He turned his head to her. “What is your opinion of my father?”
Tessa blinked at him. Her shoulders drooped and she looked away. Had she thought he’d brought her into this room for another reason? She laid Clare (still asleep) on the bed and gazed down at her in the half-light. “Your father is a remarkable physician and an even better man.”
Joseph turned his whole body now, though he did not move from the window. “But has he ever… When he’s—examined you, has he made you uncomfortable?”
“Childbirthis uncomfortable. That is hardly your father’s fault.”
Joseph advanced a step. “I mean…uneasy. Has he ever touched you when or where he needn’t have?”
Tessa gaped at him. “Never!”
Joseph turned away again.
Tessa came to stand beside him. “Joseph, your father is one of the kindest, most solicitous men I have ever met. I hope he continues practicing until he is ninety, because I want no one else attending my daughter or my grandchildren. Now, will you tellmethe truth about why you asked such a question?”
Joseph planted his fists on the window-sill. “When I was a boy, I saw something that made me certain my father was abusing my mother. But I think now…that I may have been mistaken.”
“You must have been.” Tessa slipped her hand around Joseph’s wrist in reassurance. “Your father doesn’t have a cruel bone in hisbody, Joseph—any more than you do. I know you disagree about a great many things; but at heart, you and he are very much alike. You are gentlemen to the bottom of your souls.” Tessa saw Joseph wasn’t ready to leave the window yet, so she took up her daughter and went to Hélène.
Joseph realizedhe did not need to speak to his mother. He needed only to watch her with his father—without prejudice, for the first time in eighteen years. The way she darted down the stairs when he returned home. The way she took his coat with such tenderness. The way she smiled at him. Not even a saint would delight in the presence of a man who had violated her.
His father was not a monster. He was simply a man. His mother was not a victim. She was simply a woman.
When Joseph returned to his father’s office, he found him standing before the great cabinet of medicines, taking stock of his pharmacopeia.
Joseph waited on the threshold until his father lowered his note-pad and turned. Joseph could not meet his eyes. “Regarding my mother…” Joseph advanced only a step. “Forgive me, Father.”
His father came to meet him and reached out to touch Joseph’s face. “Of course I forgive you. You were a child. I wish you had come to me then, but I am grateful you have come now.” Then, he smirked. “Before I grant you Absolution, however, I must impose a Penance. Your mother mentioned you will be travelling to Columbia next month?”
Joseph nodded. “To deliver a monstrance to St. Peter’s.”
“You will return to us afterward?”
Joseph averted his eyes. “At least until we have a new Bishop.” He hadn’t made up his mind about whether to leave Charleston after that. He knew remaining in Tessa’s proximity was playing with fire.
“While you are in Lexington District, I want you to meet someone: Father James Wallace. He’s my age, an Irishman by birth.When we met, he was serving here in Charleston. You were eight years old, I think, when he left.”
The name sounded a distant bell in Joseph’s memory. “Is he the Father Wallace who was a mathematics professor at South Carolina College?” Joseph remembered another Priest talking about it several years ago at a diocesan convention: how a new, anti-Catholic college president had dismissed Father Wallace from his post of fourteen years.
“That’s him. He’s also a skilled astronomer. Like many of your kind, he is quite brilliant. James was trained as a Jesuit, but he withdrew from the Society so he could remain in Columbia.”
A former Jesuit was rare indeed. This Priest was a rebel. No wonder Joseph’s father liked him. Why should Father Wallace wish to remain in South Carolina, when so many Irish Priests fled its climate at the first opportunity? At least he and Joseph would have something to talk about.
By morning,Father Wallace and Columbia seemed as distant as the stars.
On the fourth day after Hélène’s surgery, Joseph’s mother appeared before Mass. Her eyes were bloodshot. ‘Are you still praying for your sister?’
‘Of course.’
His mother’s hands trembled as she signed. ‘She is worse.’
Joseph came home as soon as he could. He raced up the stairs to hear Liam begging his father: “What can we do?”
“Manage her fever…beyond that, we can only wait.”
They could pray.
Their mother was doing just that, while May bathed Hélène’s forehead. Her breaths were rapid, and their father said her pulse was as well. He explained: “The wound showed signs of inflammation last night.”
