Reborn ac-4

by F. Paul Wilson

  "So I guess what I need now is a chance to go through your old financial records and see if Dr. Hanley was ever a contributor to St. Francis."

  "We don't allow anyone to go through those," Bill said.

  Carol couldn't help noting the we—Bill was really part of something else now, something that excluded her and Jim and the rest of the world.

  "It would mean a lot to me."

  "I know. I'll make a quick search for you myself, if you'd like."

  "I'd really appreciate that, Bill."

  Bill smiled. "What are old friends for? What year was that again?"

  "Forty-two. I arrived here January of Forty-two."

  "I'll see what I can find. Sit down. This shouldn't take too long."

  4

  "Imagine… Bill Ryan," Jim heard Carol say when they were alone.

  He gave her a sidelong glance and put on a lecherous stage whisper. "Still got the hots for him?"

  Carol swatted him on the arm. Hard. It stung. She meant that one.

  "That's not even funny! He's a priest!"

  "Still a good-looking guy."

  "You can say that again," Carol said with a wink, smiling.

  "I'll pass. Once was enough, thank you."

  Jim closed his eyes and listened to the old building around him. St. Francis Home for Boys. The last of its kind, as far as he knew. He'd been here many times since his teenage years but had no memories of the place as a child. Why should he? He'd spent only the first few weeks of his life here before Jonah and Emma Stevens adopted him. Quite a coincidence. Within hours of his being found on the doorstep, the Stevenses were there, looking to adopt a male infant. The U.S. had entered World War II about six weeks earlier, and already applications for adoption had fallen way off. The foundling found a home and became James Stevens before he was two months old.

  Lucky.

  Even luckier now that he was a rich man's heir.

  What about all the other not-so-lucky ones? What about all the other homeless kids, parentless by fate or design, who had to spend years here, shuttled in and out of strange homes until they finally clicked somewhere or got old enough to move out into lives of their own? He ached for them.

  What a rotten life.

  Granted, a kid could do a lot worse. The nuns from Our Lady of Lourdes next door taught the kids in the parish school, changed their sheets, and did their laundry, while the priests provided father figures. It was a stable, structured environment with a roof overhead, a clean bed, and three squares a day. But it wasn't a home.

  Somehow Jim had lucked out in 1942. He wondered how lucky he'd be at the reading of the will next week.

  If I get a couple of those millions, I'll adopt every kid in St. F.'s, every one of the poor little bastards.

  He couldn't resist a smile.

  Yeah. Bastards. Like me.

  "What are you grinning at?" Carol asked.

  "Just thinking," he said. "Wondering how much I'll get from the Hanley estate. Maybe it'll be enough to allow us to get away for a while and do some serious work on starting some little feet to patter around the house."

  Carol's face was troubled for an instant as she slipped her hand into his. "Maybe."

  He knew how worried she was about her ability to conceive. They'd been over the territory hundreds of time. The fact that her mother had had fertility problems didn't mean Carol would follow. Every doctor she'd been to had told her she had no reason to worry. Yet he knew it haunted her.

  And so it haunted him. Anything that bothered Carol bothered him more. He loved her so much it hurt at times. A cliché, he knew, but sometimes he'd stare at her as she read or worked in the kitchen, unaware of the scrutiny, and he'd feel an actual pain deep inside. All he wanted to do was someday be able to make her feel as fortunate to have him as he felt about having her.

  Money wouldn't do it, but at least with this inheritance he could buy her everything, give her the kind of life she deserved. For himself, he had everything he needed, corny as that sounded. But Carol… money couldn't buy her what she needed and wanted most.

  "And even if we don't get our own," he told her, "there's plenty of kids available right here."

  She only nodded absently.

  "Anyway," he said, "if that job at the hospital is getting you down, you'll be able to quit. No sweat."

  She smiled crookedly. "Don't get your hopes up too high. With our luck there'll be a thousand other 'sons' of his waiting in line at the reading."

  Jim laughed. That was the Irish in Carol: For every silver lining there had to be a cloud, invariably dark and rumbling.

  "Nice of Bill to search the records for you," she said after a while. "Especially after we missed his ordination and all."

  "You had appendicitis, for chrissake!"

  "You know that and I know that, but does he? I mean, knowing the way you feel about religion, maybe he thinks we just made it up as an excuse not to come see him made a priest. Maybe he's hurt. After all, we haven't seen him in years."

  "He knows better. It's just your Irish guilt projecting."

  "Don't be silly!"

  Jim smiled. "It's true. Even though you were hospitalized, you feel guilty as hell about missing his ordination."

  "Swell choice of words, Jim."

  5

  Bill hurried back to the interview room, wondering why he was in such a rush. He didn't have anything to tell them. It had taken him only an hour or so, but he was sure he had found all there was to be found.

  Was it Carol?

  She looked good, didn't she? Her hair was longer, straighter, but her face was the same, that same sharp, upturned nose, thin lips, fine sandy hair, the same natural high coloring in her cheeks.

  Was he in a hurry to see her again?

  Not likely. She had been a teenage infatuation, a stage in his adolescence. That was all over and done with.

  So why this sense of urgency to get back to where she was waiting?

  As he entered the little room he pushed the question away. He'd think about it later.

  "Sorry," he said, dropping into a chair. "Couldn't find a thing."

  Jim slammed his fist against his thigh. "Damn! Are you sure?"

  "I started the search somewhere around three years before your drop-off date and went through every year since. The name Hanley doesn't crop up a single time."

  Jim obviously wasn't satisfied. Bill could guess what was on his mind. He was probably looking for a delicate way to question how thoroughly anyone could have combed through three decades of records in a little over an hour.

  "That's an awful lot of years, Bill. I'm just wondering…"

  Bill smiled. "A lot of years, yes, but not a lot of contributions, I'm afraid. And the name Hanley doesn't appear in any of our index files or on our mailing list." As he saw Jim's shoulders slump, he added, "But…"

  "But what?"

  "But just ten days after you were left here, St. F.'s received an anonymous contribution often thousand dollars. One whale of a sum in those days."

  "It's nothing to sniff at these days, either, let me tell you!" Jim said, animated again. "Anonymous, huh? How unusual is that?"

  "Are you kidding? Even today we occasionally get twenty-five or fifty, or rarely, a hundred bucks anonymously. But the rest of the time everyone wants a receipt for tax purposes. A five-figure donation that won't be written off is unheard of."

  "Guilt money," Jim said.

  He nodded. "Heavy guilt."

  Bill glanced over at Carol. She was staring at him. Why was she looking at him that way? It made him uncomfortable.

  At that moment a mailman stopped in the hall at the door. He held up an envelope. "Care to sign for this, Father? It's certified."

  Bill took the envelope and dropped it on the table as he signed the receipt. When he turned back, Jim was on his feet, clutching the envelope in his hand.

  "Look at the return address! Fletcher, Cornwall & Boothby! That's the same law firm that contacted me!" He shoved it toward B
ill. "Open it!"

  Propelled by the infectious urgency in Jim's voice, Bill tore open the envelope.

  After skimming the astonishing contents, he handed the letter to Jim.

  "They want St. F.'s to send someone to the reading of the Hanley will!"

  Jim glanced at the letter and grinned.

  "Same letter I got! I knew it! This clinches it! Let's celebrate! Dinner's on me! What do you say, Bill?"

  Bill took back the letter and shook his head.

  "Sorry. I can't get away just now. Maybe some other time."

  Partly true. With Father Anthony out, he couldn't simply walk off and leave the boys without supervision. Of course, if he really worked at it, he could probably find somebody to cover for him, but in a strange way he was glad to get out of it. He was finding it difficult to keep his eyes off Carol. And every time he looked her way, she was looking back.

  Like now. Carol was staring at him again.

  She said, "A rain check, then. We'll owe you one."

  "Sure. That'll be nice."

  The good-byes were protracted, with much handshaking and promises of keeping in touch this time and getting together soon. Bill breathed a quiet sigh of relief when he finally closed the door behind them, figuring his insides would begin to quiet down now.

  But they didn't.

  6

  Carol waited for Jim to start the car but he just sat behind the wheel, staring straight ahead.

  She shivered with the cold.

  "If we're not going anywhere, Jim, how about just starting the car and getting the heater going?"

  He shook himself and smiled. "Sorry. Just thinking."

  He turned the ignition and the ten-year-old Nash Rambler shuddered to life. He steered it toward Queens Boulevard.

  "Thinking what?"

  "How pieces are starting to fit together. Won't be long before I know who I am."

  Carol leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. "I know who you are. Why don't you ask me?"

  "Okay. Who am I?"

  "The man I love. A great guy, a talented writer, and the best lover on the East Coast." And she meant every word of it.

  He kissed her too. "Thanks. But just the East Coast? What about the West Coast?"

  "I've never been to the West Coast."

  "Oh." He braked at a stop sign. "Well, where do we eat?"

  "Can we really afford it?"

  "Sure. I got paid for the God Is Dead series today. We're 'in Fat City, ' as our president is wont to say."

  "About time they paid up."

  That explained the dinner invitation. Jim was about as modern as could be, but he remained mired in the fifties when it came to spending her salary on luxuries.

  "We can go that way"—he pointed east, toward home— "and catch some seafood at Memison's, or we can try someplace in the city." He pointed toward the setting sun.

  Carol wasn't really hungry—hadn't been hungry for days, in fact. She couldn't think of any food that would appeal to her, but she knew that Jim was a pasta freak.

  "Let's try Little Italy. I feel like Italian tonight."

  "Funny… you don't look Italian."

  "Corny. Drive," she said.

  As they approached the ever-graceful Queensboro Bridge, an idea struck Carol.

  "You know, it's a bit on the early side to eat, don't you think? So as long as we're heading into the city, let's stop at Aunt Grace's."

  Jim groaned. "Anyplace but Grace's. I'll even hang around Saks with you."

  "Come on. She's a sweetheart, and she's special to me."

  Carol loved her spinster aunt who had acted as a sort of stand-in mother during Carol's college years, giving her a family to come "home" to over the holidays and to live with during summer break. Carol had always got along well with her. The same could not be said for Jim, however.

  "Yeah, but that apartment of hers gives me the creeps."

  "Nothing gives you the creeps. Besides, I don't feel right going into town with this much time to kill and not stopping in to say hello."

  "Okay," he said as they crossed the East River and headed down the ramp into Manhattan. "To Gramercy Park we go. But promise me. As soon as she starts trying to save my soul, we leave."

  "Promise."

  Interlude on Central Park West—I

  Mr. Veilleur wasn't sure what it was at first.

  It came as he was half sitting, half reclining, half dozing on the living-room sofa while a news special on the effects of the Tet offensive in Vietnam filled the nineteen-inch screen of their brand-new color television. A feeling, a sensation, a prickling in his hindbrain. He couldn't identify it, but there was an ominous feel to it.

  A warning?

  As it grew stronger it seemed in some way familiar. Like something from the past, something he'd known before but had not encountered for many years.

  A presence!

  Suddenly alarmed, he shook himself awake and sat up.

  No. It couldn't be.

  He rose from the couch and went to the window where he stared out at the naked trees of Central Park below. The park was bathed in an orange glow from the setting sun except where it was blocked by the buildings rising along Central Park West. His own apartment building cut a thick swath of shadow into the light.

  The feeling was growing, getting stronger, more defined, flowing from the east, from straight across town.

  It can't be!

  He saw his ghostly reflection in the window glass: a large-framed man with gray hair and a lined face. He looked sixtyish but at this moment he felt much older.

  There was no doubting the feeling, yet how could it be? It wasn't possible!

  "What is it, dear?" his wife said in her thickly accented English as she entered the room from the kitchen.

  "It's him! He's alive! He's here!"

  Three

  1

  Grace Nevins munched a Ry-Krisp as she dusted the largest of her Infant of Prague statues. It wasn't really an infant; actually, the twelve-inch porcelain figure looked more like a young boy wearing a golden crown and holding a globe before him. A cross jutted up from atop the globe. There were four such statues in the front room of her apartment, one at each point of the compass. All were still garbed in their Christmas raiments, but soon it would be changing time. Lent was fast approaching. Ash Wednesday was next week. That called for somber purple robes on each of the statues.

  She moved on to the crucifixes. All told, she had twenty-two of them, and some of the more ornate ones were real dust collectors. After that she worked on the eight statues of the Blessed Mother, from the little six-inch one she had picked up in the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., to the three-foot marble beauty in its own miniature grotto in the corner opposite the door. There were six pictures of the Sacred Heart, each with a blessed palm frond behind the frame. The fronds were brittle and brown with age, each being almost a year old. That was all right. Their time was almost up, anyway. When Palm Sunday came again in early April, she'd get fresh fronds for all the pictures.

  She was about to start on her praying hands and relics when the buzzer rang. Someone was down at the front entrance. When Grace recognized Carol's voice on the intercom, her heart gave a little extra beat of joy as she buzzed her in.

  Always nice to see her only niece.

  As she waited for Carol to climb the three flights of stairs, Grace became aware of a vague uneasiness within her, a gradually mounting tension, with no object, no identifiable cause. She tried to shake it off.

  "Carol!" she said at the door when her niece arrived, reaching up to give her a kiss and a hug. "So good to see you!"

  She was a good quarter of a century older and three inches shorter than her niece, but probably weighed twice as much. Sometimes Grace fretted about her weight, and had even gone so far as to join that new group, Weight Watchers, but then decided it wasn't worth the trouble. Who was she trying to impress? There was no man in her life, and certainly the Lord didn't care how much you weighed when yo
u came to Final Judgment. She told herself, The color of your soul is more important than the size of your waist. It was far more important to watch the shape your soul was in. Say, that was a great idea for a religion discussion group—Soul Watchers. Catchy.

  "How are you, Aunt Grace?" Carol said. "I hope you don't mind. We were in town and—"

  " 'We'?"

  "Yes. Jim came along."

  Grace's enthusiasm for this surprise visit dropped a few notches at the sight of Jim's face peeking out from behind her niece, but nothing could dampen it completely.

  Except perhaps the nameless uneasiness growing within her.

  She pushed it down.

  "Hiya, Aunt Grace," he said, putting his hand out.

  Grace gave it a quick shake. "Hello, Jim. I'm surprised the… both of you came."

  "Oh, Jim's the reason we're in town," Carol said brightly.

  Grace ushered them into the apartment. As she took their coats she held her breath, waiting for Jim to make one of his comments about her religious articles. It took a moment, but then he started.

  "Have you added to your collection, Aunt Grace?"

  "A few items, yes."

  "That's nice."

  She waited for a skeptical remark, but he merely stood there with his hands clasped behind his back, smiling blandly.

  This was not the usual Jim. Perhaps Carol had warned him to be on his best behavior. Carol was such a dear. Yes, that was probably it. Otherwise her husband would be behaving as he had the last time he was here, commenting on the Infant of Prague's taste in clothes or citing the fire hazards of keeping old, dried palm fronds around the apartment.

  She took a deep breath. The tension was beginning to stifle her. She needed help. She went to her curved-glass china cabinet and took out her latest treasure: a tiny fragment of dark brown wood on a bed of satin in a clear plastic box. She prayed that holding it would ward off the strangling uneasiness but it did nothing. She handed it to Carol.

  "Look. It's a relic. A fragment of the True Cross."

  Carol nodded. "Very nice." Then she handed it to Jim.