LITMIR.BIZ

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that might make it rest a lot easier on his mind when he was later drifting under tropical sunshine in that fishing boat of his...and the cold beer...and maybe even a sun-tanned woman with inviting eyes...

      He could hear footsteps coming from the kitchen. It was time to let these pictures flicker out. Spring hunting season for wild turkeys was opening next week. He would get himself up the mountain in the early mornings and play that game instead of this one. Because after all, he was a decent man.

      The revolving door swung open from the kitchen and Gail’s nose twitched as she gave him a curious look. “Still sittin’ here? Cigar smells marvelous. What are they doing these days, wrapping them in rat skin?”

      CHAPTER SEVEN

      MOTHER AND DAUGHTER

      Father Mancuso hated his doorbell. It didn’t ring like a normal bell should but instead buzzed and rattled as though you were being descended upon by wasps and rattlesnakes at the same time. As always, he startled badly when he heard its dreadful racket, startled even more than usual because he had been in the process of leaving and hardly expected anyone to be arriving so early in the morning. He had been about to visit Mrs. Cogan who had Alzheimers and would call him by her son’s name. She had always hoped her only son might become a priest himself. Instead he had become a bookie down in Albany. He had not been able to survive the advent of off-track-betting and had died young of dissipation. Mrs. Cogan had never quite got over the disappointment. For the late Mr. Cogan, the disappointment had not been so much that his son had gone crooked and lazy, but that he had failed even at those modest ambitions. Since Mr. Cogan had died, his wife had taken to speaking loudly and often to him—more often than when he had been alive—directing her comments to an empty chair across from the couch she seldom left anymore. When she did this in Father Mancuso’s presence, the priest had a hard time hiding a bad case of the creeps.

      This being the case, Father Mancuso was not terribly disappointed that his visit might be delayed by whoever might be ringing his doorbell. As he moved toward the door, he saw a copy of the April Readers Digest on the floor. His back was in its usual stiff and sore early morning condition, and so rather than bending down to pick it up, he kicked it under the chair, shouting “goal” as it accurately passed between the legs and disappeared underneath. The doorbell rattled annoyingly again and he hurried on to answer it.

      The woman at the door was a stranger to him and he guessed also a stranger to these parts. You just didn’t see women in full length fur coats around Cedar Falls. Father Mancuso knew little about fur other than it was expensive and becoming offensive to some people. She was somewhere in her middle years but she looked like she had the means and the know-how to wage a successful battle against the ravages of time and gravity. There were gold hoop earrings hanging below her neatly coiffed auburn hair and a pleasant scent of perfume as she held out her hand.

      Anna Kilgallen was her name and when Father Mancuso led her into his parlor, she sat down and gracefully crossed her nice legs in a manner that suggested to the priest that she might next produce a cigarette in a long ivory holder from her leather purse. But she did not. Throughout the initial amenities, she flashed rapid little smiles between sentences, revealing a nervous unease.

      “I know I should have called you first and in fact I did call last night but there was no answer. I thought I would just come in person and hope to catch you this morning. You can spare me a few minutes, Father?”

      “Of course.”

      “I’ll get right to the point. My daughter is missing; has been for some years actually.”

      “Oh, I’m so sorry. And what is the child’s age?”

      “Christy would be twenty-one now. She was eighteen when she left us.” There was a brief constricted smile. “I find it difficult to speak of this, Father. It’s not a pretty story and my own role was hardly stellar I’m sorry to say. This is all very hard.”

      Anna Kilgallen struck the priest as someone who had generally gotten what she wanted in life; not one to be plagued by difficulties or to suffer them gladly. But in this case she had gotten every parent’s nightmare—a lost child. He smiled in what he hoped was a reassuring manner. “Please remember that I have been regularly hearing confessions for over twenty years. I have been privy to most of the foibles and mistakes we are all prone to in God’s world. And of course our conversation can be strictly confidential if you wish it so.”

      Her smile came again, a smile that had no doubt gained her much in her life until now it was hard to suppress even if at times she wished she had. “I am afraid I have somewhat lapsed in religious matters, Father.”

      “We all suffer lapses, Mrs. Kilgallen. And I myself would be out of work if it were otherwise.”

      This allowed Anna a more relaxed and genuine smile and she did indeed feel she had come to someone she could speak freely to about this painful business. “Yes, of course you are right. Thank you. Well, as I say, Christy was eighteen years old when she ran away. Sometimes, looking back on it all, I am surprised she lasted that long. I met Dean when I was just out of college. He was fifteen years older than I but he swept me off my feet or at least that’s what I told myself. We were both from prosperous families out on Long Island. The difference was my father eventually failed in his real estate business and even got in some legal trouble with the authorities and the tax people and whatnot. When he died while I was still in college, everything had to be sold and my mother was barely able to hang onto the small condo they had in Manhattan. The house on Long Island was gone as was the property on Martha’s Vineyard. And there was nothing left in the bank or from the investments and so on. By the time I fell in love with Dean, the choice seemed very clear to me: I could marry this rich, rather exciting man who could keep me, as they say, in the manner to which I had become accustomed, or I could take my chances trying to eke out a living somewhere on my own. And to say my mother was in favor of my union with a wealthy man like Dean would be an understatement, embarrassed and depressed as she was with what she called the new realities of her life.

      “And so Dean and I married and at first all seemed well. Christy was born two years later and of course we doted on her for a while. But I always thought Dean would have preferred a son who shared his kind of drive and ambition. Christy wasn’t that way; she liked to wander the beaches and woods with her camera and was a bit of a day dreamer. I think after a while Dean just lost interest in her or was too busy with his career and chasing other women—if I may be so crass about it, Father. When that started, I compensated by drinking more and ignoring the situation like I guess you’re supposed to in the circles we travelled in. No one at the clubs or the dinner parties wants any messy personal problems interfering with the so-called sophisticated good times. Besides, half of them were probably sleeping around themselves. And being young and stupid, I had signed a prenuptial agreement that would have tossed me out of that life if I had left Dean. That thought terrified me and would have made my mother hate me forever, or so I convinced myself at the time. And so Christy was on her own, at least emotionally. You try to pretend your children are unaware of what goes on in your private life, but the truth is they always know ten times more than you think they do. Of course we shipped her off to all the best summer camps and prep schools, and if you had insinuated I wasn’t a good parent, I would have bitten your head off. And there were good times too, early on, when Christy was younger and she and I were close; at least I like to think so. But as I see it now, I’m sure Christy would have felt as though she was never the most important thing in her parents’ lives. I don’t think a child ever overcomes that. Not completely anyway. Listen, Father, am I getting too deeply into all this. I know I just barged in here this morning and...” Her voice trailed off and she looked down at her folded hands on her lap.

      It was very quiet in the room; only the hum of the old refrigerator in the kitchen, and the occasional passing car outside broke the long silence. Father Mancuso shifted in his chair and said, “You may share as much or as little as you wish. Whatever feels right for you, Mrs. Kilgallen.” In truth he was fascinated.

      “You are most kind, Father. Well of course there were warning signs. There always are I suppose. Christy never did particularly well in school and she became moody. She would come

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