That’s when the church door opened. The sound caught me off guard, and some instinct led me to sink in the pew. I heard heavy shoes shuffle against the wooden floor, and I craned my neck around, peeking over the back of the bench.
Just like the first time he visited our house with that ice cream cake, Father Coffey wore stiff jeans and a black turtleneck. His posture was slouched. His splotchy skin was flaking. Since he was bound to notice me, I stood and said, “Hello.”
Coffey gasped, nearly dropping the bag in his hand.
“Sorry,” I said, my voice echoing. “Didn’t mean to scare you.”
“Well, you did,” he snapped back. But after a second, he looked at me and his tone softened. “Sylvie?”
I nodded.
“You’ve . . . you’ve grown since I last saw you.”
When exactly had that been? I wondered. “I guess so.”
“And you are just about the last person I expected to see here.”
“The doors were open,” I said, trying not to sound defensive. “When I came in, no one was around, so I decided to sit for a while. Sorry again for startling you.”
“It’s okay.” He looked around, let out a breath. “This place belongs to you as much as it does me.”
We fell silent after that. In the midst of the quiet, I remembered when I’d last seen him: at my parents’ burial, a raw morning last March, after the ground had thawed. Since it was not a public service, no one had been present except for Father Coffey, Rose, Howie, and me. It struck me as odd, suddenly, that a priest—even one who had a strained relationship with my parents—would not visit the orphaned children of his parish. “I saw cars in the lot earlier—” I began just as he said, “So I imagine you are in high school—”
We both stopped.
“You go,” he told me.
“I saw cars in the lot. The flowers in the window boxes. I guess the place is, well, open for business again.”
“We held a wedding rehearsal this afternoon for a ceremony that takes place tomorrow. It’ll be the first since . . .” Coffey stopped, let out a sigh. “I’m sorry, Sylvie. You should know many prayers were said for your parents’ souls, and this place was reconsecrated before opening the doors.” He walked up the aisle, his heavy black shoes echoing against the floor too. That’s when I noticed the statues in the back of the church. They hadn’t been removed as I’d thought, only relocated. Their painted faces watched as Coffey slid into my pew without bothering to genuflect. Up close, I could see more of his skin peeling at the sides of his nose and chin. “I need to lock up and head over to the school. But do you mind if I sit with you a bit first?”
“I don’t mind,” I told him, taking a seat again too.
“I didn’t eat before the rehearsal. After, I was famished. One of the parishioners gave me a ride over to—” He held up the bag so I could see the Herman’s Bakery logo. “Against the rules to eat here. But I won’t tell if you won’t.”
Coffey fished a piece of a marshmallow doughnut from the bag and popped it in his mouth before reaching in for a cruller. Behind us, the church door opened—or I thought it did. When I turned, no one was there. It’s only the shhhh, I told myself. After offering to break his cruller in half and share, an offer I declined, Coffey began wolfing it down. He asked about my coat and boots, which I explained belonged to my sister’s boyfriend without telling him anything more.
“How is Rosie anyway?” he asked, smiling when he said that name.
“Same,” I told him, trying not to think of the fight we’d just had. “Rosie’s always exactly the same.”
“I’d tell you to say hello from me, but I’m not sure she wants to hear that.”
When I asked him why not, Father Coffey told me that a week after the funeral he’d come by our house. “It was a school day, so you weren’t there. But your sister was. I brought food with me. Not that awful stuff Maura, the rectory housekeeper, makes. I stopped at Burger King.”
“Well, Rose never gave any to me.”
“That’s because she told me she didn’t want it.”
I thought of all the food left on our steps by that woman with the grim, head-on-a-totem-pole face, the way my sister refused to take even a bite for fear it might be poisoned, the way she instilled the same fear in me. “Did Rose think you put something in it?”
Coffey swallowed the last of his cruller and began picking crumbs from the bag. “Put something in it?”
“Poison, I mean.”
“Poison? No. Well, at least I hope she didn’t suspect me capable of such a thing. Your sister said she didn’t want anything from me or the church. Her specific words were that I had been nothing but trouble for your mother and father, and that it was better if I kept away. Believe me, Sylvie, I’ve thought many times of you girls out there living on that empty street. But Rose made it quite clear she was the one in charge of your lives now, and she didn’t want me in it.”