Read Online All the Roads That Lead From Home by Anne Leigh Parrish - Free Book Online

ocean,
maybe.”
    “He’ll
know you took it.”
    “That’s
just it. There’s this girl he used to live with, this Marcy something, and
she’s bad news, let me tell you. She comes in and helps herself to everything.
He’ll have to figure she took it. She’s always after him for something. Major
sleazeball. No surprise there, given the kind he likes.”
    He dropped
off and she was left to take one deep breath after another until she finally
gave in to sleep.
     
    ***
     
    In the rain she made her
way down the block. The street was brown with dirt. Her skin was brown, too,
and always had been. The big secret. Her father not her father. Her mother a
woman who loved brown men so much she got knocked up by one, then left her
husband for another.
    The driver
of a car honked because she was walking in the street. “Fuck you!” she yelled.
    She loved
him anyway. The drunk who took her into bars.
    The rain
bent her face down, and when it lifted up there was Yolanda coming around the
corner with a wastebasket she must have emptied into the dumpster. Yolanda
said, “I remember you.” She had cornrows for hair, violet half moons for
fingernails.
    “You
looking for a piano?” said Angie.
    “Not me,
the Father.”
    Angie
didn’t like the sharp stare she was being given.
    “All
right, then. Don’t be standing around in the wet,” Yolanda said.
    She
followed Angie inside and set the wastebasket on the floor. She went down a
hall and knocked on one of the doors, then leaned her head inside. She closed
the door and called back to Angie, “He be right out.”
    Yolanda went
down another hall while Angie waited. The quiet was broken by the quick tapping
of a radiator that slowed, stopped, and resumed like a sick heart not ready to
quit.
    He came
out the door Yolanda had opened a moment before, a short, round man wearing black
pants, a priest’s collar, and a ratty gray sweater.
    “I’m
Father Mulvaney,” he said and extended his hand. Angie didn’t take it. “I
understand you have a piano.”
    “I can let
you have it for fifteen hundred,” she said.
    He nodded,
rubbed his hands together, and stared into space just beyond her shoulder, as
if he’d forgotten what he was going to say.
    “Hm. Now,
what kind of instrument is it?” he asked.
    “Old and
banged up.”
    “An
upright?”
    “Uh, huh.”
    “Out of
tune, I suppose?”
    “Probably.”
    “Why are
you getting rid of it?”
    “What do
you think?” Angie had put a few paces between her and the Father by then. He
took her in with one long hard look.
    “I think
you could use a hot cup of tea and a sandwich. I’m just about to have one,
myself.”
    Angie
hadn’t eaten breakfast that morning because she’d forgotten to get to the store
the evening before. Sometimes she ate at work, if her boss left early. Last
night he didn’t, and she’d had two bags of M&M’s for dinner.
    “Nothing
fancy. Just ham and cheese,” he said.
    His office
was small and full of books and papers. The radiator’s paint peeled gray flakes
that showed a darker gray underneath. She sat in the chair opposite his,
separated by an old wooden desk. On a smaller table were a plate with several
sandwiches, a teapot, and a number of cups, most of them chipped. Angie looked
at the amount of food, wondering.
    “Yolanda
always finds a guest or two for me at the last minute. Saves the kitchen
trouble by just having something made in advance,” said the Father.
    “You must
feed a lot of people,” she said.
    “The
mission down the street had to close its doors, and the economy hasn’t picked
up as much as we’d hoped.”
    Angie
finished her sandwich quickly and the Father offered her another. She took it,
but refused any tea.
    She looked
through the window into the courtyard where a man swept bits of paper into a
dust pan. His arms reached beyond the too short sleeves of his shirt.
    “What is
it?” the Father asked.
    “Why is
that guy working in the rain?”
    The Father
looked through