Page 57 of Play Nice

18

When I dream, I hear my mother’s voice. That’s how I know I’m dreaming, because even asleep I know she’s dead.

Father Bernard arrived the next morning before I could get the girls to school.

Elle, Dee, and Cici were at the kitchen table eating oatmeal when the doorbell rang. They perked up, curious.

“This is my visitor and my personal business,” I told them. “No one likes a busybody.”

“What’s a busybody?” Elle asked me.

I suspect she’s the one who told your father.

“A gossip.”

I went down and answered the door.

Father Bernard was an old man, well into his seventies. He was completely bald but had long, dark, bristly eyebrows, like black widows glued to his face. Like Father John, he was dressed in all black, except for the white of his clerical collar. Unlike Father John, he came without a hat. And without manners.

“Good morning, Father,” I said.

He grunted. “Ms. Barnes.”

“Alexandra. Please, come in,” I said.

Our call the night before was short. He didn’t provide details other than he’d spoken to Father John about the house and that he would come by in the morning.

He crossed himself before coming inside.

He winced the second he stepped into the foyer. Then he sniffed the air. Two exaggerated inhales, crinkling his nose.

It was incredibly, unabashedly rude.

“Sulfur. Excrement.”

“Excuse me?”

He shook his head. “I’m not welcome here. The presence is making it known. Trying to repel me. It’s powerful.”

I was shocked to receive such immediate validation.

“ ‘The presence’?” I asked.

He ignored me, waving a hand as if I were a gnat. He looked past me, down the stairs, then up the stairs, then down the stairs, as if debating which way to go. A sort of purgatory there on the landing.

He clutched a Bible to his chest and started upstairs.

“My girls,” I whispered, following at his heels. “They don’t know.”

“Very well,” he said.

When we reached the top of the stairs, we found the girls gathered around the dining table. They’d moved their chairs closer together and were glowering at us like a little pack of wolves.

“Hello there,” Father Bernard said, his tone artificially cheery. I was grateful he wasn’t as brash with the girls as he was with me but knew they would be able to see right through him. I’d taught them to be skeptical of strangers, done what I could to nurture their intuition.

Sure enough, they narrowed their eyes at him.

Cici, in particular, was never afraid of being perceived as ill-mannered. “Who are you?”