That night, Emily stood in the hallway at Holy Trinity, the church her family attended. A bunch of construction-paper balloons bearing psalms and Bible verses were tacked up on the walls. A long gold runner stretched from one end of the hall to the other. The air smelled like a mixture of incense, stale coffee, and rubber cement, and the wind whistled noisily under the door. Years ago, Ali had told her that the whistling wind was the wails of the people buried in the cemetery out back. Sometimes Emily still believed that was true.
A door at the far end of the hall opened, and a graying man peered out. It was Father Fleming, the oldest and sweetest priest at the church. He smiled. “Emily! Come in, come in!”
For a second, Emily considered turning and bolting back to her car. Maybe this was a huge mistake. Yesterday, when she’d come home from swim practice, her mom had sat her down at the kitchen table and said she and her dad were considering postponing their trip to Texas. “Why?” Emily had asked. “You’ve planned this trip for months!”
“You just don’t seem like yourself,” Mrs. Fields said, folding and unfolding a cloth napkin again and again. “I’m worried about you. I thought, with the scholarship to UNC, you’d turn a corner and put everything behind you. But it’s still weighing on your mind, isn’t it?”
Tears inadvertently filled Emily’s eyes. Of course everything was still weighing on her—nothing had changed. Even worse, the woman who’d wanted her baby had found her. If A didn’t tell everyone about her pregnancy, Gayle probably would. And then what would happen? Would Emily still have a home to live in? Would her parents ever speak to her again?
She put her face in her hands and murmured that everything was so hard. Mrs. Fields patted her shoulder. “It’s okay, honey.” Which made Emily feel even worse—Emily didn’t deserve her mom’s sympathy.
“I have an idea.” Mrs. Fields picked up the cordless phone from its cradle. “Why don’t you talk to Father Fleming at the church?”
Emily made a face, thinking about Father Fleming. She’d known him forever. He’d listened to her first confession when she was seven years old, telling her not to sweat calling Seth Cardiff a walrus in the schoolyard. But admitting to a priest she’d had premarital sex? It seemed so wrong.
The thing was, Mrs. Fields wouldn’t take no for an answer—in fact, she’d already set up a meeting with Father Fleming the following day without asking Emily first. Emily relented, if only to reassure her parents that it was okay for them to go to Texas as planned. They’d left for the airport that morning, although Mrs. Fields had left a miles-long list of emergency contacts on the kitchen table and arranged for several neighbors to check in on Emily during the time they would be gone.
But now here she was, shuffling toward Father Fleming’s office. Before she knew it, she was hanging her coat on a hook shaped like a hand making a thumbs-up sign on the back of the door and looking around the room. The décor took her aback. A ceramic head of Curly from The Three Stooges leered from the windowsill. The sanctimonious preacher from The Simpsons gave her a puckered-lipped pout from next to a gooseneck lamp. There were a lot of religious texts on the bookshelves, but Agatha Christie mysteries and Tom Clancy thrillers as well. On the desk were two tiny handmade Guatemalan worry dolls.
Father Fleming noticed her looking at them. “You’re supposed to put them under your pillow to help you sleep.”
“I know. I have some, too.” Emily couldn’t hide the surprise in her voice. She didn’t think priests were superstitious. “Do they work for you?”
“Not really. What about you?”
Emily shook her head. She’d bought six worry dolls at a head shop in Hollis shortly after what happened in Jamaica, hoping that placing them under her pillow would calm her down at night. But the same thoughts still zoomed through her mind.
Father Fleming sat down in the leather chair behind his desk and folded his hands. “So. What can I do for you, Emily?”
Emily stared at her chipped green nail polish. “I’m okay, really. My mom was just worried about my stress levels. It’s not a big deal.”
Father Fleming nodded sympathetically. “Well, if you want to talk, I’m here to listen. And whatever you say goes no further than this room.”
One of Emily’s eyebrows shot up. “You won’t tell my mom about . . . anything?”
“Of course not.”
Emily ran her tongue over her teeth, her secret suddenly feeling like a festering sore inside of her. “I had a baby,” she blurted. “This summer. No one in my family knew about it except for my sister.” Just saying it out loud in such a holy place made her feel like the devil.
When she snuck a peek at Father Fleming, though, he still had the same unflappable expression on his face. “Your parents had no idea?”