Sandcastles

by Luanne Rice

  “Should we have a theological discussion now?” she asked.

  “I tell you what,” he said, eyes glaring. “I believe in love. I believe that what is meant to be will be. As long as it takes.”

  “Six years,” she said quietly to hide the anger she felt growing, pretending they were talking about John and Honor. “That’s how long John has been gone. That’s how long Honor has waited, and it hasn’t been easy.”

  “Who ever said love is easy?”

  “John never understood his own limits,” Bernie said, shoving her hands into the sleeves of her habit, to hide the fact that they had started to shake. “That was one thing—learning how to fly his own plane so he could land in the Alaskan bush, going out on thin ice to get the best shot, traveling to Ireland to seek out our family history—and building spectacular sculptures in the process. But putting Regis in danger…that’s the part that made Honor crazy.”

  “He’s afraid she’ll divorce him.”

  “You’ve been in touch with him since he got out?”

  “Bernie,” he said, his voice patient, but his eyes still dark and quite dangerous.

  “Have you?”

  “What do you think?”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Honor among rogues,” he said. Tried out a smile on her, then dropped it. “He asked me not to.”

  “He had six months more on his sentence.”

  “Good behavior. He’s had a barrister working for him, to make sure it was noticed.”

  “Paid for by whom, I wonder?”

  Tom didn’t reply, just kept walking. The rain pattered overhead.

  “Bernie, I’m walking a fine line here. John’s my friend, and there are confidences…”

  “You think I don’t understand confidences?”

  “Oh, fighting words.”

  “If you think those are fighting words, Tom Kelly, think again. And you should know better, with Tadhg Mor O’Kelly in your family tree. What do they say about him? ‘He died fighting like a wolf dog’ against the Vikings?”

  “Go on, Sister Bernadette—take your best shot.” He thrust his shoulder at her, and she landed a punch.

  “Ow, Bernie,” he said, and she could tell he was surprised that she’d connected so hard. She was a little shocked herself. Knowing her brother was free, and that Tom probably knew just where he was—and the surfacing of all the other memories—filled her with emotion. Tom had said John feared that Honor would divorce him. Would she?

  Her brother had been gone for so long, some of the young nuns didn’t even know he existed. Just last month, when Tom had come to work on the seawall and the stone cottage on the beach, Sister Gabrielle had laughed, said, “Sister, I think we should find a way to fix up your sister-in-law and the hot Irishman.” Bernie had wondered what Tom and Honor would both think of that. The fact was, many of the young nuns knew next to nothing of Honor’s and Bernie’s past. And they didn’t know Tom’s history with someone else in the family.

  “You blame me,” Tom said.

  “I don’t blame you for anything,” she said. “How could I? John has free will. He made his own choices.”

  “I know,” Tom said. “It stirred us all up—me, John, even Honor, even you. You can’t deny that.”

  “I wouldn’t dream of it,” she said, uncomfortable with this rising level of tension between them.

  “Will Honor see him?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What did she say about the letter?”

  Bernie wheeled to look at him. “What do you know about that? Is he staying with you? Did he tell you he wrote it? Tom, I don’t care about confidences—tell me where my brother is!”

  “Bernie, I don’t know.”

  “Then the letter—”

  “He sent it to me to give to Honor. The postmark was Quebec. But he said he’s on his way here. That’s all I know, I swear.”

  “Honor’s really on the edge with all this,” Bernie said to Tom. “Regis is giving her the devil of a time….”

  “A lot like her aunt at her age, if I’m remembering right,” Tom said.

  “None of that,” Bernie warned.

  “I don’t know, Bernie,” he said. “I remember you giving your mother a few sleepless nights when you were her age. You gave me a few, as well. What’s Regis done?”

  “She’s in love and she’s getting married and she’s only twenty…nothing much more needs to be said,” Bernie said. “You already know that.”

  “She’s as passionate as her parents were.”

  “Yep,” Bernie said, willing him to say not one word more.

  “But as much as they loved each other, as strong as their passion might have been—Bernie, ours…”

  “Stop it, Thomas.”

  They just walked along, the only sound their feet hitting the wet ground and the rain falling on the umbrella. His anger poured off him, waves of heat that she felt through the black fabric of her habit. Nearing the Blue Grotto, they were startled by a white streak—Sisela, running away.

  “Now, is this the problem?” Tom asked as they approached the Blue Grotto.

  “It is,” she said, stepping closer to the arch, holding out her hand to touch the crumbling stone. Most of the Star of the Sea walls had been built without mortar, the friction and weight of one large, square stone upon another keeping them in place, but the grotto was different. Here the stones had been cut smaller, rounder, and were held together by cement mortar. The walls formed something like a cave, with a beautiful archway at the entrance and a delicate statue of the Virgin Mary inside.

  She watched Tom examining the place where three stones had fallen from the arch. They lay on the ground, the size of softballs. He picked one up, held it in his hand, tried to fit it back in place. Then he tried it with the other two.

  “Can you fix it?” she asked.

  He nodded. “Something’s missing, though,” he said.

  “What’s missing?”

  “A fourth stone. See here?” he pointed, beckoning her closer. She stood beside him, seeing the empty space. His breath was warm on her cheek. It made her shiver, and she wanted to step back. But he was pointing at scratch marks made on one of the existing stones.

  “What are they?” she asked.

  “Someone pried the stones out with a knife,” he said.

  Her heart pounded, and her mouth was dry. “Vandals?” she made herself ask. This missing stone was one thing she had no idea about.

  “Looks that way,” he said. He reached into his pocket, pulled out his reading glasses, and leaned closer to the crumbling mortar. Bernadette walked straight over to the statue. She examined it for damage, saw none. Carved from alabaster, the statue was three feet tall. The virgin’s face was exquisite, her delicate features filled with love and compassion. Her gown was draped in graceful folds, and her arms hung at her sides, hands upturned. A serpent writhed beneath one bare foot.

  Since the Academy grounds and chapel were open to the public on Sundays for mass, worshippers often left gifts here. The statue was set on granite, a natural outcropping. The rock was covered with mass cards; notes asking for prayers; the names of people living and dead in need of intercession; miraculous medals; scapulars; Alcoholics Anonymous anniversary coins; devotion candles in tall red glass holders; coins; even pieces of fruit. Although many years had passed since the apparition, and even though no official announcement had ever been made, and, in fact, the bishop had ordered it suppressed, word had trickled out, and the devoted continued to come.

  “Bernie,” Tom said. “You’d better look at this.” The tone of his voice made her feel cold inside as she turned to walk over.

  “What is it?” she asked, peering up at the faint scratches, made where the arch began its overhead curve. Tom pointed; his gold Kelly crest ring glinted dully in the grotto’s dim light.

  Without a word, Tom handed her his silver-rimmed reading glasses, and she slid them on. She had to stand on tiptoe to really see th
e knife marks, where the vandals had chiseled the rocks right out of the wall.

  “I have no idea what these words mean,” Tom said. “Do you?”

  She stared, not replying.

  Tom pointed, putting his arm around her slightly to give her a little boost up. Leaning closer, she held her breath as she felt Tom’s heart beating against her back, as she read the words etched in stone:

  I WAS SLEEPING, BUT MY HEART KEPT VIGIL.

  Four

  When do you think Dad will come home?” Agnes asked as the first rays of Wednesday’s morning light came through the filmy white curtains.

  “She speaks!” Regis said, grinning from her twin bed across the room.

  Agnes just smiled back, holding the covers up to her chin. A small stuffed bear came flying down from the bunk bed above, and Cecilia’s head appeared, upside down, in Agnes’s face.

  “She spoke Tuesday, too,” Cecilia said, whipping her head around to look at Regis, curly brown hair whirling over Agnes’s face. “Didn’t you hear her yesterday, when Mom was reading the letter?”

  “That hardly counted,” Regis said. “We were all in shock.”

  “Mom left some of it out when she was reading it to us. Did you notice?” Agnes asked.

  “I noticed,” Cecilia said. “Now that he’s coming back, why do there have to be secrets?”

  There was a long pause; then Agnes broke the silence among them. “Will he be home for your wedding?”

  “That’s what he says.”

  “If Mom lets him,” Agnes said.

  “Of course she’ll let him.”

  “Don’t you ever think about what he did?” Cecilia asked.

  “You sound like Peter,” Regis said.

  “Then you don’t?”

  “We think about it,” Agnes said. “We all do….”

  She glanced at Regis. She knew that it was different for her—they had all been in Ireland, but Regis had actually been with their father. She had seen the fight, probably felt Greg White’s hot breath on her own cheek.

  “I don’t think about it,” Regis said stubbornly. “I barely remember it. Everything happened so fast.”

  “But you dream about it,” Agnes said. “Because you wake us up saying—”

  Regis shook her head fast and put up her hand so Agnes would stop. She had never been able to bear talking about it. During the investigation, Regis had been so traumatized—in St. Finan’s Hospital, being treated for shock. By the time she was well enough to testify, her father had entered a plea of guilty, and the court didn’t call her.

  “You yell, ‘Help, help, help,’ over and over,” Cece chimed in. “Sometimes you say something else, something I can’t understand.”

  Regis was silent.

  Agnes knew that Regis was dreaming of their father in prison, of the bars at his window, blocking his view of the sky. Things Regis couldn’t think about while awake haunted her sleep. Sometimes Agnes felt so close to her sister, she believed their dreams merged; that they traveled the same roads, trying to be with their father in their dreams because they couldn’t in real life.

  “What will he be like when he gets home?” Cece asked.

  “I don’t know,” Regis said. “I wonder whether he’ll speak to me.”

  “Speak to you?” Agnes said. “Why would you even ask that?”

  “Because if I hadn’t followed him, it might not have happened,” Regis said.

  “Oh God,” Agnes said. She had her own guilt. She could have stopped Regis from going to the headland. Watching Regis pull on her raincoat that day, gesturing not to tell their mother, Agnes had felt chills. She’d had a premonition—not specifically of death, but just of some terrible thing. Agnes had glimmers sometimes…sparks of perception, hints of a vision. That day she had grabbed Regis’s hand. “Don’t go,” Agnes had said. “Daddy will be back in a minute.”

  “I have to,” Regis had replied, pulling away. And the way she had said “have to” was every bit as compelling and electric as Agnes’s own feelings about holding her back. So Agnes had let her sister go that day, and their family had fallen apart, and Regis still had it all locked inside.

  “Agnes,” Regis said now. “We have to straighten this out before Dad gets here. You can’t blame yourself because of what I did.”

  “But I knew,” Agnes said.

  “She knew what would happen,” Cece said. “She has the power.”

  Agnes wished it weren’t true, but Cece was right. Agnes—not always, but sometimes—saw and felt things, and she couldn’t deny it. She had once dreamed their mother was going to take them blueberry picking the next day, and she had. A dream had once shown Regis tripping on the way to the bathroom in the middle of the night, knocking a framed picture off the shelf—and it happened. The glass had shattered, and she’d fallen on it; Agnes glanced over now, saw the white half-moon scar, smooth, shiny, just below Regis’s left kneecap. There was something spooky and prescient about Agnes.

  “Let’s be practical, not magical,” Regis said. “We have to get over this so we don’t upset Dad.”

  “I agree with that,” Agnes said.

  “What will he be like?” Cece asked wistfully. “Sometimes it’s hard to remember him. Will he be happy to see us? Will he and Mom be happy again? Can you tell us, Agnes?”

  “No,” Agnes said, holding herself tight, wishing she didn’t always picture her father staring out through those bars for just a sliver of blue sky, his muscles in knots from being locked up, pent up like a lion in a zoo, and his heart in tatters because his family had forgotten him.

  “You can, but you don’t want to,” Cece said.

  Agnes bowed her head. When the family was in Ireland, everyone else had loved the beaches, stone walls, and pubs. Agnes had loved the fairy forts, stone circles, and standing stones. She loved any Irish town whose name began with “Lis,” because it meant that fairies lived there.

  “Stop pushing, Cece,” Regis said. “Agnes doesn’t know any more than we do. We’ll have to wait and see.”

  But Agnes did know. Whether it was second sight or just common sense, she wasn’t sure. But she knew that nothing was right. How could it be? Her father had killed a man.

  “Do you ever think about him?” she asked softly now.

  “Dad? Of course,” Regis said.

  “Not just Dad,” Agnes said, with a funny fishhook feeling in her throat. “I mean Greg.”

  “She means Greg White,” Cece said, as if she thought her sister’s use of only the first name to be unseemly.

  “Not if I can help it,” Regis said through teeth clenched so hard her words came out in a whistle. “And you shouldn’t either. He tried to kill me and Dad, and he’s the reason why Dad went to prison.”

  “I just wonder,” Agnes said. “Who he was, and why he did it….”

  “Mom told us he was a drifter,” Cece said, as if that was the worst thing in the world, as if she could just as easily have said “devil” instead. “And he was angry at the world, and he hated Dad’s sculpture because it had a cross on the top of it.”

  Agnes knew that, and it made her sad. Why did people do things like that?

  “I just want—” she started to say.

  “You just want world peace, universal happiness, and goodness,” Regis said, climbing out of her bed to grab Agnes by the wrists. The sisters locked eyes, and Regis gave Agnes a good, gentle shake and kissed her hard on the forehead. “You’ll drive yourself crazy wishing for things you have no control over.”

  “But,” Agnes began.

  “That’s why you have to grab for happiness yourself,” Regis said, still holding her wrists, fire in her eyes as she stared into Agnes’s. “You have to stop running on walls, Agnes. Diving into the water…do you think you’re going to walk on it someday? You’re not. Stop thinking about Gregory White. Stop thinking about Dad in prison, because he’s out. Do you realize that?”

  “I heard Mom read part of the letter,” Agnes said.

 
“Well, there you go. What don’t you believe?”

  “She said ‘part of the letter,’” Cece said. “Maybe she’s wondering what was in the rest.”

  “Stop worrying about it,” Regis said. “It’s summer. We have to make our own happiness, don’t you know that?”

  “Is that why you fell in love?” Agnes asked.

  “I fell in love because I met Peter,” Regis said. “I’m going for it. Let other people be ‘safe,’ and wait till they graduate, and not tick off their parents. I love him, and that’s that.”

  “You love him because he makes you forget—”

  Regis shook her head hard. “Don’t say that. Our love is real and true. You’re making it sound like getting drunk, or getting high, doing stuff to block out stuff. Agnes, I swear, the only boy good enough for you would have to be a saint or an angel. But for me, it’s Peter.”

  The two sisters stared at each other. They had been together for so long, through so much. Agnes had never known a day of life without Regis; she had always been there. Agnes had been born five days after Regis’s second birthday. The two girls gazed at each other without words.

  “It’s time for work,” Regis said. “I have to get going now.”

  “Which job? Ice cream or books?” Agnes asked.

  “Books, this morning,” Regis said. “Dusting tomes in the library for Aunt Bernie.”

  “At least you get to be with the books,” Agnes said. All the school archives, the missals, the Latin books, the old catechisms…Her own job was cleaning the art and photography studios.

  Regis nodded. Agnes saw her glance up at the tall bureau, at the picture of their father smiling down. Regis had placed it there a long time ago, shortly after they’d returned from Ireland. Someone had moved the frame, shifted it back on the bureau top, and Regis gently moved it forward now.

  Agnes knew why.

  When they were little, their father would always come into the room to tuck them in. He would stand right there, at the end of their beds, smiling down at them—and then he’d sit at the end of one of the beds, to read to them. He had been such a good, loving father. Regis liked to pretend that his picture was really him. Not just an old photo, a moment frozen in time, but their real, live dad.