One More Day (19 page)

The former parish house was an attached row home, so it was never considered large. But it was even smaller than Carrie remembered it, the porch narrower, the steps shorter, uneven, cracked. In this part of town, near her old house, just beyond the reach of the tonier Main Line suburbs, houses could look peeling and sagging, on the verge of becoming slums, or be bright and cheerful as oversize Monopoly houses, depending on what street you were on. This block, not far from the commercial district, had been home to the maids and livery men for some of the larger, older houses, and the people who owned them tended to them carefully, as if trying to overcome their heritage. Mrs. Harrison had told Carrie that once, and her husband had come downstairs at that moment, smiled, and said that was what drew him there—that he was a servant too. A servant of God.

Reverend and Mrs. Harrison still lived there, even though they'd retired from the parish a long time before; Carrie knew that. She had kept track of them all these years just in case they moved or, God forbid, changed professions and took her secret like a suitcase to somewhere more worrisome to her, more prone to leaks.

She walked up to the house nervously, palms sweating, worried that he'd changed, that he would regret forgiving her. She told herself she was being silly, but her body didn't listen.

She knocked a few times before she heard footsteps. A man she didn't recognize answered the door. He wore a collar and dark pants, and when he offered his hand, she hesitated; she didn't want to take it without knowing exactly who he was.

“I'm the new priest,” he said as if he understood. “Are you a former parishioner? I don't recognize you from service.”

She smiled. She supposed priests weren't as up on local news and infamous residents of the county as other people were.
Or maybe he's just being nice.

“I moved away,” she said. “I go to another church nearby.”

John's parish had always felt safer than her own. There weren't any girls from high school at John's. And there was no Father Paul, who knew too much.

Carrie glanced at the electronic chair mounted to the stairway.

“He needs a little help getting around,” the priest said. “But he's in denial about it.”

She nodded and said she'd love to see him, if he was up to a visit.

“He's in his study,” the priest said. “I'm sure he'll be glad to have company.”

A few minutes later, the electronic chair buzzed, and she watched as her old priest descended the stairs, the younger man walking slowly alongside him, as if he needed even more assistance than the chair could provide.

Reverend Paul Harrison had a small, impish face; even in his dotage, he looked a bit like a mischievous boy. He smiled broadly when he saw Carrie, and she couldn't help smiling back.

“Carrie,” he said.

“Father Paul.”

“Oh, I do so love to be called that again. Everyone is so formal these days. So few of you left who I know well.”

Carrie couldn't imagine that was the case. Did anyone on the Main Line really move far? But she humored him, hugged him when he stood, and let him grip her arm as they walked into the small sitting room. The other priest murmured his good-byes and closed the narrow door after offering tea, which Carrie declined.

It took Father Paul a while to sit down, which made Carrie worry about how long it might take him to get up. She asked if his wife was home, and he said yes, and she was glad there were two other adults nearby in case she needed help.

“I was wondering when you'd come,” Father Paul said quietly. “Given your troubles.”

“Well, you know I go to another church now.”

“Saint David's.”

“Yes.”

“Reverend Carson is a good man.”

Carrie nodded.

“But he doesn't know you like I know you.”

She started to tremble. Something sinister about the truth of those words.

“No,” she whispered.

She thought of that night she'd come to him, a few days after giving birth. Shivering in the rain as she'd knocked on the door to the cottage that was his office. She'd waited until Friday, when she knew everyone would be gone and he'd sit down that evening to write his Sunday sermon. He always did that on Friday night, alone. She'd almost felt she didn't need to tell him. He looked at her as if he could see it all, feel the ragged flesh, still so tender, hear the blood dripping down onto the extra-large pads she'd had to send Ethan out to buy. At moments like that, Carrie could believe that not only God was all knowing, but also that people who believed were too. He offered to call a doctor, but she said no. He insisted on taking her temperature and was visibly relieved that it was normal. He asked the questions a nurse would ask: Had she delivered the placenta? Were there clean towels and sterile instruments? Worried about her health first and everything else later. Never a question about the baby—she'd told him Ethan had taken him to Safe Cradle, and he'd nodded. His questions were only about her, her soul, her fresh start. He'd said a prayer over her head and told her she would be forgiven, but that truly, there was nothing to forgive. She still remembered his words:
A thousand other girls wouldn't have had the courage to do what you did.
And when she'd blubbered back to him,
But I lied to my mother. I lied to everyone,
he'd held up his hand to stop her.
You did not lie to yourself. Or to God.

“The police were here again yesterday,” he said, bringing her attention back.

Her throat constricted, and she tried clearing it, but everything she wanted to say was caught inside her.

“Again?”

“Yes. They came once before.”

“Father, I hope that you—”

“Didn't tell them? Of course not, child. I don't know what they thought they'd accomplish—that I'd forget my duties to my parish? That retirement was relinquishment? It's your secret to tell, and you've already told God. All they have is a whisper of a rumor, from a few of those misguided girls you went to high school with. Said you were weird and started dressing differently. The last time I checked, that's not a sin or a crime.”

“No, it's not that. I hope you still…believe in me.”

“Oh, of course I do. I always did, and then, well…my faith was bolstered, you might say.”

“Father, I, um, I've been having some very strange…visions.”

“Visions?”

“Or visitations, I guess you'd call them.”

“From God?”

“No. From…spirits.” She explained, but in the barest terms. Leaving out the parts about who and what—like her dog, lest he think she'd lost her mind, as John did.

He nodded carefully, seriously. He said that although it had never happened to him personally, it had happened to other priests and lay people he knew.

“So it does happen?”

“Yes. Depending on who you listen to and what you believe, it happens with great regularity.”

“Father,” she said, “one of the people who came to me was…Ethan.”

“Ethan Lawrence?”

“Yes.”

He shut his eyes tightly, then nodded. “So he told you then? About your child?”

“What? Wait—you knew?”

“Ethan came to me right before you did. The very same day.”

Carrie's skin felt hot; she wanted to tear it off, start over, walk away with a new facade.
Father Paul had known? And hadn't said?

That night, when he'd walked her to the door of his office, he'd said something so cryptic, odd. He'd hugged her and said that he was sure she would move on from this, that she'd find the courage to go on to have children someday when she was ready.

“Me and Ethan,” she'd said.

And he'd said, “No, you. I hope you go on.” As if he hadn't approved. As if he preferred her to Ethan.

Now she knew; Ethan had told him. He'd told him first, a secret impossible to keep long, because his sin was larger.

“Oh, Father,” she cried, “you have to tell this to the police. Call them back!”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Otherwise, I'm afraid they'll find out and go to Safe Cradle. They'll put two and two together and think
I
did it. And did it
again
with Ben!”

“Dear child, I can't share Ethan's secret.”

“Yes, you can! He's dead! And he loved me. He wouldn't want me blamed for what he did!”

“I can't trade the sins of one member of the flock for another, Carrie.”

She started to cry, softly at first, then harder. He touched her shoulder tenderly, held it there, like he was covering a wound, until she finally stopped.

“But I also won't tell them what you told me. No one will know,” he said. “No one but you. And Safe Cradle won't tell them either, I assure you.”

He picked up a box of tissues from the table and brandished it in her direction. She took one and wiped her eyes, dabbed at her nose, then held it tight in her fist.

“Can you…tell me how to make the visions stop then? Is there some prayer, some way, to make them stop? Like an exorcism?”

He blinked slowly, so slowly that his eyes disappeared in between.

“What you are referring to…it's a gift, Carrie. You just have to see it as such.”

“So I should share them? Try telling more people about them? Because,” she said as she screwed up her face, “so far, people just seem to think I'm crazy.”

“Perhaps you can use them to your advantage without talking about them, my dear.”

She blinked, and he reached for her hands.

“Don't give these damned Main Line snobs another reason to think you're different.”

“Father Paul!”

He laughed at her shock, waved away her concerns. “I'm old enough now to say what I please. And when you're a priest, everyone hangs on your words, believes them. But not when you're a young, pretty girl. If I stepped up to the lectern and told people you were receiving communications from the beyond, they'd believe it. But you? You have to be more careful.”

“I don't know how.”

“To be careful?”

“No, to…make use of it.”

He drew a deep breath in, and his smile grew as the breath filled his body. Carrie had always liked that about him, how he seemed to draw pleasure from the simplest things, like breathing, holding a cup of warm tea, or watching a bird fly overhead.

“You'll figure out a way.”

She nodded and sighed. “I suppose you're going to tell me to be patient.”

He laughed. How many times, over the years, had he told a young person to be patient, to wait it out, that it would all turn out all right, if they just waited and trusted?

“I'm glad you were listening,” he said. “Now, I have to rest, but do you promise to come back once in a while and tell me how you're doing? Not wait a dozen years? Because let's face it,” he said as he stood up on wobbly knees. “I certainly can't be as patient as I used to be.”

She nodded her promise. They walked into the foyer and said their good-byes. When she leaned in to hug him, she was relieved to smell nothing but the lime of his soap and the metallic tang of tonic combed through his hair. Clean. He smelled clean, and he smelled well, despite his protests.

She walked down the steps, and when she turned at the end of the sidewalk and offered one more wave, his face was blurred through the last of her tears, faded, like an old fresco.

Carrie's mother, Danielle, wasn't surprised when John called her back. She also wasn't surprised when he offered to pay the difference to change her flight and to pick her up at the airport. She assumed they'd changed their minds, that they were taking her up on her offer to come early, that her daughter had realized she needed her before the memorial service. She didn't think anything suspicious about it until her plane landed and John appeared at the gate without Carrie in tow.

John's head bobbed above the others, but he was looking out the long bank of windows leading to baggage claim. Distracted, like a boy might be. Or worried. He smiled when he saw her and hugged her when she came up next to him, reaching for the strap of her carry-on, insisting. Nothing wrong exactly, as he asked if she had a good flight and she said yes, but he had trouble looking her in the eye.

“Where's Carrie?”

“Oh, she'll meet us at home.”

He struggled to continue the conversation beyond the banalities he might say to anyone. She and John had never had trouble talking before. It had always seemed her son-in-law understood her better than her own child. Danielle could imagine their conversations at night, Carrie explaining the disagreements between mother and daughter, differences over the years, and John telling her it didn't sound that bad to him. It didn't sound that bad to anyone, Danielle thought; a single mother struggling to do the best she could was the way anyone else would look back on it. But Carrie had pulled away in high school and never fully come around again, and Danielle knew she was the reason. Something she did or didn't do.

They walked down the long white corridor toward baggage claim, John's loafers squeaking a little, like they were wet. Danielle's boots were light and quiet in comparison, even though she had to put in extra steps to keep pace with his long gait. No matter—she was short and used to hurrying, always running late, always stuck behind a slow Florida driver when she needed to get to an open house.

The conveyor creaked, the bags slid down their silvery path, and they waited for hers. Every possible shape and size of black bag was represented. An occasional green or blue to break things up.

“Mine has a pink ribbon tied to it,” Danielle said, and he nodded. John didn't speak while they looked for the bag. She knew how things worked, how men worked in particular. Knew that she'd have the best chance when they got out to the car.

John shouldered both bags, and she let him, and they walked out to his car with only one of them overburdened. They exited the airport, an endless loop that felt like circling the sun, and when they were at last on I-95, she saw her opportunity and asked him gently what was wrong.

“Wrong?” he asked dumbly. Unspoken:
Wasn't finding our son's body wrong enough, Danielle?

“Oh, I know everything must seem wrong right now. But I meant something wrong beyond Ben, beyond the obvious.”

He was silent. If he hadn't been driving, he would have looked at his shoes.

“Maybe something wrong…between you and Carrie?”

“Oh, no. Not really.”

“But, John, is there a particular reason I've come early is what I'm asking. Other than general support.”

“Well…Carrie's really, really not doing well.”

She sniffed, nodded. How could she be? It was one thing to lose your child instantly, from an accident or illness. It was another to get used to the idea, slowly losing every drop of hope, before it was confirmed, suddenly snapping into place. How did she ever get used to it?

“Is she still seeing the therapist?”

“Yes, but reluctantly.” He glanced at his watch. “I think she's actually still with him now.”

Danielle's eyes rested on John as he drove, taking him in. She knew he was holding back.

“I'm happy to help with anything that needs to be done, John.”

“Oh, it's all done, Danielle.” He sighed.

He rubbed one hand across his eyes as he drove, which made Danielle nervous. Her ex-husband Robert had always done that—rubbed his eyes, yawned, blinked widely as if he could fall asleep at the wheel at any second.

“What's all done?”

“Everything—the funeral, flowers.”

“No, can't be. When I spoke to her last, she said I could help her—”

“No, she did everything months ago.”

“
Months?
”

“Preplanned the whole thing. Yeah, the detectives had a field day with that.”

“But she said—”

“Well, Danielle, she doesn't always tell the truth.”

There was a heaviness in John's voice, a weariness tucked inside the word
truth
that she'd never heard before. She had to remember that he was grieving too. Putting one foot in front of the other, doing what needed to be done, like calling her and picking her up at the airport. But doing it all with an arrow in his back.

“Well,” Danielle said, “I guess she needed something to keep her busy.”

“Right,” he said flatly.

“You have an office to escape to, John, and she doesn't.”

He shrugged. He'd heard that excuse from Carrie too many times already.

“At its core, planning a funeral is just busywork. It's not very different from planning a dinner party or cleaning or running errands. Or making flight arrangements and driving out-of-town guests, John.”

“But the timing.” He shook his head. “Who would do that in advance?”

“She needed distraction.”

“She could have gotten a job, Danielle. Or a dog.”

“Those are both things you can lose, John.”

He sighed deeply, slowly. Then he nodded. “Never thought of it that way,” he said, then turned to her and smiled. “See, that's why you're here. You understand her.”

She nodded slowly. “Yes, but I don't know that Carrie wants to be understood.”

“What do you mean?”

She sighed, stopped, looked out the window. The leaves on the trees danced in the breeze, threatening to tumble. She thought there would be color by now. Autumn was something she missed in Florida, but it was like missing a comet—so damned fleeting. And you never, ever knew precisely when it would arrive.

“I mean she has trouble being close to people. Never had a gaggle of girlfriends in high school, not anyone close. And who does she keep in touch with from college, really, besides you? Carrie always pulls away from people who know her best.”

“Danielle,” John said, “you've just described women in general, don't you think?”

“Maybe,” she said. Certainly she was describing herself as well.