“You can’t be serious.”
“Let’s just say that I’ve been introduced to a number of young women my mother took a liking to. All Italian, of course.”
“And Jewish?”
He lowered his brow in thought. “Two of them were, if I remember correctly.”
“And you declined?”
“Of course I declined,” Jack said. “Did you think I had a wife squirreled away somewhere?”
“You didn’t like any of them?”
“I liked them well enough.”
“Pretty?”
“Oh, no,” Jack said. “We’re not going down that road.”
“Ha,” Anna said. “You opened the door, and I’m not going to let you shut it so quickly. So your mother—”
“Not just my mother. Aunts, cousins.”
“I see. So they found you a good Italian daughter, a pretty girl brought up to keep house and produce babies. So why do you think they’ll approve of me?”
“Because they are my people,” Jack said. “Because they want me to be happy, and you make me happy. It’s that simple.”
She didn’t want to smile, but couldn’t help herself. Anna wondered, in one part of her mind, why she was pursuing such a difficult subject today, of all days. As a little girl she had often provoked even gentle people to outbursts of frustration. Over the years Aunt Quinlan had curbed this impulse, so that as an adult she could resist, in most situations.
“I’m being difficult,” she said to Jack now. “And I’m not sure why. I apologize for needling you.”
Jack took this in with his usual calm expression. “You’re nervous about the Russo boy. If he is here, we could be taking him back to the city. Of course you’re nervous.”
“That might be true, if Father McKinnawae were here, but he’s not.” And Anna was thankful, but kept that to herself.
They came over a rise to see Mount Loretto—or what would one day soon be Mount Loretto—spread out before them.
There were a half-dozen buildings, some barely begun, others almost finished, set around a large square with the foundations of a brick building, most likely a church by its shape and size. Some dozen men were at work, all of them wearing rough brown robes. On the far side of the main development, more men were at work on a barn while still more drove oxen as they turned under meadow. Great piles of lumber and brick and shingles separated the clearing from a wood.
“Monks,” Jack said, before she could ask the question. “Franciscan; I think there’s a monastery not too far away. Look, it’s right on the bay.”
He pointed and Anna saw the glint of sun on water through a stand of trees.
“This is a huge undertaking. It’s overwhelming,” Anna said.
“The Catholic Church,” Jack agreed. “They move mountains when it suits them. Should we ask for a tour?”
“We’ve come this far,” Anna said.
? ? ?
THEY WERE DIRECTED to one of the buildings that was almost finished, with a makeshift office on the ground floor. One wall of shelves was already filled with overstuffed binders, all neatly labeled. Under a single window a desk was heaped with file folders and correspondence boxes. A thick wad of receipts and bills of lading and orders had been threaded onto a long nail driven through a block of wood. A small jug held pencil stubs and a few pens, the nibs in clear need of attention.
In the middle of the room a monk leaned over a table where a set of architectural drawings had been rolled out and secured with bricks. He was making notations with a pencil, working with his nose almost pressed to the paper.
He looked up at the sound of Jack’s knock, his expression friendly and welcoming. Anna let Jack handle the introductions because she was never sure of the proper protocol in such circumstances, but she was sure that the protocol was important to getting the discussion off on the right foot.
“You aren’t the first callers to go away disappointed today,” he was saying to Jack. “I’m very sorry that you’ve come so far for no good reason.”
Brother Jeremy struck her as a no-nonsense, well-intentioned sort, and she was inclined to believe that he meant what he said. He was well over fifty, with short iron-gray hair and a sunburned nose, wide in the shoulder with great square hands that were stained with ink and paint both. He reminded her of Uncle Quinlan, she realized suddenly, but could not put her finger on why that might be.
Jack pulled out their single ace: “It was Sister Irene at the Foundling who suggested we talk to Father McKinnawae.”