Read Online Faith by Jennifer Haigh - Free Book Online

pondered what he’d learned. Kevin Vick was a recurring presence in Kathleen’s life, a local hood who disappeared periodically for unsavory reasons: thirty days in a court-ordered rehab, brief jail terms for possession and driving under the influence. Art had met the guy only once, when Vick stopped by unannounced at Kath’s apartment, something he was clearly accustomed to doing. Art and Kath were drinking coffee in the kitchen when Vick’s battered Camaro squealed up to the curb. As was typical of the wayward young, he was dumbstruck in the presence of a priest . I just need to get some stuff , he’d mumbled, heading straight for Kath’s bedroom. Kath was palpably embarrassed, while Aidan—who normally hovered like a hummingbird during Art’s visits—seemed to be in hiding. Was he afraid of Kevin Vick? Fran had long maintained that the man was dangerous. Art suspected that the truth was subtler and more pernicious: that under his influence, Kath herself became dangerous.
    At this thought, he made an illegal U-turn—in the local dialect, banged a Uey —on Atlantic Avenue and headed west to Dunster. A century ago it had been a village in its own right, with shops and a Congregational church and a pretty town green, until it was garroted by a state highway and absorbed into the noisy, traffic-strangled Boston suburbs. Kath Conlon lived on North Fenno, a side street at the far end of town, in a three-decker Flip Finn had bought as an investment. Art had convinced him to take her on as a tenant, despite her lack of references or a steady paycheck. I’ll vouch for her , he’d promised, sounding more confident than he felt. If she’s ever late with the rent, you can come to me.
    North Fenno was short and narrow, the houses set close to the curb. Aidan and Kath lived on the first floor, in a shotgun apartment with a kitchen at the rear. Art drove past slowly, noting lights in the windows, Aidan’s yellow toboggan still lying on the front porch, though the snow had melted a month ago.
    Kevin Vick’s beat-up red Camaro was parked at the curb.
    Well, now what? Art thought. At one time he would have knocked at the door, but those days were gone forever.
    (And if he had gone to her door that night—would this have changed anything? It seems unlikely. The match had been struck, the fuse already lit.)
    In the end he turned the car around and headed for the rectory. He would do as Fran had asked: he would remember Kath and Aidan in his prayers.
    B ACK AT the rectory, beside the old rotary phone, he found a stack of messages. It was the usual mix of parish business. Sister Ursula, the school principal, had set a rehearsal date for the eighth-grade commencement. A young bride had called to schedule her wedding. (In all his years as a parish priest, Art had never received a phone call from a groom.) Only two of the messages could be called personal: one from his old friend Clem Fleury in Rome, another from Sheila, me, in Philadelphia. They were recorded faithfully in Fran’s neat handwriting, indistinguishable from my own or my mother’s or my aunt Clare’s—evidence of our shared education, twelve years in the parochial schools. (My brother Mike, taught by the same nuns, writes illegible chicken scratch, as do my father and his brother and all their male children. I think back to those school papers corrected in red ink— Penmanship! —marked down half a grade if an i was left undotted, a t uncrossed. Maybe only the girls were penalized in this way.)
    Messages in hand, Art retreated upstairs. With Father Aloysius gone, he had the run of the place; but from long habit—he had lived his whole life in shared housing—he avoided the common areas, the dark parlor and stiff sitting room. I would see these rooms a week later, when I came to help Art pack his few possessions before the Archdiocese changed the locks. Undoubtedly the circumstances