He led her to a sparse but elegant dining room. Beside a pot of coffee, a ring cake had been laid out in the middle of a lace doily on an old plate with a braided rim, perfectly centered on a mahogany table. Probably the work of a housekeeper, there were always these devout ladies in the rectory in her day, who served as maid and cook and chaste hausfrau for the priest. The woman herself was absent, although Holly sensed another presence in the house, an organizing spirit. Perhaps she was dusting the priest’s plain room or hovering behind a doorway to eavesdrop. The dining room walls were unadorned, save for the crucifix atop the lintel and one painting that drew the eye by virtue of its solitude. She circled the table to take a closer look.
As with so many paintings she had encountered in this part of the country, the subject was the roiling sea with a ship barreling toward the viewer, the sky a chaos of yellows and grays. Sails swollen with wind, the cloth tattered at the edges, the ship listed slightly forward with the bow pointed toward the deep. The painter had been clever enough to show a coil of rope uncurling and an unmoored barrel smashing against the rails. A silver plate fixed to the bottom of the frame showed the title in tarnished letters: Wreck of the Porthleven, 1849.
“I see you’ve discovered the Porthleven,” Father Bolden said. “A tragic tale.”
“So, you know the story behind this painting?”
Holding a hand against his belly, Father Bolden chuckled and walked around the table to join Holly as she faced the painting. “I pride myself, if it is not too great a sin, on the history of these parts.”
“Was there really a shipwreck around here?”
“Legend has it that the spirits of those who died on board still haunt these waters,” Father Bolden said. “Fact is, she left Cornwall in a calm November, a small crew and passengers bound for America to find a better life. The Porthleven ran into rough seas just as they came within sight of Maine. One December evening, a nor’easter blew in, and the ship floundered in a blizzard. A scrim of white so thick the poor captain could not have known how close they were to land. This whole area was snowed in, not fit for man nor beast, and of course, that lighthouse had not been built. The crew laid anchor but it did not hold. She hit a ledge of rocks and broke apart in twenty feet of water. Six crew and thirteen Englishmen, women, and children, including a vicar from Cornwall, and not a soul survived the freezing sea. People in the village discovered the first bodies next morning, stiff and coated with ice, and story goes that not all the passengers were found, that some still lie at the bottom of the sea, and you can hear them keening on stormy nights, anxious in their watery graves.”
She shivered and wrapped her arms against her chest.
“You’ll have some of Miss Tiramaku’s crumb cake.” He pointed at the table, as she turned. “She’s a sensitive soul and will be heartbroken if we don’t finish at least half of it.”
Taking a chair, Holly allowed the old priest to pour her a cup while she sliced two helpings of cake. The cup rattled in its saucer as he set it before her. The dollop of cream she added left an oily slick on the surface, the color of foam on the back of a wave. She stirred and at once the hue brightened, and in the whirlpool created by her spoon, she imagined the foundering ship and the passengers pell-mell on the decks. The image so disconcerted her that she had to look away from the cup. Through the picture window, scattered flurries danced in the cold air.
“I’ve been thinking about your situation ever since we spoke on the phone.”
Holly looked up, flabbergasted by the sudden appearance of the priest already seated in his chair across the table. A sip of hot coffee helped shake off the visions of those people drowning in the sea.
“Where should we begin?” He bit into a forkful of cake, allowing her time to consider the question.
“Would it be a sin, Father, to say that I hate him sometimes?”
Crumbs caught at the back of his throat set him into paroxysms of choking and sputtering. Red-faced, he gulped at his coffee and composed his demeanor. “Surely, Mrs. Keenan, you don’t mean hate.”
She studied her fingernails and reconsidered her opening gambit. “Perhaps ‘hate’ is a strong word.”
“A four-letter word. My late mother, God rest her soul, never allowed such a word to be uttered in our house. She would have given you a clap on the ear. Perhaps you meant something else?”
“Of course, I don’t hate him. He’s my boy. But I do hate the way our lives have changed. The Asperger’s is one thing, but this fear of the outdoors just adds to the struggle. Everything revolves around his needs, his care. Do you know what an ordeal it is just to get him to the doctor’s or the dentist? I have to trick him, offer a bribe, wrap him in blankets so he’s not exposed to the outside.”