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purgatory, being punished but certain that the day would come when his troubles would cease and he could return to his family. She kept him supplied with recent photographs, but the kids knew him only from the wedding picture on her dresser. How young they both had been, squinting into the sunlight, not knowing what lay before them.
    Jane enjoyed the game as much as the boys. And Phil Keegan. He was up and down, cheering, groaning, shouting at the umpire, constantly flagging down anyone selling food.
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    Phil amazed Father Dowling. He could watch a game in the rectory and never raise his voice, but he was an active participant today. They had hot dogs and peanuts and popcorn and soft drinks, but when Phil waved down the kid selling Frosty Malts, Father Dowling begged to be excused. So did Edna. Jane sat between them, as knowledgeable about the game as her brothers, explaining everything to Edna, and giving Father Dowling a look at her mother’s lack of knowledge. But that certainly didn’t diminish Edna’s enjoyment. What a good woman she was and how well she was raising her children in difficult circumstances. But then the moral resources of ordinary folk never ceased to amaze him. Tragedy struck without warning—an unexpected death, a daughter in trouble, an intractable son—and people rose to the occasion and saw it through. Who would suspect the burdens
Edna bore seeing the calm efficiency with which she ran the Senior Center? And there was not an ounce of condescension in her treatment of the old people, even when foolish little romances flared up among septuagenarians and elderly men and women acted like children on the school grounds of their youth. Edna might have been anticipating her own innocent susceptibility.
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    On the way home, Eric sat next to Father Dowling on the back seat of the little bus, reviewing the game and analyzing why the Cubs had lost despite two home runs by Sammy Sosa. Like Phil, he regarded any loss as the result of bad calls and lucky hits by the opposing team. But finally they all fell silent, weary from the outing. They were nearly at the Fox River exit when Eric roused himself.
    â€œMom, you know that guy that took us to a game? The reason my Google search didn’t work was I got the name wrong.”
    â€œHow so?”
    â€œI thought it was Moran. But it’s Morgan. I remembered that and got a pile of stuff.”
    â€œDid you print it out?” Father Dowling asked.
    â€œI could.”
    â€œI’d like to see what you found.”

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    Give me again the joy of your help, with a spirit of fervor sustain me.
    â€” Psalm 51
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    Marie Murkin continued to sing the praises of Stan Morgan. “I wish he’d come back, Father.”
    â€œI’m surprised he hasn’t.”
    â€œThe way you treated him?”
    â€œI was thinking of the way you did.”
    â€œOh, for heaven’s sake.”
    At least Marie had no inkling of Morgan’s interest in Edna. What a thing she would have made of that. It was one thing for her to have tea in her kitchen with the attentive young man, but if she knew Edna had had dinner with him, that he had taken her and the kids to a ball game … Roger Dowling did not like to think what she would have said.
    â€œWhy do you call him a young man?”
    â€œBecause he is.”
    â€œYou mean younger.”
    â€œI mean young,” Marie said and tromped down the hall. The kitchen door banged shut behind her.

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    In the old days, they had had nuns who took care of the laundry and refectory, a community of German nuns who chattered away in their native tongue and had only an imperfect grasp of English, much to the delight of the seminarians who were always trying to get them to commit spoonerisms. But Marie Murkin was something entirely different. Boniface had had two sisters, one a nun, the other married, both dead now, and he supposed he had heard female chatter as a