Nearing the light spilling out of the double doors at the entrance of St. Mike’s, I saw Lucy’s softly lit face shining through the pane of a single window, one medic attaching an IV to her arm, the other performing a triage scan of her major moving parts. I’d make sure I was in that ambulance with her by the time it was set to take off for the hospital. No way would I let her navigate that experience alone when she was already suffering from so much.
I pushed through the doors, the smell of gunpowder finally fading, probably with the gusts of wind that carried in and out of the church each time someone new came in and out of the crime scene.
St. Michael’s.
A crime scene.
I was still in shock. It would take me days to unpeel these layers, especially when they were so intimately wrapped around a man who held the most sacred of soft spots in my soul.
I paused at the second set of doors, my view clearer than it’d ever been.
Bastien’s form was hunched over what looked to be an innocent bystander who had been knocked off his feet by one of the blasts.
Bastien held the old man’s frail hand as a medic poked and prodded all the other parts of his body for wounds.
Dried fingerprints of blood caked Bastien’s hands, his gaze intent on the soul suffering before him.
Father Bastien tending his flock.
Just as he’d been called to do.
Pushing through the final set of doors, my focus crisp and clear after far too long, I walked on confident steps to the person who needed me most. Validation coursed through me in the form of a wave of satisfaction so profound, all I could do was glance back for one last stolen moment.
I watched him, kneeling and helping the wounded man at his feet, so very God-like from the inside out. The last thought to cross my mind was something he’d probably parroted to me at some point over our torrid last few months.
The best in life is only bought at the price of great pain.
Maybe this was our penance.
Our greatest pleasure had brought the greatest pain to those we loved most.
Heart shattering every step, I turned back, walking away from a life set aflame, resolution finally riding me harder than the longest of my many dark nights. I thought of all the people I’d lost in my life, the affection—the love—the smiles that I could never again take for granted. And as I shivered in the night-time chill, it dawned on me that tonight was an end to something profound.
Tonight was our expiration date.
Lucy held a hand out to me as I approached the ambulance, our eyes locking when I climbed through the back doors, listening to them close before we turned out of the churchyard, a hard left over the curb, and then the next right, headed in the direction of the rest of our lives.
NINETEEN
Tressa—six months later
Lucy and I lived for three months in a one-bedroom apartment, her in the bedroom and me on the couch, before I got a call on a colder than normal Sunday morning that Mom had suffered cardiac arrest in the middle of her dinner one night, cigarette burned into a shell of ash in her hand. My heart broke when I went back, cleaned up the life she’d spent all of her days working so hard for. The small blessing was that she’d left everything to me, meaning Lucy and I could move in to Mom’s tiny little house, the burden of rent suddenly off our shoulders.
And Lucy grew.
At seven months, the doctor began to talk about taking the baby early. He also asked her if there was a chance she could be farther along than she thought.
She was adamant, though.
Her story unwavering.
Casey.
The boy with the backpacks.
That was still how I thought of him.
The sad, broken boy with the backpacks he’d stuffed chock-full of metal debris and pipe bombs and set off in St. Mike’s on another colder than normal Sunday morning. Investigators had also confirmed he’d been picked up for loitering down the street and just out of view of the church. The likelihood that Bastien had seen him that night when I’d run tearing out into the rain was high, and horrifying. But in the end I didn’t think Casey was vicious, only sick. Very, very sick.
