The Presence (2 page)

"Catherine took it hard," Grandma would have said. "She and Kirsty were very close. The poor child felt so guilty. Heaven knows why."

Heaven knew why. And so did I.

"It's OK," I told Rita. "No need to watch what you say around me. Honest! I'm getting over it."

There was a silence in the office except for the tick of that humungous clock.

"So why don't you and Arthur go have a look at the sanctuary, sweetheart?" Grandma said gently, and Arthur immediately set down his paper cup.

The numbing chill followed us into the lobby.

"The church is made of stone and old bricks," Arthur said. "I think that's why we get these sudden updrafts of cold air. Cracks in the mortar, you know. Last earthquake..." He stopped for effect. "Last earthquake, the church got shaken up. We lost part of the steeple. Now we're told we need a retrofit, but that takes money, something we always seem to be short of."

I nodded.

"We're very proud of St. Matthew's," he added. "Last spring it was designated a historic monument."

"Grandma told me," I said.

He pushed open the swinging doors that led into the sanctuary, which I'd looked down at from the gallery. I drew in my breath. What a lovely, serene place. The old oak floor gleamed, the dark wooden pews shone, and the high, high ceiling spread its blessing above us. Stained' glass windows, bright and jeweled, dropped colored patterns on the white walls. I could be at peace here, I thought. This place could soothe my guilt. Instinctively, I lowered myself into one of the pews and closed my eyes.

"I'll just leave you to yourself for a few minutes," Arthur whispered, and I heard him tiptoe away from me, heard the small
whoosh
as the doors swung closed behind him. He knew what had happened, of course. He'd heard the exchange between Maureen and me. But even without that, he would have known from my grandmother how sad and miserable I was, and he had faith in the power of this holy quiet to comfort me.

I tried to push away the thoughts that came crowding into my head. Be at peace, I told myself. But it wasn't going to be that easy, even here. So think about something else—that voice, that unseen person. I shivered and took a quick, nervous glance around the empty sanctuary. Don't think about that, either. OK. Think about Mom and Dad.

"Going to Grandma's will be good for you," Mom had told me.

"I don't think I want to go. I won't be able to be cheerful."

"It's so rotten to be leaving you at Christmas," Mom said. "You know we tried to turn it down. But Dad's firm—well.... Anyway..." she'd added vaguely. "Dr. West thinks it will be for the best."

Dad stroked my hair. "Grandma won't expect you to be cheerful. You'll be comfortable with her, the way you always are."

My mind jumped to the drive through the early-morning streets of Chicago. Snow piled up, dirty on the sides of State Street. Christmas banners blowing in the frigid wind. The plane. The delay while they defrosted the wings, and then defrosted them again. Grandma waiting for me at the airport in Los Angeles, driving me through the city, where there was no snow, only palm trees and traffic and bustle and sunshine. Same world, I'd thought. Just different. Better for me for a while.

My legs ached where they had been broken, and I realized I'd slipped onto my knees. I straightened and rubbed at the pain. My chest ached, too, where my ribs had cracked. I concentrated on slowing my breathing.

"Catherine!" Such a soft voice, gentle.

I jerked upright, holding on to the seat in front. Same voice. Same.

My heart began a slow, steady thumping. It must be someone carefully hidden.

"Please,
please
don't do this to me," I whimpered, but my words seemed to fall one by one, soundlessly in the empty space. I clawed my way out of the pew.

The Presence watched her hack along the aisle toward the door. He saw the terror in her eyes. Foolish to scare her like that. He'd scared others before her and suffered the consequences. He needed to let her sense him first, let his being fill her slowly.

When he'd spoken to her up in the gallery, her name had spilled from him because there was so much joy in his heart that she'd come at last. He'd told himself he wouldn't say anything more, not yet, not until he'd made her aware.

But when he'd seen her kneeling, her head bowed, her hair draped forward, his feelings had overflowed. He'd seen the tender paleness of the back of her neck, and there'd been this sudden need in him to say her name. He'd given in to that need. He'd been imprudent to rush. No hurry, after all. She thought she was only here for a few days, but it would be more. They had all the time in the world.

"Hey! Watch it!" Hands gripped my shoulders from behind. "Do you always walk backward?"

"No!" I shouted, twisting around.

"Wait a sec! You're all right," the guy said. He let go of me. "Calm down. I'm Collin, and I know you're Catherine. I've seen your picture."

I couldn't focus on what he was saying, and I stared, hypnotized, at the doors into the sanctuary, closed now but swinging slightly where I'd pushed through them.

"I'm here to take you and your grandma to get the poinsettias," he said.

"I was in ... in there," I told him. "I didn't realize someone else was in the church, too."

"You saw someone?"

I shook my head. "No. Someone spoke." My heart' beat was slowing, but my hands were still clammy with fear. I rubbed them down the sides of my jeans and made myself look up at Collin Miller. He was very tall and skinny. That was all I could take in.

"It's OK, you know. Whoever's in there is probably harmless. I'll go take a look."

They were almost the same words Arthur had said to me as he went up the stairs to the gallery. Uncertainty filled me. I couldn't stand it if I was having some kind of relapse, another bout of that posttraumatic stress Dr. West talked about.

"Sometimes someone comes in the church to pray or rest or whatever," Collin went on.

"Like possums, raccoons, or skunks," I muttered.

"What?"

"Nothing."

"We keep the front door open when there's someone in the office, although we've had our silver candlesticks stolen twice. Manuel, our caretaker, has even had his Sunday clothes stolen from the choir room." He shook his head in mock horror. "But we forgive those that trespass. Church policy."

This time I managed a nervous smile. He was wearing a white sweatshirt with the sleeves chopped off. His hair was straight and blond.

He grinned down at me. "Checking me out?"

I gave a little shrug.

"Only kidding." He seemed a little embarrassed. "Don't worry about it. I've been checking you out, too."

I shrugged again, not caring what he thought of me.

"So you stay, I'll go," he said, stepping past me to push on the doors.

"No, wait." I moved after him. "I want to come, too." I didn't want to. I didn't even want to be here in the church. But it was good to confront things that terrified you, things that were there and things that weren't. Like Kirsty's whispers. That's what Dr. West had said.

"Don't shy away from what happened, Catherine," she'd said. "Look at it."

"I can't," I'd wailed. "All I see is blood. All I hear are her moans, and her awful, awful silence. I still hear her, and I still hear the silence when I waken."

"Have you ever tried to speak to her?" Dr. West's voice, so quiet and reassuring.

"No. I wake up and I'm drenched with sweat, the bed is soaked. I just about crawl to the bathroom. You don't know, you can't know, how awful..." Why do I have to sound so surly? I don't mean to. But Dr. West never takes offense.

"I think one night you and she will talk," she'd said.

I'd smiled sarcastically. "I suppose it's a part of facing up to things." That's Dr. West's mantra, her solution to everything.

"Yes," she'd said.

So I was going back into the sanctuary now. See, Dr. West? See how I'm trying?

I followed Collin through the swinging doors.

The sanctuary lay filled with time and emptiness, and its old silence.

"Anybody here?" Collin called cheerfully.

My words, repeating themselves, again and again.

No one answered. Again.

"Whoever it was has gone," he said.

I clutched at the side of a pew. "But how could he get past us?"

"Oh, there's a back door. It's supposed to be kept locked, but a lot of the time it isn't." He rubbed his arms. "It's always cold in here when it's empty. Sometimes even when it's full. Right now it's freezing. Are you cold?"

I nodded. Cold and frightened.

Collin waited for me to go out ahead of him, and I was glad to have him between me and the waiting, watching church. I pushed so hard on the door it swung back and bumped my face.

"Easy there. Easy, Catherine," Collin said.

As the doors closed behind us, I thought I heard a sigh and felt a cold breath that stirred my hair.

Grandma stood in the vestibule, waiting, her mammoth-sized purse over her shoulder. "Hi, Collin. We thought we heard you. Well, I see you two have met. Isn't our church beautiful, Catherine?"

"Very," I said. "I remember it a bit."

Grandma smiled. "I doubt that. Catherine was christened here, seventeen years ago," she told Collin.

"Good memory, then," he said. "How come you haven't been back?"

Grandma answered for me. "Oh, I usually go to them." She paused. "Your mom was here, though, Catherine, the summer you went to Scotland by yourself."

I nodded.

"Scotland? By yourself? When was that? Were you—" Collin began.

But Grandma interrupted. Scotland was a dangerous subject, and she knew it. Right now she'd be wondering why she'd mentioned it in the first place. "Are we ready?" she asked briskly. "If I don't get out of here, Rita will have another computer problem and I'll be stuck again."

"My truck's parked right in front," Collin said.

We called our goodbyes into the office and left.

Grandma consulted the slip of paper she took from the outside pocket of her purse. "Thirty-six poinsettias," she muttered as she walked down the front steps. "They should be there and waiting for us. All we have to do is go into the back parking lot, pay for them, and pick them up."

Collin put out a hand to help her into the front seat, but she hopped herself in ahead of him. He gave me a quick lifted eyebrow that asked, "What was I even thinking, wanting to help this lady?"

I sat next to the door as we drove through the Christmasy streets of Pasadena. Fat Santas chimed their bells, and volunteers rattled their Salvation Army buckets. Twinkling lights hung from the sky—and the tall palm trees. The sun shone and shone. It would be dull and gray in Illinois, two hours ahead of California by the clock, steeped in snow and winter cold. Hard to imagine.

I looked down at Collin's bare legs in his cutoff jeans. They were the longest legs I'd ever seen, and his feet in grungy sneakers were gigantic.

"Big as Sheltie shovels," Kirsty would have said.

I stared out the window.

"Here we are," Grandma said at last. "The Garden Shop."

Collin stopped and opened the other door for the two of us to slide out. I noticed that he let Grandma do her own thing, which she did without any trouble.

The parking lot was as big as a football field, filled with cut Christmas trees, giant pots of chrysanthemums, and holly. The earth and pine-tree smells reminded me of a place Kirsty and I had gone picnicking in the Hebrides, but it had been damp and mushy underfoot there, not hard concrete the way it was here. We'd taken off our shoes and danced, holding hands. We'd draped ourselves with daisy chains.

And why did I have to keep thinking stuff like this? My throat stung. If only I could turn time back to then.

I took a shaky breath, and Grandma squeezed my arm. "OK, sweetheart?" she asked softly, and I nodded.

Collin had wandered a little ways away from us. "I bet those are ours," he called, pointing to a group of poinsettias arranged in three rows. "Twelve, twelve, and twelve. Thirty-six, right?"

"Right," Grandma said. "I'll go pay, and you can load them up."

We stood, waiting. "It's hard to believe, bougainvillea blooming in December," I said, to make conversation. "And what's this?"

"Oleander," Collin said.

Grandma was back. "Those
are
ours, Collin, and I've paid."

I suddenly realized that a very old lady in a wheelchair was staring at me. Her stare made me uncomfortable. I should have been used to this kind of attention by now—I'd certainly had plenty of it—but it still made me cringe. Surely the woman hadn't recognized me from the newspaper picture? That was six months old by now, and in the
Tribune
in faraway Chicago. The nurse who was pushing the wheelchair started to move her on, but the old lady lifted an imperious hand.

"Hi," I said gently.

She kept staring and staring. Her mouth quivered.

I was wondering if it would be rude to walk away when Grandma leaned forward and said, "Why, it's Miss Lottie Lovelace. How nice to see you."

Miss Lovelace had bird legs in white stockings, and her feet on the wheelchair rail were encased in heavy black lace-up shoes. She wore a ton of makeup, bright pink blusher and green eyeshadow. Her high swirl of hair was the color of whipped cream.

"Do you remember me, Miss Lovelace?" Grandma was asking in that loud voice that people use when talking to the very old.

Miss Lovelace didn't seem to hear. Maybe she was deaf? Her little eyes, sunken in folds of old flesh, watched me carefully. The eyes were bright and intelligent.

The nurse hovered uncertainly behind her.

"Miss Lovelace used to go to St. Matthew's," Grandma boomed. "But that was a long time ago, right, Miss Lovelace? Are you still living over on Rosemont?"

The old lady's hand wavered out as if to touch me, then drew back.

"This is my granddaughter, Catherine," Grandma shouted. "She's come to visit."

Miss Lovelace's face twitched. The skin on her cheeks trembled. She crooked a finger, motioning me to come closer.