chair and shouted, “Mom, noooo!”

The courtroom went crazy.

Brent’s mother shouted “You corrupted my boy!” as the bailiffs forcibly moved her out through the doors. The judge hammered his gavel, and the volume got even louder.

Brent’s anguished features as his mother was ejected from the courtroom kind of worked for him. It was as if James’s speech and his mother’s reaction to it had brought back all the suffering he had described to the jury.

I felt heartsick for James, but I also had a moment’s doubt. That was how convincingly Wally’s reaction gripped me. He had all my attention when he pressed his palms to the table and got heavily to his feet.

“Wait a minute, Terry,” he said to his attorney.

“Mr. Brent,” said the judge. “Sit down. You may not speak unless you are on the stand.”

“Terry,” Brent said. “I’ve got something to say.”

Chapter 78

EVERY EYE in the courtroom was focused on Wallace Brent.

His posture was awkward, his face was red, and his breathing was labored. I thought maybe he was about to go into cardiac arrest.

He looked across the well toward the witness box and called out, “Father Aubrey, I have something to say.”

Say what? Was he going to hurl more disgusting accusations at James?

Judge Fiore said to Ms. Marshall, “Counselor, control your client, or I will have him removed.”

Ms. Marshall snapped, “Wally. Sit.”

And, like the big dog he was, he did it-reluctantly.

Fiore asked Richardson if he had anything else for the witness, and Richardson said that he did not. Fiore told James to stand down and Wally Brent to retake the stand.

Judge Fiore said, “You are still under oath, Mr. Brent. Do you understand?”

“I do.”

Marshall approached her client with a little less pep in her step.

She said, “Mr. Brent, what is it that you want to say?”

Brent wiped his boyish face with his jacket sleeve and then looked across the well to James.

“Father Aubrey,” Brent said, “I’m the liar. When you flunked me, I held that against you. I didn’t get into college, and it was easy to blame you for that, too. I make crap for money now, and I read that settlements in these kinds of cases can be over-the-top, and I thought, ‘Yeah. Aubrey owes me.’

“But you don’t. If I go to hell for doing this, that’s not your fault, either. You never touched me. I’m sorry I made all this trouble for you. I don’t deserve your forgiveness, but for what it’s worth, I am truly, truly sorry. I mean…”

Brent sagged forward and, raising his hands to his face, broke into sobs so heavy, they echoed like an oncoming train.

The judge slammed the gavel, shouting, “Order! Everyone! Quiet!”

James spoke from his seat at the defense table. “Wally, I understand. I understand, Wally. I forgive you as a man of God.”

The judge again made an attempt to establish order, but the commotion in the gallery overwhelmed even the sharp crack of his gavel. Fiore threw up his hands, and I heard him say over the noise, “Stand down, Mr. Brent. Case dismissed.”

Chaos ruled as the jury was released through a side door and the spectators scrambled for the exits.

I opened the gate and ran to James. His face was bright with relief. He stretched out his arms, and I hugged him. I felt a rush of energy flow between us, unlike anything I had felt before.

Honestly, it scared me.

“James, you won,” I said with my face pressed against his shoulder. “I’m so happy for you. Thank God this is over.”

Chapter 79

JAMES PUT his hand at my waist and guided me through the surging throng inside the courthouse and out to the street. Gleaming black limos waited for us at the curb and minutes later delivered us to Kyle Richardson’s office at Park Plaza.

There were buckets of champagne on ice in the glass-walled conference room in the sky where, only weeks before, Cardinal Cooney had tried to bully James into confessing to a crime he didn’t commit.

The room filled with giddy lawyers and staff until there was standing room only. Richardson toasted James, and James returned the toast with a wholehearted thanks to the entire team for believing in him. And he thanked me, too.

“Friends, if you don’t know her, this is Brigid Fitzgerald. She introduced me to Kyle and hung in, believing in me and supporting me throughout this awful ordeal. Brigid, you’ve done a wonderful thing here. I can’t thank you enough.”

I waved away the compliment as a young associate came into the room with the latest headlines on his phone.

“Everyone, listen up,” he said. “This is the Globe quoting His Eminence Cardinal Brian Cooney. ‘We thank the Lord that Father Aubrey was acquitted. We have always believed in his innocence and forgive his accuser. We pray Wallace Brent will seek forgiveness from God.’”

The hypocrisy was dazzling, and Richardson nailed it, saying, “What bullshit.”

A hundred people applauded.

An hour later, James and I tripped down the stairs to St. Paul’s basement, where the congregation had pulled together an impressive spread of food and drink in the brightly lit, low-ceilinged room.

James made a short, heartfelt speech about friends and faith and closed by saying, “Thank you all for believing in me. It means so much.”

Men and women crowded him, hugged him, and told him that they never doubted him. We drank wine from Styrofoam cups and ate home-baked sugar cookies, and after the last well-wishers called out their good-byes, James invited me to the rectory.

“I really need to feed my poor cat,” he said.

While James fed Birdie and changed out of his suit, I plopped onto the sofa. I kicked off my shoes and leaned back so that I could really take in the quaint painting over the mantel of Jesus carrying the lamb.

I must have dozed off, because I started when James came into the sitting room. He wore khakis and a blue shirt, and his hair was wet. There was a look on his face that I couldn’t quite read.

He was nervous, I saw that, but I had no idea why. He pulled a chair up to the sofa, sat in it with his hands clasped in his lap, and said, “Brigid, now that I’m free of this trial, I want to tell you my plans.”

Plans? What plans?

“Don’t hold back,” I said. “You know my shock threshold is quite high.” I put my hand above my head.

He grinned.

“Okay. I’m leaving St. Paul’s. After the way the archdiocese treated me, I just can’t be their kind of priest any longer.”

I stared at him blankly, finally managing to get out, “What will you do?”

“There may be a place for me in a little church near Springfield. It’s a farming town. I like the authenticity of that. I want to try it out.”

“You’re leaving Cambridge?”

“As soon as I can. I have to ask you a favor. Will you keep Birdie for me? I don’t want to leave her. And I don’t know where I’m going to live. Everything is going to be in flux for a while and…Will you?”

“Okay,” I said, still rocked by his news. “I’ve never had a cat.”

“Thanks, Brigid. I really appreciate this.”

James put the kitten in a carrier and toys and a bowl into a shopping bag, and then he walked me home.

For the first time, I felt awkward around James.

He was saying that he would notify the archdiocese in the morning, that he would tell the congregation the news on Sunday. I nodded, thinking that St. Paul’s Church would feel so empty without him. That I would feel empty, too.

When we reached my front stoop, James bent to the carrier and stroked Birdie’s face through the grille.

“You behave yourself, Birdie.”

He stood up and smiled at me, wrapped me in a hug, and said, “Thanks again, Brigid. You’ll be in my prayers.”

I felt that rush again, both exciting and frightening. I held on to him, feeling everything: the pounding of my heart, the tears in my eyes, the sound of his breathing, and the warmth of his cheek against mine.

“You’re doing the right thing,” I said.

“I hope so. Be safe. I’ll miss you.”

He kissed my cheek before releasing me and headed off up the street.

I climbed my stoop, holding the carrier with a crying kitten inside, and when I turned to look after James and wave good-bye, he had already rounded the corner.

He was gone from my life. Just gone.

Chapter 80

AS THINGS turned out, I didn’t have time to think about what James was doing in the next chapter of his life.

Birdie was a slippery, scampering handful. She thought my two-story house was built just for her and loved racing up and down the stairs, hiding in the laundry pile, pushing her tail in my face when I took to my laptop, and pawing the screen as my typing made the letters appear.

This orange pile of fluff made me laugh out loud, and at night, she slept on my pillow, right next to my face.

In the morning, Birdie woke me up by patting my nose and giving me a long, insistent meow.

“I get it, Birdie,” I’d say.

I would feed her, turn on Animal Planet, set her up for her day before getting ready for my own.

I loved my job at Prism.

The brisk two-block walk to work was an excellent transition from the stability of my home to Prism, which was the center of a storm from the beginning to the end of the day.

Prism’s clients needed medical care, psychological counseling, and breakfast, and everything we did for them had to be documented, filed, and printed out for the patient.

Over the next few months, my job responsibilities expanded, then doubled again. One of my grant papers got a hit, and we received a tidy windfall from an NGO. Four months into my employment, we opened a pharmacy in the empty storefront next door.

Our director, Dr. Dweck, was funny, expansive, and very loving. He used his platform at Prism to take our message about the dangers of drug use to schoolkids in our community.

“Synthetic marijuana isn’t marijuana,” he’d say. “It’s two percent marijuana, ninety-eight percent unregulated components, which is as good as a hundred percent poison. This is a high that kills, get me?”

I volunteered often to go with Dr. Dweck to these schools. It felt good being with young kids who laughed and sang, weren’t sick, dying, orphaned, tortured, or homeless.

Father Alphonse McNaughton took over at St. Paul’s.

He was a traditional priest who stuck to the book, and his homilies were solid if not inspirational. I was asked to help with church benefits, and I always said, “Yes. When?”

Along with my job at Prism, good works were bringing me not just peace but joy, too.

Kyle Richardson took me on as a client, and together we set up a private foundation. I thought Karl would have approved of my anonymously donating his money to Boston clinics for the poor. My “father” and I had no contact, but when I learned that he had been admitted to an in-house drug rehab facility, I made sure that whatever Harvard’s health insurance didn’t cover was settled anonymously from my account.

When I came home at night exhausted from the activities of the day, unrest settled over me, and sadness rolled in like high tide beneath a full moon. James and I exchanged a few texts, but they were so impersonal, I felt worse after writing to him.

I prayed. I wrote in my journal daily, adding new stories of individual lives to my collection of hundreds. I entertained Birdie, and she did the same for me.

But I still felt less than whole.

I knew what was missing. I wasn’t at the center of anyone’s life. I was really alone, and midnight was the loneliest time of all.

That was when I thought of Karl and the best of our times, which had been spent lying together in bed, our sides touching, our fingers entwined, telling each other about what we had each lived through and felt since saying good-bye that morning.

And I ached for our baby. My instinct to check on her at night was still alive, even though Karl and Tre were not.

So every night, I draped my orange tabby cat over my shoulder, and I climbed the stairs. We got into bed, and I thanked God for all the good things in my life.

I closed my eyes, and then a paw would tap my nose, a yowl would ensue, as another morning arrived.

Chapter 81

ON A dark January morning, a blizzard fell on Boston and wrapped it in a cold, blinding hug.

When I arrived at Prism, homeless people bundled in rags were piled up three deep against the storefront. There were no lights inside the facility, and no one was home.

Rob called me. He was stuck in a snowdrift on Pearl Street. I had never needed a key to Prism, and I didn’t have one now.

Louise, our nurse practitioner, had a spare, and she was on the way, but before she arrived, someone hurled a spanner through the glass of our new pharmacy. The opportunity to steal drugs was too good to pass up, and people poured in through the shattered plate-glass window.

I dialed 911 and was yelling to the operator that we needed squad cars, pronto, when a boy of about ten threw his arms around my waist and cried, “Don’t let them take Mommy to jail. Please.”

I hugged him back as people eddied around us and snow obliterated the curbs and hydrants along Putnam Avenue. Louise called out to me over the wail of sirens as she came up the sidewalk toward Prism, her head lowered against the driving snow. As squad cars streamed onto the street with red lights flashing, my phone rang in my hand.

“Rob? It’s a mess. But Louise-”

“Brigid. It’s James.”

“What?”

It was too much to comprehend in one second.

The boy broke away from me, Louise struggled with the door lock, dark figures scattered with bags of drugs in their arms, and cop radios snapped and crackled around us.

“James!” I shouted into the phone. “I can’t talk now.”

“Call back when you can,” he said.

It took all morning to sort out the chaos. Our clients were let inside. The young boy found his mother, and they came in for coffee and a good cry. Rob arrived by ten and shouted orders in the calmest possible way. When I finally got to my office, shed my coat, scarf, and mittens, I hit the Return Call button on my phone.

“James?”

“Everything okay?” he asked me.

“For the moment,” I said. “How are you?”

“Can you take a break for a day or so? I want you to see what I’m up to.”

“James. Tell me. What is it?”

“Telling you will spoil the fun. You have to see this for yourself. Expect the unexpected.”

I was actually a little annoyed. I hadn’t heard from James in months, hadn’t seen him in more than a year, and now he was telling me to drop everything, and he wouldn’t tell me why.

“Will you come?” he asked.

“There’s a blizzard here,” I said, “if you didn’t know. A whopper. And I have a job. And a cat.”

“When the blizzard moves on, see if you can take a few days off,” said James. “And bring the cat.”

Chapter 82

SNOW WAS still banked alongside the Mass Pike as I drove my rented Camaro two hours from Boston to the small town of Millbrook, Massachusetts, population just under two thousand.

The GPS directed me to the only traffic light in town, and I parked at my destination: a little old clapboard-sided church that had probably been built in the late eighteen hundreds.

Birdie was in her carrier in the front seat, next to me. She had been intermittently singing along with my playlist but had finally gone to sleep.

I got out of the car to get a better look at the church-and I liked it. It was definitely showing its age, but it had come through the years in classic form and with its dignity, bell tower, and spire intact.

Beyond the church was a two-lane road flanked by small shops and spiked with large, bare-limbed trees growing between them. American flags hung outside the fire department and post office, and pickups sat parked along the road.

Looking back again at the classic old church, I wondered if it held the surprise James had teased me with, and I wondered again what it could be. I told Birdie I’d be right back, then headed up a stone path to the church.

The door was ajar, and it creaked on its hinges when I opened it and stepped into the dimly lit nave.

James was standing at the altar, reading.

“Yo. James!” I shouted.

He looked up, peered down the center aisle, and shouted back at me, “Brigid, it’s you! You’re here!”

He stepped down from the altar, strode down the aisle with arms outstretched and a huge grin on his face.

“It’s so good to see you,” he said.

I went into his hug, again feeling that great surge of warmth when he held me. It felt too good. Oh, no. I stepped away, looked into his face, and said, “James! You look terrific.”

“You too, Brigid. You too. Life is treating you okay?”

“The short answer is yes,” I said, grinning up at him. I forgot that I’d been annoyed with him. I noticed that he was stronger and leaner than the last time I’d seen him, and that his gorgeous blue eyes were no longer sad.

“I saved your spot for you,” he said.

He walked me back up the aisle, and I laughed when he offered me the end seat in the first pew. He sat down next to me.

“So, how do you like it?”

I took a good look around the church, which was so simple and unadorned, it reminded me of a chapel in a monastery. There was no stained glass. The altar and the floor were made of hand-hewn boards, and the pews looked as though they’d been polished by centuries of people sitting, standing, and sitting again.

“I love it,” I said, getting some of my equilibrium back. “She reminds me of a dignified lady of a certain age.”

“Very apt, Brigid. When I saw this church for the first time, I said, ‘Jesus Mary Joseph.’ So that’s what I call it.”

“Hah! And somehow that name just stuck?”

“Like crazy glue,” James said with a grin.

He told me that the previous priest had died many years before and that the church had fallen into disrepair.

He said, “Some people in this town followed my trial and contacted me about their opening for a priest. When I said I was handy with a hammer and a saw, that cinched it. The job was mine. Small salary. Lots of work.”

“Hah! Not everyone’s idea of heaven,” I said, laughing.

He grinned. “It’s perfect for me. Like hitting a home run with bases loaded.”

“I’m happy for you, James,” I said.

“You brought Birdie?” he asked me.

“Did I bring her? I thought you gave me a direct order. Bring the damned cat.”

James laughed like crazy, actually cracked up with a full-on, whole-body laugh.

He was nervous, too.

“Well, let’s get her, please,” he said when he got his breath back. “I’ll make you both something to eat before Mass.”

Chapter 83

THE RECTORY’S old oaken kitchen was as rough hewn and handsome as the whole of the church. James fried eggs, made toast and tea, and set out cat chow for Birdie.

When he sat down across from me, James began telling me about his concept for Jesus Mary Joseph, which he called JMJ.

“The idea here is that, while we embrace Catholic traditions, we’re way open to change. I didn’t step away from Mother Church for nothing.”

“What kind of change?” I asked.

“To start with, no one gets turned away,” he said. “We are inclusive, not exclusive. God loves everyone.”

“No argument from me,” I said.

“I’ll drink to that,” he said, clinking his teacup against mine. Then, without missing a beat, he said, “So, get this, Brigid. Despite the threat of excommunication, women are being ordained outside the laws of the Roman Catholic canon. I’m all for that.”

My mind kind of spun as I listened to James speak with passion and conviction about the role of women in the Church, same-sex marriage, and the inclusion of all people who wanted to know God. I saw that he was trying to bring at least his church into the real and modern world.

“I’ve been lecturing,” he said. “Sorry, Brigid. And look at the time. Come to Mass. Or just make yourself at home.”

James left the rectory, and a few minutes later, bells sounded out across the churchyard.

I washed my face, did the dishes, set Birdie up in the bathroom with a litter box. I fluffed my hair, straightened my pretty blue dress, and went to church.

My customary front pew was taken, but I was happy for once to sit in the back. I noticed right away that, unlike St. Paul’s, JMJ was filled with young couples, many with small children. Those bright faces of the young churchgoers filled me with hope.

James came through the side door of the church and went to the altar wearing dress pants and a dark-blue long-sleeved shirt with a collar, but no vestments.

A few people clapped and whistled. Someone called out, “Good morning, Father.”

He smiled and said, “Back at ya, Slade. But I’m no one’s father. Um, Ms. Mary Jane, texting can wait.”

Gentle laughter washed over the body of the church, and watching James begin the celebration of Mass his way gave me more of that hopeful feeling. The choir sang, accompanied by a boy playing an organ that was probably as old as the church. James led the service, praying in both Latin and English, tossing in his own commentary when he thought an explanation was in order. And, although the service was informal and very different from what I was accustomed to, praying to God in this place uplifted me.

Did God see all these joyful faces? Was He here?

I closed my eyes and opened myself to God without any hope of reaching Him. It had been a long time since I had floated on a burning sea from a hotel room in Jerusalem.

But He was with me. Soft rain misted my eyelids and my folded hands, a faint breeze ruffled my hair, and a single word came into my mind.

Home.

Chapter 84

THAT EVENING, James and I walked up through a wooded hillside behind the church. Leaves and residual snow crunched underfoot, and the three-quarter moon spilled pale light around us.

James was telling me about the angry letter he’d received from Cardinal Cooney’s attorneys-but I couldn’t concentrate on what he was saying.

I was in communication with God.

I put one foot in front of the other, following James under the milky moonlight and deep shadows thrown across the path by forest trees. The sensation I was having was unlike anything I’d felt before.

It was as if I were passing through the trees and they were also passing through me. I was insubstantial, and yet I was breathing, in the flesh and the moment, hearing James’s voice as we climbed up a wooded path.

James said, “Brigid, take my hand. This part of the walk is tricky.”

I took his hand, and I felt his solid grip. And at the same time, my fingers closed on my own palm. I thought, Dear Lord, what does this mean?

The air seemed to swirl around James and me.

God. Tell me, please. What is happening?

The sounds of the wind and the night birds and the crackling of sticks underfoot and God’s voice were all as one.

Be with James.

“Be with James”?

I remembered a time when I was speaking with God, and He said to me, Be with Colin. And I had gone to Colin within that vision and spoken with him, and he had spoken with me-even though Colin had already died.

James was alive.

I was in that place deep inside my mind where somehow, I could hear God, and I asked Him, Do you mean, be with James in the moment?

James was saying, “See that hump over there? That rocky outcropping? That’s where we’re going. Okay?”

The sense of God’s presence left me. I heard James’s voice clearly, and when he squeezed my hand, my fingers wrapped around his.

“Cool,” I said, in a voice that wasn’t quite my own.

James showed me footholds and held my hand until we were seated on top of the smooth hillock of stone.

“I feel very close to God right here,” he said.

I nodded. But I couldn’t speak.

“Boston is that way,” James said, pointing through a cleft in the woods. “Tell me about your job, how it’s going for you. I want to hear it all.”

“Will you hear my confession?” I asked him.

“Your confession, Brigid? Well. Not as your priest. I’m just James. And you can tell me anything.”

“As James, then,” I said. “It’s been many years since my last confession. I don’t actually remember the last time.”

“Just talk to me, Brigid,” James said. “I’m here.”

Be with James.

Chapter 85

I WAS sitting close to James on that mound of stone, feeling the pressure of his body against mine. The breeze was faint but entirely worldly. An owl hooted. Two deer, twigs snapping under their feet, bolted across the path below the outcropping.

“I once killed a man,” I said.

I credit James for not saying, You did what?

“Can you tell me what happened?” he asked me.

I didn’t want to look back to that killing field in South Sudan, but I had to do it. I had never told James anything about Colin, the hospital, the last day, when Colin insisted that I stay in the camp. But I told him all of it now.

“I defied him,” I told James. “And in doing so, I took a life and also became instrumental in Colin’s death.”

James said, “Brigid. Oh, my God. Poor Brigid. Go on.”

I told him about the injured boy I had been trying to protect and that an enemy soldier had rushed us.

“I shot him, James. I shot him dead. I never thought in my life that I would kill anyone. I have never killed a chicken or a fly, but this man was going to shoot. I swear to you. I swear to God.”

James put his arm around me and pulled me to him, and I pulled away.

“There’s more,” I said.

“Keep going,” he said. “I’m here.”

I told him about begging Colin to help me get the wounded boy off the field when a second helicopter had come in, firing down on us, and that bullets had gone through Colin’s chest. That he had died trying to speak, and that I had never-ending guilt about his death.

“Good God, Brigid. Of course you feel guilt. You loved him.”

“I did.”

As the moon floated ever higher into the sky, I told James about flashes of anger that I have had toward Karl for Tre’s death. “I know it wasn’t his fault,” I said.

James squeezed my hand, and I kept going. I told him about seeing my “father” the very day that I had met James for the first time. “He told me that he wasn’t my father and that he never loved me.

“I hate him,” I said. “He’s no one to me, and that’s the truth. But why am I still attached to him? I don’t need him, and I don’t want him, and I can’t forgive him for what he’s done.”

“He was your father, even if he was not your biological father. Isn’t that right, Brigid?”

I nodded, but I couldn’t look at James anymore.

Had I shocked him? Had I told him too much? Or not enough? I was still holding back. I forced myself to look into his beautiful face, and I said, “James, I have spoken with God.”

“Of course. Of course you have.”

“No, not just in my prayers. He has given me visions. He comes into my mind and conveys thoughts and words. I swear to you, it’s not a mental trick. I know this sounds crazy, but these-these thoughts that appear in my mind did not come from me. They came from God.”

“Brigid. The day I first saw you huddled in the front pew at St. Paul’s, hugging yourself, I knew there was something very”-he searched for a word-“godly about you,” he said. “I believe you hear from God. It has happened before to others who believe in Him. Tell me more.”

I told James about my God-given visions of the killing field and of Father Delahanty, about the multitude of birds and about the burning sea. But I didn’t tell him that only moments ago, God had put three words into my mind: Be with James.

I said, “He has told me to live my life to the full extent of it. That He can’t watch out for all of us all of the time. We have to take responsibility…”

My voice trailed off, and then James was saying, “How many lives did you save in that emergency room in South Sudan, Brigid? How many lives in Germany?”

“I never counted.”

“In your heart, have you done your best for the people you’ve touched?”

“I don’t know. Yes. I believe I have.”

“God has forgiven you-if there was ever anything to forgive. Can you forgive yourself? Can you love yourself as God loves you?”

I blurted, “I have feelings for you, James. And you’re a priest.”

He said, “Oh.”

He enfolded me in his arms, and I hugged him fiercely back, pressing my face to his jacket, not daring to lift my eyes and my lips to him. He held me for a long time before saying, “Do you trust me to get us safely out of these woods?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I’ve never made this trip in the dark before. With the help of God and a little moonlight, let’s give it a try.”

Chapter 86

I SHOWERED while James prepared dinner, and as I stood under the tepid spray, I thought about my vision while walking through the woods.

I had been passing through the trees and the trees had been passing through me, which seemed to mean that I was part of the woods, and maybe the world, as they were part of me. Moving through the living forest spoke to me of my passage through time and perhaps eternal passage and unity with all things.

I washed my hair and meditated on Be with James, which God had said in the same way I remembered him saying Be with Colin when Colin was dead. And still, in that vision, Colin had spoken to me.

I wondered now if Be with Colin and Be with James were ways of saying Be.

Be aware. Be conscious. Be present. Absorb everything. And, specifically, Be with James as he leads you through the woods to a high place where you open your heart and he hears you.

What did James think of me now?

I dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt and walked down the hallway to the kitchen, where soft lights shone on golden oak.

James was at the stove.

He turned, smiled, said to me, “I hope this is at least palatable.”

He dished up an aromatic stew and even put a small bowl of it down for Birdie. I was so hungry that my awkwardness with James fell away. The stew, the bread, the wine, it was all delicious, and after dinner, we played with Birdie, who couldn’t stop looking at James.

“She remembers you,” I said.

“But of course. I took her out of a garbage can. Didn’t I, Birdie? Fetch,” he said, throwing a ball of paper, and she brought it right back.

James said, “Brigid, the dishes can wait. Let’s go outside. Put on your jacket.”

We sat together on the rectory steps watching the light traffic. A couple walking by waved to James.

I was conscious of all that, but my mind was on James. I had told him that I had feelings for him. He was a priest and had taken vows of celibacy. Clearly, he cared about me, but not in the same way I was feeling. He cared about me as a shepherd cared about a lamb in his flock.

I leaned away from him and said, “James, if I leave now, I can be in Cambridge by midnight.”

He said, “No way, Brigid. What’s the point of driving two hours at night when I have a perfectly good second bedroom with a semidecent bed? Will you stay? I’m not ready to say good-bye to you again. Okay?”

“Sure,” I said.

He said, “Brigid, I’m not a priest as defined by Rome. Not anymore. I’m just James.”

“What does that mean?”

He reached his arm around me, pulled me close, and then he kissed me. As I marveled at the feeling of that kiss, he kissed me again, and I kissed him back and I stopped thinking.

James said, “You’re always in my thoughts, you know.”

I blinked up at him. He was so familiar to me, and at the same time, I had never spent time like this with him before.

“Do you think you could love me?” he asked.

I blinked some more. Could I love him?

“Could I love you? Do you not see me staring at you with big moony eyes?”

He grinned. “How do my eyes look to you?”

“Moony,” we said together. We laughed and then James released me.

He closed his eyes and folded his hands. And after a moment, he stood up, reached his hand down to me, and helped me to my feet. I didn’t want to ever stop holding his hand.

When we walked through the door to his bedroom, I heard the words in my head.

Be with James.

With the help of God, that was what I would do.