Nathaniel, angry that I've ruined his work, shoves at the cards so that half of them fly off the table. He buries his face on his bent knees and refuses to look at me.
"That was useful," Patrick mutters.
"I didn't see you doing anything to help!"
"Nathaniel." Caleb reaches across me to touch our son's leg. "You did great. Don't listen to your mother."
"That's lovely, Caleb."
"I didn't mean it like that and you know it."
My cheeks are burning. "Oh, really?"
Ill at ease, Patrick begins to stuff the pictures back into the envelope.
"I think we ought to talk about this somewhere else," Caleb says pointedly.
Nathaniel's hands come up to cover his ears. He burrows sideways, between the sofa pillows and Patrick's leg. "Now look what you've done to him," I say.
The mad in the room is all the colors of fire, and it presses down on him, so that Nathaniel has to make himself small enough to fit in the cracks of the cushions. There is something hard in Patrick's pocket where he's pressed up tight to it. His pants smell like maple syrup and November.
His mother, she's crying again, and his dad is yelling at her. Nathaniel can remember when just waking up in the morning used to make them happy. Now, it seems that no matter what he does, it's wrong.
He knows this is true: What happened happened because of him. And now that he's dirty and different, his own parents do not know what to do with him.
He wishes he could make them smile again. He wishes he had the answers. He knows they are there, but they're dammed up in his throat, behind the Thing He Is Not Supposed to Tell.
His mother throws up her hands and walks toward the fireplace, her back to everyone. She's pretending no one can see, but she's crying hard now. His father and Patrick are trying hard not to look at each other, their eyes bouncing like a Superball off everything in the tiny room.
When his voice returns, it reminds Nathaniel of the time his mother's car would not start last winter.
She turned the key and the engine groaned, whining and whining before it kicked to life. Nathaniel feels that same thing now, in his belly. That kindling, that croak, the tiniest bubble rising up his windpipe. It chokes him; it makes his chest swell. The name that gets shoved out is feeble, thin as gruel, not nearly the thick and porous block that has absorbed all his words these past weeks. In fact, now that it sits on his tongue, bitter pill, it is hard to believe something this tiny has filled all the space inside him.
Nathaniel worries no one will hear him, since so many angry words are flying like kites in the room. So he comes up on his knees, presses himself along Patrick's side, cups his hand to the big man's ear. And he speaks, he speaks, Patrick feels the warm weight of Nathaniel on his left side. And no wonder; Patrick himself is ducking from the comments Caleb and Nina are winging at each other; Nathaniel has to be faring just as poorly. He slides an arm around the child. "It's okay, Weed," he murmurs.
But then he feels Nathaniel's fingers brush the hair at his nape. A sound slips into his ear. It's not much more than a puff of breath, but Patrick has been waiting. He squeezes Nathaniel once more, because of what he's done. Then he turns to interrupt Caleb and Nina. "Who the hell," Patrick asks, "is Father Glen?"
The logical time to search the church is during Mass, when Father Szyszynski-a.k.a. Father Glen, to the children like Nathaniel who cannot pronounce his last name-is otherwise occupied. Patrick cannot remember the last time he went on a hunt for evidence wearing a coat and tie, but he wants to blend in with the crowd. He smiles at strangers while they all file into the church before nine A.M.; and when they turn into the main nave of the church he walks in the opposite direction, down a staircase.
Patrick doesn't have a warrant, but then this is a public space, and he does not need one. Still, he moves quietly through the hallway, reluctant to draw attention to himself. He passes a classroom where small children sit wriggling like fish at even smaller tables and chairs. If he were a priest, where would he stash the Goodwill box?
Nina has told him about the Sunday when Nathaniel came home with a different pair of underwear on beneath his clothes. It might not mean anything. But then again, it might. And Patrick's job is to overturn all the stones so that when he goes to back Szyszynski into a corner, he has all the ammunition he needs to do it.
The Goodwill box is not next to the water fountain or the restrooms. It's not in Szyszynski's office, a richly paneled vestibule stacked with wall-to-wall religious texts. He tries a couple of locked doors in the hallway, rattling them to see if they'll give way.
"Can I help you?"
The Sunday school teacher, a woman who has the look of a mother about her, stands a few feet behind Patrick. "Oh, I'm sorry," he says. "I didn't mean to interrupt your class."
He tries to summon all his charm, but this is a woman who is probably used to white lies, to hands caught in the cookie jar. Patrick continues, thinking on his feet. "Actually, my two-year-old just soaked through his jeans during Father Szyszynski's sermon . . . and I hear there's a Goodwill box somewhere around here?"
The teacher smiles in sympathy. "Water into wine gets them every time," she says. She leads Patrick into the classroom, where fifteen tiny faces turn to assess him, and hands him a big blue Rubbermaid box. "I have no idea what's inside, but good luck."
Minutes later Patrick is hidden in the boiler room, the first place he finds where he won't readily be disturbed. He is knee deep in old clothing. There are dresses that must be a good thirty years old, shoes with worn soles, toddler's snow pants. He counts seven pairs of underwear-three of which are pink, with little Barbie faces on them. Lining the remaining four up on the floor, he takes a cell phone from his pocket and dials Nina.
"What do they look like?" he says when she answers. "The underwear."
"What's that humming? Where are you?"
