The priory bused many of the boys, but Charlie was the only student from Swannhaven, and the little village was too remote to warrant a bus route. Ben rarely minded driving him, though he hoped that everyone had exaggerated the treacherous winter weather.
Some students still loitered around the school’s front steps when Ben pulled up, but Charlie wasn’t among them. He parked the Escape and walked around the cluster of buildings to the athletic fields, where a soccer practice was in session. The priory ran a winter soccer program that competed against nearby private schools. The boys were running passing drills in two lines, from one end of the field to the other.
Ben found Charlie watching from one of the small metal bleachers that flanked the field.
“Hi.” He sat next to his son. “Sorry I’m late.”
“It’s okay.”
The boys who had completed the drill started doing tricks with the balls. They bounced them off their knees and knocked headers between them. Ben could feel the cold from the bleachers through his jeans. He watched Charlie’s eyes follow the boys showing off to one another.
“I bet you can juggle the ball better than any of them. I should get you one so you can try it.”
“I have one already.”
“Well, we should play with it more. Did you know that I was on the soccer team when I was your age?”
Charlie shook his head.
“I was pretty good, too.” Ben saw Father Cal walking through the priory’s garden, and he raised a hand to him. “I was a forward. You know what that is?”
Charlie shook his head again. His eyes were still on the field, but Ben sensed that his thoughts were far away.
“It was my job to score the goals.”
“Oh.”
Father Cal reached the bleachers and shook Ben’s hand. “Getting chilly.”
“I can’t believe they’re still wearing shorts,” Ben said, nodding to the boys on the field.
“The young don’t stand still long enough to feel the cold,” Cal said. “Hello, Charlie. Do you mind if I borrow your dad for a moment?”
“Okay,” Charlie said. His eyes did not stray from the soccer players.
“Is everything okay?” Ben asked Cal as they walked toward the garden. He talked with the priest every few days, and Cal had never hesitated to speak in front of Charlie.
“Charlie’s doing exemplary work in all his classes. He’s a bit shy, but that’s not unusual since he’s still new and he’s been through a lot recently.”
“Switching schools is hard,” Ben said. “But after the last one, this place must feel like a relief.” He kept up with the priest’s casual tone, but Ben had plotted enough dialogue in his time to already dread where this conversation would take them.
“Moving here from the city is a big change. Getting a new brother can be traumatic. And having Caroline around more is something else he’s had to get used to. There was also that business with the fire over the summer.”
They skirted the edge of the garden to head toward the buildings. “That could have been a lot worse than it was.” The fire in the shed had been a near thing; if the wind had been any different, they could have lost much more than its four walls and some lawn equipment.
“Some events latch on to children and don’t let go. Who can say why? But it’s best that they’re brought into the light, rather than left to grow in the dark.”
“What exactly are we talking about here?”
“His art teacher, Miss Woods—you may remember her from back-to-school night? Lovely woman. They’ve been doing pastel work in Charlie’s class, but Miss Woods sensed that they needed a break and gave them a free drawing period.”
“I’m not going to like this, am I?”
“It’s a small thing, Ben,” Cal said. “But a thing that shouldn’t be ignored.”
They entered one of the low stone buildings on the edge of the school’s campus. Student artwork was on display along the walls of the hallway. Watercolors of the seasons, colored-pencil renderings of pilgrims and tall ships.
When they reached the classroom, Father Cal announced their presence to the young woman updating the bulletin board.
“Hello, Mr. Tierney.” A smile lit Miss Woods’s face. “It’s nice to see you again.”
“Likewise,” Ben said. He tried to return the smile.
“Well, as I told you at conferences, Charlie’s great.” She gathered a sheaf of papers from her desk. “He’s very careful and doesn’t cause any trouble—which, I can tell you, is a characteristic I appreciate in kids of any age.”
Father Cal remained standing, but Ben settled into a desk in the third row that he remembered was Charlie’s.
Miss Woods recounted what Father Cal had already told Ben about the free drawing period. She pulled a page from the pile and showed it to them: a jungle scene with a child’s stab at giraffe shapes and elephant impressions. The second sheet she showed them depicted a figure standing on grass, with rows and rows of multicolored circles in the background. “I think this one is of a soccer stadium,” she said, before setting it aside. She removed the top few pages from the pile.
“Charlie always does things a little differently—which is one of the things I most enjoy about teaching him.” She began to lay the pages out on her desk. “A different perspective is invaluable. It gets the other students thinking and certainly keeps me on my toes, too.”
Charlie’s drawing was comprised of six sheets of paper, arranged in three columns. The left column was a stark outline of the Crofts, executed in sharp black strokes, its towers pressing all the way to the top of the upper sheet. The right column was of the forest, an impenetrable bank of overlapping trees rendered with the same clear purpose as the drawing of the house. With a medieval sense of proportion, Charlie had given the two subjects an equal presence. Taken together, the drawing’s two outermost columns had a stark elegance to them.
The center column was the problem. The shed, half the height of the Crofts itself, was ablaze—the vivid red of the conflagration the only color on any of the pages.