“Oh, yeah.” I nod. “Mhm.”
“Your Boston bees will be so happy.” He tilts his head slightly. “And this that they made—did you see?” From the desk, he takes up one something from a small plate: a rose, shaped out of thin half-moons of apple slices skewered in place. A decoration from the buffet outside. “They’ve cut these apples into flowers.”
He turns it over in his fingers, as if he’s feeling out that it’s solidly real.
“Yeah,” I agree. “It’s really nice. They did a really…nice job.”
I sit, hands on my knees, feeling awkward. Feeling like maybe someone should know that I’m here, that I’m doing this—talking with him, even though so far all we’ve discussed is the weather and the food. The rectory feels somehow cramped, stuffy, even though it’s a big room and the window is cranked open a few inches for air.
“I know you have not had occasion to speak with any of our order on your own.” I sit up a little straighter—it’s like he’s reading my mind. “The others all have—as oblates. It is our regret that we did not think to get to know you sooner, CallahanThomas.” I can’t see his face, but I get the sense that he’s got one of those polite,terribly sorrykind of smiles going.
“It’s okay,” I say. From what I know of what went on at the monastery, the weeks the three of them were there before they took their vows, it didn’t really sound like a vacation. Although it would have been nice to see France, I guess.
Mom had always wanted to.
I rub the edge of my thumb over the base of my forefinger, catching the edge of the ring.
“Regardless, now you are here.” He folds his hands in his lap. “And we are so pleased to be able to do this small gesture for you.”
This small gesture. “This was you?” I glance at the window—not that I can really see anything through the pebbled glass. “The garden.”
The brother nods. “Indeed.”
“But…” I tense my hands on my knees slightly. Hundreds of thousands of dollars, Father Mendez said. More than they knew what to do with. How did?—
“Our daily lives may be poor, but our beneficence is amply funded,” the brother says. Again I wonder if he can read my mind. Or maybe I’m just an easy mark.
You’re a terrible liar, Cal.
Even thinking of Lanz makes my face get hot.
Even now.
“We are fortunate to be in a position where a great many generous donors bequeath us significant worldly gifts,” he goes on, “which we may, in turn, pass to those truly in need.”
So rich people give them money, I translate. That makes sense.
“Well, I…” I don’t quite know what to say. “Um, thank you.”
“Thanks,” the brother says, “are due only to God.”
But he bows his head. Keeps it bowed, like a little longer than would be normal.
I don’t know where this conversation is going. But it’s making me nervous.
“We wish that we had been able to train you in Avignon, Callahan Thomas,” he says. “Fervently.”
“Oh yeah?” I wonder if he means because I’m not quite as good a fencer as the others. I’m good—very good, better even than Lanz at epee because of my reach. But it’s true; I haven’t had the years and years of experience the others have. “I try to train really hard,” I say, by way of apology. “But there’s only so much you can do to catch up, I guess, when the other guys have been fencing for?—”
The brother shakes his head, brushing a white-gloved hand through the air. “Not only for the bladework. For all of it. The discipline.”
I sit very quietly.
If I don’t think about Lanz, then he’ll never be able to tell I’m thinking about Lanz.
But if I try not to think about him, I just think about him even more.
And that goes doubly true when I put Gwenna in the mix.
