“Oh, sorry,” Jason said after the fact, telling Fifth to come in as well.
The door closed behind the boy and Lynn came into the foyer to greet them, a towel in hand. Her lips parted in a smile for a brief moment. Then she registered Dent’s appearance and rushed over to him, cupping his chin in her hand and turning his head this way and that.
“My God, Marion,” she said in close to a whisper. “What happened to you? Your eye’s purple and is … is your lip busted, too?”
“I got into an argument,” he told her, though it was difficult to talk with her hand under his chin.
“Why? About what? With who?”
Fifth stepped up to his side and put a hand on his arm. “He decided to go sightseeing on his own. Got himself into a scuffle with some homeless people.”
Lynn let her arm drop down and began twisting the towel with both hands. She looked from Dent to Fifth to Dent again. “What, exactly, were you doing in the bad part of town?”
“I wanted to see things for myself,” he replied.
“For what purpose? I swear!” She stopped wringing the towel and snapped it loudly at her side. She then came at him quickly, hands raised, and he tensed, preparing to sidestep and respond accordingly. But she didn’t attack him. No, she grabbed his shirt collar and tugged it aside.
“Is that duct tape? Did you use duct tape to cover a wound?”
The answer was obvious so there was no need for him to reply.
Fifth said, “He came home like that last night and wouldn’t let me take care of his injuries.” To Dent, it sounded like the girl was talking about him like he was a bird with a broken wing.
Lynn stepped back from him, pointed a very straight, very stiff arm in the direction of the kitchen, and ordered, “Kitchen. Now.”
Her tone indicated he was at fault for something. He looked to Fifth.
“Can’t help you on this one,” she said.
“Marion.”
“Lynn.”
“Kitchen.”
“Okay.”
She finally dropped her arm now that he’d started moving and behind him he heard Jason chuckle and say in a low voice, “I think the black eye looks cool.”
“I know, right?” Fifth responded, her voice just as low.
In the kitchen, Dent took a seat on a stool at the island counter and waited as Lynn headed off to the restroom to fetch what she called ‘supplies.’ The supplies, it turned out, were a first aid kit and rags. She sat in front of him and opened the plastic kit on the counter, making much more noise than he felt was necessary.
He looked at the basic kit, one likely to be found in almost every home. Bandages, alcohol swabs, butterfly stitching, Neosporin, cotton balls, peroxide; this was far too much for his minor injuries. He was about to say just that when Lynn cupped his chin again and sent her focused gaze around his face.
“At least your nose is fine,” she commented. “Be a real shame if you’d ruined your face.” Her tone was a bit lighter now, and he considered that she might be attempting to be humorous.
He let his lips curl up in a facsimile of a smile.
She tsked. “Your lip isn’t too bad, but when you do that you open the cut again.”
He stopped smiling.
She took a cotton ball, soaked it in peroxide, and began ministering to his wounds, starting with the small cut below his split lip.
“So are you going to tell me what possessed you to visit the Stretch?”
“The Stretch?”
“Where the less fortunate gather. The homeless people. Why did you go there?”
“To see how bad it was.”
“And?”
“It was bad.”
She sighed. “I hope you won’t be foolish enough to go back. Most people are wise enough to avoid that place.”
As she pulled at the duct tape just below his collar bone, exposing the gash there, she sucked in her breath through clenched teeth.
“Does it hurt?” she asked as slowly and as carefully as she’d pulled the last of the duct tape from his skin.
“Not much.”
She soaked a new cotton ball and gently began working the dried blood clear. “If you went there just to see if they were truly down on their luck, you could have saved yourself the trip, and the black eye, and just asked me.”
“And if I had asked you?”
“I would have said that you needn’t worry about those folk. The community chips in where it can. We give food, donate to Saint Nicholas to help out those less fortunate than us.”
The church again. “Why does the church support them?”
“Support?” She shook her head. “You make it sound so cold, Marion. They don’t support them, but they do help them out. Food, water, clothing, toiletries, anything to help them get by. Many of those people can’t care for themselves in the real world. It’s up to the rest of us to make sure they don’t starve or freeze to death.”
“That sounds like support.”
She cocked her head to the side. “If you want to put it that way, then that’s your choice. But don’t belittle what Saint Nicholas does for those people.”
“I wasn’t belittling your parish. Just stating a fact.”
“Sounded like an opinion to me.”
He shrugged, earning himself a light slap on the shoulder and an order to sit still.
He let her do what she thought was helping him. It occurred to him that he should say something.
“Thank you, Lynn.”
She paused, and though she wasn’t looking up at him, he could see her cheeks lift. She was smiling.
And oddly enough, he found himself doing the same.
“Looks good on you,” she said, looking up from his wound.
“What?”
“The smile. The real thing, not whatever that thing is you normally do with your lips.”
Her words bathed his chest in her gentle breath and at that moment he became acutely aware of the sensation of her fingers brushing against his skin. His heart, though nowhere near racing, did pick up its pace, sending warmth to his extremities and flushing his skin. He looked away, over the top of her head as she applied a bandage to his chest wound.
He had to focus, to force his body to ignore the proximity of the woman. He wasn’t here to make friends, wasn’t here to get drawn into something that he had no right starting. The fact that he was … reacting to Lynn was troubling. And counterproductive.
“What’s wrong?” Lynn asked as she leaned back.
He brought his gaze back down. “Wrong?” he repeated, dumbly.
“It looked like you disappeared for a moment there.”
He didn’t grasp her meaning and remained quiet.
“Preoccupied?” she asked after a long moment of looking into his eyes.
More to force himself to think of something else besides the woman, to keep himself from being drawn into her eyes, he said, “I was thinking about the church. About what motives would drive the place to cater to the homeless.”
“It’s not about catering, Marion. It’s about tending. That place has been a foundation for many of us in town. When Jason isn’t at school or at the shop with me, he’s at Saint Nicholas, with a lot of other children. With his friends. Saint Nicholas is a safe haven to everyone in the area.”
“Do you go often then?”
She shook her head. “No. I’ve got bills to pay. I don’t have any help besides Jason at the shop, so I don’t have the time to go.”
“But Jason does go.”
“Almost every chance he gets.”
Dent started to put everything together. Jason had been fostered through the church around the time Herristown was going through its changes. Jason spent his free time at the church, a place where many of the residents congregated, where someone with a talent much like Fifth’s could influence a great many people on a weekly, possibly daily, basis. If Dent’s time spent with Fifth could start to change him, could emotionally magnetize him, then Jason li
kely could do the same. And, using Saint Nicholas as a focal point, Jason could do so on a much grander scale.
Dent needed to speak with Fifth, tell her what he believed was happening here, why Otto had sent them here. She would better understand the implications than he. But the way she had been acting around the boy was proving to be a problem all of its own. She seemed to lack the focus he had, seemed to forget the reason why they were here in the first place.
With a gentle hand on his shoulder, Lynn stood, closing her first aid kit. He almost felt … disappointed that she’d finished tending to his injuries.
Again she looked into his eyes, and he found himself looking right back.
She said in that husky voice, “I think we should get started.”
Heart speeding up, mouth going dry, Dent asked, “Started?”
Lynn winked, grabbed his hands and tugged him up from the stool. “Don’t look so worried, Marion. It’s just cooking.”
Cooking? he thought, until he realized that was the reason he came over in the first place.
He let her lead him by the hand into the kitchen. He probably should have let go.
Probably.
XXI
As they walked to the east lawn of Saint Nicholas Parish on a crisp Friday afternoon, Dent reminded Fifth, “This is not a social event.” Though Lynn and Jason were still getting the rest of their pot-luck contributions from the car, he still kept his voice low.
She made an obvious show of looking at the nearly fifty people already there milling about, setting up tents, placing their cooked dishes on long trestle tables, of listening to the small band warming up for their performance.
“Looks pretty social to me,” she commented under her breath.
“You know what I mean.”
“Yeah, yeah. Then you keep that in mind, too.”
He looked at her.
“Don’t go all googley-eyed at Miss Wilkens while we’re here.”
“I don’t go all googley-eyed.”
“You do a pretty good Dent-version of it.”
He tilted his head to the side.
“You know what I mean,” she said, throwing his words right back at him.
“Yeah, yeah, you keep that in mind, too,” he said, throwing her words right back at her. He didn’t want her getting entangled with Jason any more than she already had, didn’t want her getting in the way of what they were sent here to do. He had a contract to fulfill.
He adjusted his grip on the baked macaroni and cheese dish he and Lynn had made the day before, after she had taken care of his wounds. They neared the tables and tents and Dent scanned the immediate area for somewhere to put down his burden. Fifth apparently had been doing the same as she tugged his sleeve, nodded to one side, and led him to a relatively clear spot on the red-and-white checkered tablecloth.
He put his dish near a two-foot wide bowl of potato salad and a three-foot wide aluminum tray of spaghetti and meatballs. His small casserole dish seemed inadequate by comparison. He would have to mention that to Lynn.
From somewhere further down the table, Fifth had come up with a piece of garlic bread. After taking a few large bites, she handed the remaining half to Dent. They turned, putting their backs to the table, and waited for Lynn and Jason to join them.
Dent had just finished the garlic bread when Fifth cleared her throat quietly. He looked her way and saw a man approaching. Grey temples, jeans, button-up shirt — nothing to denote who the man was.
“Father Lance,” Fifth whispered, her lips barely moving as she spoke.
“Okay,” he whispered right back, also keeping his lips as still as he could for no reason other than she had done it.
“Kasumi,” Father Lance said with a smile as he stopped before them. “I see you’ve started without us, eh?”
Fifth must have made a face because Father Lance made a show of wiping his lips.
“Oh,” she said, a sleeve running across her lips. “We may have had a piece of bread.”
Father Lance leaned in slightly and said in a hushed voice, “I had a few pieces myself a few minutes ago. Best to get to it while its fresh.”
“Exactly,” Fifth beamed up to him.
Dent shuffled inches closer to Fifth’s side, successfully drawing Father Lance’s attention.
Hand offered Dent’s way, the man introduced himself. “I’ve heard great things about you Mr. Dent.”
Dent looked at Fifth.
“About how you take care of me,” she said in a tone higher than normal.
He looked to Father Lance. “I take care of her.”
“So I’ve heard,” the man said with something close to a smile. “You’re doing the Lord’s work, Mr. Dent.”
“Somebody has to,” Dent said.
For some reason, this made Father Lance’s face tighten up.
Fifth wrapped her arms around one of Dent’s and leaned in to him. “He gets overly protective, Father,” she said.
Father Lance’s face slackened back to normal and he gave Dent a slight bow. “Of course, of course. We’re glad you could make it today. It seems your girl has made friends here already.” He sent his gaze over Dent’s shoulder, to where Lynn and Jason were approaching. “And, if I’m not being too forward, it seems you have as well?”
Was that a question, or a statement of fact? Dent didn’t know. He simply stared at the man.
Fifth let go of his arm and shuffled her feet in the grass. Father Lance found something intriguing on table to occupy his attention. It remained quiet until Lynn and Jason joined them. Mother and adopted son greeted Father Lance, and Dent waited until Lynn and Jason excused themselves to find a place for their large tray of brownies — twice the size of Dent’s macaroni and cheese — to speak up again.
Dent needed to get information before the two rejoined them and he lost the opportunity. “I’m … curious about your operation here,” he said to Father Lance.
“Excuse me? Operation?” The man’s shoulders squared and he took a slight step back.
“The orphanage,” Fifth said quickly.
“Oh.” Father Lance’s stance eased, becoming less defensive, but still stiff in the back. “Kasumi was curious as well. What would you like to know?”
“It must be expensive.”
A nod. “And worth every penny.”
“Where does every penny come from?”
Father Lance spread his arms, taking in the entirety of the potluck event. “The community. Events like this. People really step up when there is a worthy cause. We also have government funding as well as private contributors.”
“Government funding for a faith-based charity?”
“It’s not unheard of, nor is it a violation of anyone’s rights. But, to put you at ease, the funds from the government are specified for maintaining the orphanage, not for Saint Nicholas itself. For our parish, we have private money helping us to keep things operational, as you would say.”
“Private money,” Dent said. “So, philanthropists.”
“Some. Large companies, as well. Those who recognize the good we do here. One in particular. HelpTouch.”
Fifth stiffened at his side.
Dent said, “Grant Chisholme.”
Father Lance spread his lips. “Oh? You know of him?”
“I’ve run across him and his company in the past.”
“Well, Mr. Chisholme is a great man.”
“Have you met him?”
“No, but bless his soul for the good he does here. Without him and his company, Saint Nicholas and the orphanage would never have been able to grow into what it is today.”
Dent opened his mouth to tell the man what he thought of Chisholme, but Fifth suddenly stepped between him and Father Lance. She said in a high voice to Dent, “I think I saw some chocolate-covered strawberries over there. I know how much you like them.”
Dent wasn’t particularly fond of chocolate-covered strawberries. In fact, he couldn’t recall a time when the two of them ever discussed
them. With her back to Father Lance, Fifth raised her eyebrows and rolled her eyes to the side.
Dent got the hint.
“I’d like to try them,” he said carefully. He thought he sounded convincing.
When Father Lance excused himself, saying he had more meeting and greeting to do, Dent figured he had been convincing enough.
Alone for the moment, he and Fifth walked away from the tables.
“Mr. Chisholme,” Fifth said.
“I was listening.”
“I know. I just … never mind. So, what are we going to do?”
“I’m going to find out who Chisholme is working with here.”
“Do you believe Father Lance was telling the truth about not meeting him?”
“I was going to ask you the same.”
She looked back, to where Father Lance was chatting with a small group of people. “I wasn’t actively forcing my emotions into him, if that’s what you mean. I don’t think I had to. He seemed eager to be helpful.”
“That seems to be a thing around this place.”
She looked back to him. “You make it sound like a bad thing.”
“It’s not a normal thing.”
“Says you.”
“With Chisholme and HelpTouch involved, I don’t see how any of this could be normal.”
Fifth opened her mouth, likely to argue, but she was forced to keep her thoughts to herself as Lynn and Jason came over to join them.
Dent would have to plough through this event, get through the convoluted nuances of social gatherings, and start to figure out how to get to the bottom of what was going on here and figure a way to shut the place down.
But when Lynn stepped close to his side, close enough that he could feel the warmth of her body, Dent suddenly felt that maybe he wouldn’t mind this socializing event as much as he’d originally thought. And by the look on Fifth’s face as she laughed when Jason whispered something in her ear, he surmised she wouldn’t mind this event either.
Still, he’d make sure Fifth didn’t get too attached to Jason.
XXII
“Grace? Hey, Gracie!” Julius called over his shoulder, loud enough for his partner to hear in the break room.
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