by Luanne Rice
Already on the scene to apprehend a reported runaway, several police officers burst into the rooftop chamber and discovered a sobbing girl clutching one single photograph of stone bells.
The officers stared down the face of dark Vista Rock. Turtle Pond was frozen with weed-choked ice. They scanned the scene, and although they didn’t say it out loud, they were looking for the boy’s body.
“He’s dead,” one officer said quietly to another, so Penelope wouldn’t hear. “That’s a long way down.”
“Must be the holidays. Second suicide I’ve been to this week.”
“The hardest time of year.”
“As long as I’m not the one sent to tell his parents.”
The EMTs arrived moments later, and they ran across the castle’s terrace, around the stone parapet, to the place where the boy must have landed. The piles of snow were deep here—it was the dead end of a park road, where the plows dumped all excess snow, to get it off the sides of the road and keep them free for emergency vehicles. Scraped off the roadways, this snow was gray with grit, gravel, and sand.
“Hey,” shouted a police officer looking down from above, up in the castle. “There’s a hole in the top of that pile, right there.” He pointed, and several EMTs clambered up the pile.
The officer was right—there was a huge body-shaped indentation in the very top of one deep pile. Some of the EMTs scrambled, and one radioed that they’d need shovels. They started digging out with their hands. One woman had been trained in avalanche rescue, when she worked in Utah.
No one said it out loud, but this wasn’t a rescue. It was a recovery operation. It had to be. Every one of them looked up to the top of the tower and did the mental calculation. The boy had to have fallen forty feet, even allowing for the height of the pile of snow.
Still, working as if the boy’s life depended on it, the emergency squad dug with all their might.
A television crew was the first news team on the scene. The girl was in shock and couldn’t speak, the boy’s body hadn’t yet been pulled from the snow pile, and there was nothing yet in terms of an identification. The bystanders were willing to point up at the tower and tell how they’d seen a figure standing on the peak.
“He jumped,” one woman said, gulping tears, “but he seemed to change his mind at the last minute. He was reaching, grabbing for anything he could hold on to. He swung there at the edge. It was awful.”
The cameras showed the scene, the witnesses, and then zoomed in on the only clue to the boy’s identity: the photograph of bells. Police officers said they’d had to pry the picture out of the girl’s hands, that she was holding it to her heart and sobbing the words, “He thought he was a cloud.”
Sylvester Rheinbeck Jr. was in his office, watching NY1 as he did most afternoons at this time. He liked the real estate report, where different city buildings were featured each day. Often they were his, making him feel proud and rich. But today his attention was grabbed by the breaking story of a boy’s death in Central Park, a grave and lingering camera shot of Belvedere Castle, as well as a black-and-white photo of stone ornamentation.
The picture was of bells, and it looked familiar, very familiar. Sylvester peered at the screen. Yes, he had seen that image just a few days earlier, when his father had waxed poetic about the project he was doing with Catherine. Sylvester turned up the volume and leaned closer.
“Police have few details of who is already being called the ‘Cloud Boy.’ He was apparently a regular at Belvedere Castle, seeming particularly interested in the weather station here. Some are saying he was a college student, studying meteorology. Others believe—”
“Meteorology!” Sylvester murmured as the camera again showed the picture of the bells, and he began to put two and two together. He strolled down the corridor into his father’s office. The old man was not there—the great room was vacant. Sylvester cast one quick look over the mahogany desk and chairs, the silver plates and cups—awards and tributes his father had received for his humanitarian works—and at the splendid views outside the window. This office really had the best vista in the tower. In fact, from here Sylvester could see the flag waving, right in the middle of Central Park, marking the top of Belvedere Castle.
Taking the private elevator, Sylvester went up to the library. His heart was pounding hard in his chest. Just as he suspected, his father was up here, sitting at a table with Catherine Tierney. They were poring over photos and contact sheets. Sylvester’s mouth constricted, just a little. He shouldn’t take such pleasure in what he was about to do. But he disapproved of his father’s spendthrift tendencies, his improvident ways with corporate funds. And he was hurt by the way Catherine had turned him down the one time he had asked her out to dinner after her husband’s death.
He walked straight in, over to the small television hidden in a wall unit. Catherine used it mainly for watching videos related to Rheinbeck Projects, but right now Sylvester Jr. tuned it to NY1. When he looked up, he saw that his father appeared very annoyed. Catherine looked beautiful but shell-shocked. As if her heart weren’t quite in her work today.
“What are you doing?” his father asked.
“Remember those odd books someone left out?” Sylvester asked, staring straight at Catherine. “The ones you asked me about, Father?”
“The weather books,” his father replied. “Yes, I remember taking heart when I found them. I thought perhaps you had gotten interested in something other than the prime rate.”
Sylvester didn’t say anything to that. He turned up the volume and let the TV reporter do the talking for him. The news had looped back to the Central Park story, with shots of the castle, police and emergency officers clustered around piles of snow, the news that a boy had fallen from the tower, and rumors that he had been hanging around the castle weather station.
“Danny!” Catherine cried, jumping to her feet.
Sylvester watched her clap her hands to her mouth. To his surprise, his father pushed himself out of his chair and put an arm around her for support. The camera panned over the picture found in the castle tower chamber—a black-and-white photo of two carved stone bells, tied together at the top with a granite ribbon.
“No, no—Danny!” she said, and Sylvester shrank from the pain in her voice. He hadn’t meant to cause this kind of distress. He tried to catch his father’s eye, but the old man was reaching down on the table in front of them, picking up a picture that was the mirror image of the one on TV.
Sylvester’s father nodded at Catherine, his kind, steady gaze telling her to leave, do what she had to do. She flew out the door, leaving the Rheinbeck men—father and son—to face each other.
“I don’t know what’s going on,” Sylvester said.
“You meant to show her up to me,” his father said. “By pointing out the connection between those science books and the picture of the bells. I know, Sylvester. She’s been letting a young man up here to use the library.”
“You know, for sure?”
“Of course. Teddy, in security, reviewed the tapes. He informed me accordingly.”
“And what did Catherine say?”
“I haven’t mentioned it to her.”
“But why?”
His father narrowed his eyes, took off his glasses, and removed a pumpkin-colored square of felt from his pocket to clean them with. Sylvester felt his stomach tighten. He was fifty-four years old, and he had been watching his father evade difficult questions his whole life. This is what his father did when he didn’t want to answer something.
When Sylvester was seven, he had asked him to go on the father-son Adirondack camping trip, for example. Instead of saying he was too busy, his father had simply cleaned his glasses. When the company had Yankees season tickets, and Sylvester had asked if once, just once, his father could take him instead of a shareholder, his father had started polishing his lenses.
And here they were again: Sylvester asking a question, his father dismissing him with one little square of felt
.
“It’s against the rules,” Sylvester said steadily. “We have insurance regulations. And Catherine’s our employee. If she’s so free about letting people up here after hours, what makes us think we can trust her not to steal—books, or funds, or corporate secrets? Some of these volumes are priceless.”
“I know. They were mainly acquired by my grandfather, your great-grandfather. Remember?”
“Then you know.”
“What I know, son,” his father said, clearing his throat. He seemed unable to speak. Sylvester saw him reach for the felt square again, but perhaps he thought better of it. His watery blue eyes welled up.
“Father … ,” Sylvester began, shocked.
The old man rested one gnarled hand on Sylvester’s shoulder. Late afternoon light slanted through the northwest-facing windows, throwing long shadows over the park. “What I know is that a very young man seems to have died. And that he was somehow important to Catherine Tierney. That is what I know, Sylvester.”
“Yes, but—”
“All I can say, Sylvester, is that I find myself thinking. Thinking of you.”
“Of me?”
“Sylvester,” his father said, “if that had happened to you, I would be heartbroken. It’s beyond words. Let’s try to think of that boy and his family, shall we? If he is a friend of Catherine’s, then he is our friend as well.”
Sylvester Jr. stared at the photo of bells, and he bowed his head with shame.
Catherine walked past the choir singing “Adeste Fideles” in the Rheinbeck Tower lobby and stopped when she got to the sidewalk, crowded with Christmas shoppers. She thought of running into the park, rushing to Belvedere Castle. She wanted to be there when they found Danny. But she would only be in the way. She turned toward the subway, but she knew it would take too long. Her arm shot out. “Taxi!” she called, and a yellow cab screeched to a stop on the side of Fifth Avenue.
“Ninth Avenue and Twenty-second Street,” she said, giving the address of Christy’s tree stand.
The cab took off. They dodged through traffic. Catherine’s heart was beating so fast, she thought she might pass out. The driver didn’t give her a second glance—and why would he? She was just another passenger, in a hurry to get somewhere. He couldn’t know that it was life or death.
What would she say? She hadn’t seen Christy since he’d left her house. Even now she wasn’t sure he’d want to speak to her. But he had to hear—she had to let him know. Maybe she was wrong, maybe the boy in the park wasn’t Danny. In her heart she believed it was—and Christy would die, too, when she told him.
When the cab pulled up to his corner, she saw that he was gone. His tree stand was still set up, but the lights were out and he was nowhere to be seen. Someone must have told him. The cab driver reached for the meter to turn it off, but Catherine said, “No, not here. Please keep driving.”
“Where to?” he asked.
She planned on saying her home address, on West Twentieth Street. But instead, the words that came out of her mouth shocked her.
“St. Lucy’s Church,” she said. “Around the corner.”
“I know it,” the driver said. “On Tenth Avenue.”
He drove around the block, and Catherine hesitated for a moment before getting out of the cab. Her heart thudding, she gazed up at the rose sandstone church with its square bell tower where, once before, she had asked for too much.
“You okay, lady?” the driver asked.
Catherine didn’t reply, but paid him his fare.
Lizzie and Lucy knelt in the back of the small church. It was dark except for blue December light coming through the stained-glass windows, and they were alone except for someone practicing Christmas music on the organ in the loft. Incense filled the air, the remnants of a late afternoon benediction. It seemed appropriate—frankincense and myrrh were two of the gifts of the Magi. On the altar was the crèche; glancing down at her daughter, Lizzie had the feeling that Lucy was praying directly to Baby Jesus, child to child. The minute Lizzie had heard the news about the boy in the park, she’d gone to get Lucy. She didn’t want her hearing about Danny from anyone else.
Lucy coughed, from the incense. Her eyes were watering.
“Are you all right?” Lizzie whispered.
“Will Harry be all right, Mom?” Lucy asked now, looking up at her mother.
Oh, this was a hard one. Lizzie kept her head bowed, buying time. When Lucy was only three, she’d had to deal with the illness and death of Uncle Brian. Lizzie had worked up a whole repertoire about heaven, eternal happiness, and choirs of angels. Lucy was a very inquisitive child, and she had spent many sleepless nights grilling Lizzie on exactly where heaven was—could she show her on a map? And what was eternal happiness, and how was it better than going to the park, or for a ride on the Staten Island Ferry? And choirs of angels—well, that was fine, but what about Uncle Brian’s guardian angel? Where was he when Uncle Brian had gotten sick? What good was a guardian angel who didn’t guard?
“Mommy?” Lucy whispered.
But this time Lizzie was all out of explanations. The incense thickened the air. As she knelt beside Lucy, she pressed her head to her clasped hands and felt the tears flow. Danny was so young. He had touched the dreamer in both Lizzie and Catherine. His sparkling eyes, the ferocity of his dream. She could almost see him on that roof high over the park, trying to touch the sky.
Lizzie thought of Catherine, of how, in some odd New York City miracle, Danny had brought her back to life. She had lost her faith. It was that simple. Having Brian taken from her had broken her. Catherine had shut down, stopped believing in anything, stopped believing in goodness. And then Danny had come along … and, this year, Christy and Bridget. Lizzie had watched her best friend open up to the Byrne family, trying, Lizzie knew, to bring them back together.
“Oh, Danny,” Lizzie sobbed.
Lucy took her hand and held it. They sat like that for a long time, praying for the boy who had always been able to escape.
“Uncle Brian is taking care of him, isn’t he?” Lucy asked after a long while.
Lizzie nodded. She glanced down at her amazing daughter, saw that Lucy was looking over her shoulder—toward the door.
“Mommy,” Lucy whispered, tugging her sleeve.
It was Catherine.
They watched her emerge through the incense haze to stand in the back of the church, looking around as if she had never been there before. She seemed poised to run out, but instead she took a few steps forward. Something seemed to pull her toward the bank of glowing red candles, off to the right. Lizzie watched as she went over, lit a candle, and knelt at the small altar.
Lizzie’s heart was in her throat. Love had never come easily to her—certainly she’d been let down by Lucy’s father. But she’d always had Catherine. So much of their history could be told within the walls of this small church. They had been baptized here, made their first communions together. Catherine used to joke that Lizzie’s love of hats had been formed here, that she hadn’t liked any of the first communion veils and so had designed her own, using white tulle and a band of silver sequins she’d bought in the fabric district with her allowance.
That was true.
The girls had been confirmed here, and Catherine had been married here. Lizzie had been her maid of honor—they’d walked right down this aisle, and Lizzie had given her friend away to Brian, the only man Catherine swore she would ever love. And then, at Brian’s funeral, Catherine had sworn to Lizzie all love had died with Brian and that she would never—ever—set foot in this place again.
And Lizzie had said a silent prayer that Catherine would find that that wasn’t true. That love hadn’t died, that it never could.
Staring at Catherine now, Lizzie felt her head tingle.
Somehow Lizzie knew that her prayer had been heard. Catherine knelt at the altar in front of St. Lucy, her head bowed with intensity. Lizzie closed her eyes. She saw the tree man, his son, and his daughter. They had come to
New York and found Catherine just when she’d needed them most. Don’t let Danny be dead, Lizzie prayed. Let him have survived—and let this family come together. Upstairs the organ was playing “Gloria in Excelsis Deo.”
And Lizzie began, not so much to pray as to talk—to Brian.
“Help her,” Lizzie whispered. “Help her now.”
She and her daughter stared, transfixed, as Catherine knelt by the small red candles. And then, holding hands, they slipped out past the crèche.
12
When Rip came by the corner to give Christy the news, Christy jumped straight into the squad car and sped uptown with him. Lights and sirens blaring, they zigzagged through crazy holiday traffic, straight up Eighth Avenue.
Christy felt as if someone had reached down his throat and yanked him inside out—he felt skinned, all his nerve endings raw and wild. Rip was talking, trying to calm him down. Christy heard words, but none of them made sense. A boy had been hiding in some castle, had climbed onto the roof and jumped.
“Danny wouldn’t jump,” Christy said.
“He was cornered,” Rip’s partner said. “His hiding place found out. We closed in on him, and he must’ve panicked. Especially if he stole that money.”
“Hey,” Rip said, cautioning him.
Christy didn’t care what they said. Even if Danny took the money—he had to know his father would have given it to him anyway. That was what Christy was working for, his kids. Bridget, he thought. He’d left her home, not a word. She’d be okay, she had to, but right now he had to tend to Danny.
“Here’s the park,” the partner said when they got to Columbus Circle. Rip drove faster. They saw other police cars, fire trucks, and ambulances. Christy’s eyes swam. There weren’t this many emergency vehicles in all of Cape Breton. They were all here for Danny. Surely all these people, this expensive high-performance equipment, could save the life of one young boy.
Christy’s throat felt scraped raw. So many people trying to help. He saw their faces, their eyes grave and their jaws set. Trying to help. One young boy. A teenage runaway, a street kid accused of stealing his father’s cashbox. Nobody important—except to Christy. Danny was the sun, the moon, and the stars to Christy. And to Bridget.