The Promise of Home (9 page)

“I love hearing stories like that,” Claudia said. “Father O'Brien is going to marry us as well, so maybe that'll help our marriage be as long and happy as yours. You wouldn't have any advice for a bride-to-be, would you?”

“Funny you should ask. I like to give all my wedding clients a little advice with each fitting. Hold your arm out for me, would you, dear?” Claudia extended her left arm, and the seamstress stepped closer, gently pulling up the fabric of the gown on her left shoulder and upper arm, trying to determine how much the material needed to be taken in. Pauline's eyes sparkled, and a tiny smile puckered the corners of her mouth as she began pinning the material.

“I've seen that look before,” Claudia said. “It's exactly how a few of my students look right before they say something a little bit naughty.”

Pauline chuckled. “I was thinking how some of my best advice fits with the little surprise I gave you,” she said with a glance down at her chest. “And that is for you to always be truthful to Kyle, and for him to be truthful to you. Falsehoods and little white lies never lead to anything good. And be careful when you decide what's false and what isn't. Sometimes things and even people aren't what they seem.”

Late Sunday afternoon, Emily sat on the staircase in the McAllister mansion with the briefcase on her lap. Before closing Turner's for the day, she had called the Home Depot in Rutland. Unfortunately and somewhat surprisingly, like the little hardware store where she worked, it had no lock-pick sets in stock. She was set on opening the case, though, particularly after her encounter with Matt. Despite the fact that she had three new pedestal sinks to install in various bathrooms, despite the painting of the recently installed drywall that needed to be done, she had been tinkering with the briefcase for the better part of an hour.

Her toolbox sat open on the floor, where a hammer and a chisel tempted her from the top tray.
I could just break it open and tell Ruth I found it that way,
she thought. But she resisted. In addition to her love of all things old and vintage, she had always hated dishonesty. It made her feel fake and ashamed to lie about anything. Even her decision to delay telling Ruth about the briefcase was beginning to weigh on her, so outright lying to her employer and longtime family friend was out of the question.

Emily sighed and stared at the briefcase balanced across her knees. If she ordered a lock-pick kit online, she would probably receive it within a week, possibly sooner with expedited shipping. She reached into her pocket and pulled out the card Matt had left for her. Maybe she shouldn't have rebuffed him. She could have squelched her indecision, batted her eyelashes, and accepted his terms. If she had, she would have already found out what was in the briefcase, and she might have a date scheduled as well—what would have been her first date in years. Given the fact that she was on pins and needles about the contents of an old briefcase, she probably needed a date. Or
something
exciting.

For a few minutes, Emily turned the card around and around in her hands, thinking. Then she set the briefcase on one of the steps and stood up. In one corner of the room was a trash bag into which she had been putting used sandpaper and other refuse generated from her renovations. She ripped the business card into tiny pieces and added them to the bag.
I'll just order the lock-pick kit through Turner's and wait for it to arrive,
she thought. In the meantime, there was work to be done.

Emily was in an upstairs bathroom, hooking up the pipes to one of the new pedestal sinks, when she heard a man's voice calling to her from the back door in the kitchen. Still holding a large pipe wrench, she hurried downstairs to find Matt in the doorway.

“How did you find me?” she asked as he stepped into the house and shut the door behind him. She noticed that he held the lock-pick kit in one hand.

“I went by your house, looking for you. Your aunt was on her front porch across the street and told me you were up here working.” He spoke quickly, the words tumbling out. “Look,” he said, “I feel bad about what I said earlier. It was pretty assholish of me to condition my helping you on a date. I don't know what I was trying to do—be funny, I guess—but the more I thought about it afterward, the more I realized what a dumb move that was.”

Emily squinted at him, trying to believe what she was hearing. When she remained silent, Matt hurriedly continued. “I'd be happy to open the briefcase for you. No strings or conditions.”

Silently, she looked at him for a few moments longer and then shrugged. “Fine. I've got it in here.” She turned and led him toward the staircase in the great hall.

Matt was all business as he sat down on the stairs and placed the briefcase across his lap, as Emily had positioned it earlier. While she watched with her arms crossed tightly across her chest, he opened the lock-pick kit and selected a thin instrument with a long L-shape bend at the tip. He inserted the instrument into one of the locks on the briefcase and tried to turn it gently one way and then the other. While keeping pressure on the first instrument, he took a second one from the kit, a long thin tool with a slight hook, and inserted it as well. He drew the second instrument forward slowly, listening as he did so. When the second tool was almost completely removed from the keyhole, he turned the L-shaped instrument a little harder. The lock opened with a sharp
click
. “One down, one to go,” he said.

“So you need
two
at the same time,” Emily said, more to herself than to Matt. He heard, though, and nodded as he worked on the second lock.

“Usually. Most simple locks like these have pins of different lengths that come down and keep the plug—this middle-cylinder part of the lock—from turning. A key cut to reflect the lengths of those pins aligns them to allow the cylinder to rotate and unlock. If you don't have the correct key, you use a tension wrench—the one shaped like a long L—to figure out which way the lock turns and then keep some torque on it while you push the pins up with your pick. Doing that lines up all the pins, just like a key would, except a pick does it one pin at a time. Once all the pins are up and out of the way, the internal cylinder is free to turn, and—voilà!” As he applied pressure to the tension wrench again, the second lock opened.

“Wow,” Emily said. It wasn't every day that she learned something completely new about tool use, and she had seen enough master carpenters and craftsmen at work to recognize genuine expertise. Matt clearly knew what he was doing, and she was impressed.

He placed the lock-pick tools safely back inside their case and stood to hold the unlocked briefcase out to her. “I assume you'll want some privacy when you open it,” he said. “I'll see myself out.”

“Thank you,” she said as she accepted the briefcase.

“No problem. And again, I'm sorry about this morning.”

Emily nodded, but she was no longer annoyed with him or focused on what he was saying to her. Her heart pounding in anticipation, she waited until she heard the back door close before she moved. Once she was sure he was gone, she glanced around the great hall, settling her gaze on a sofa draped in a white dustcover. She had already sat for a long time on the hard wooden stairs, and if she was going to park herself somewhere for another good while, it would be on something soft.

She placed the briefcase on one of the cushions and took a seat beside it. Carefully, she positioned her hands on the two smooth leather corners of the lid and steadily raised it up.

The cloth-lined interior was filled with letters.
There must be dozens of them,
Emily thought as she stared at the yellowish envelopes bundled together and secured by neatly tied pieces of string. She picked up the first bundle and untied it. The top envelope, and each of those stacked beneath it, bore postmarks from 1973 and were addressed in a looping, handwritten script to Mrs. Mary McAllister. She turned the envelope over and saw a return address on the flap from Mrs. Anna O'Brien.

Emily didn't know who Anna O'Brien was, but she and everyone else in town knew of Mary McAllister, the late recluse who for seventy years had been a secret benefactor for the people of Mill River. Carefully, so as not to rip the delicate, aged stationery, she removed the letter inside and unfolded it.

My dearest Mary,
the letter began. Emily's eyes flew down the page, scanning for anything of particular interest before she read it carefully:

…I must express again my gratitude to you for these letters. I've become somewhat isolated in my old age, and it is so kind of you to take up a correspondence with me when Michael suggested it. As his mother, I'm grateful that he has such a dear friend in you. He works too hard and too much—he always has—and his life has been anything but easy…

March 31–April 1, 1934

I
n the front passenger seat of the church sedan, Michael sat quietly as his uncle Frank pulled out of the farm's driveway onto the main road. Behind them, the entire backseat was taken up by the body of the hobo. Once Uncle Frank had arrived at the farm and said a prayer for the dead man's soul, the four of them—Michael and Frank, Anna and Lizzie—had wrapped the stinking mass tightly in the old horse blanket and dragged it around the house to the car. Now he and Frank were taking it away, but where, he didn't know.

“Will you tell me now where we're going?” he asked once the farm had disappeared into the night behind them.

“To a place where the presence of a dead body won't raise suspicion,” his uncle replied.

“The cemetery, you mean,” Michael said.

His uncle pursed his lips and nodded slowly, but his gaze didn't deviate from the road.

“But the ground's frozen.”

“Yes, it is. Still snow-covered, too.”

“Then how?”

His uncle merely smiled. “It's a good thing we haven't had a storm in the past few days. The roads are clear, so we'll have no trouble getting there or getting you back home before dawn.”

Michael leaned his head against the seat. It was obvious he wouldn't get more information until his uncle was ready to give it.

“I'm going to say again, Michael, how important it is that you never speak of what we're doing to anyone. Not even your mother or grandmother. If they don't know, they won't have information to give if anyone ever comes asking for it. Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

They rode in silence for the rest of the short drive. The village of Colchester was dark and quiet as they turned into the parking area for a small stone chapel. Instead of stopping there, his uncle guided the sedan around to the back and onto a narrow drive that looped around the cemetery. His grandfather was buried there, but Michael hadn't been to his grave in years.

“We keep this driveway shoveled as best we can so we can get to the vault.”

“Vault?” Michael thought of the bank vaults he'd seen in old silent westerns. The image in his mind was one of a gleaming steel fortress with a spinning, six-handled lock on the outside and piles of money inside. “The church has a vault?”

“Yes, a receiving vault. Before the ground freezes, we dig a few graves in the cemetery, but we can't know for sure how many we'll need during the winter. Once those graves are used, we hold the bodies of the deceased in the receiving vault until spring. Until we can bury them properly.”

It was then, in the narrow beams of the sedan's headlights, that Michael saw where they were going. At the far end of the cemetery, tucked against the hillside that sloped up and away from the looping driveway, was a small, nondescript structure. It seemed to be made of the same stone as the chapel. There were no windows, only a door facing out toward the cemetery. The top third of the door was open but secured against unlawful entry by closely spaced iron bars.

His uncle parked in front of the vault and cut the engine. “Wait here,” he said. Before Michael could reply, his uncle was standing before the door to the vault, fumbling with a ring of keys, and making the sign of the cross as he opened the heavy door and went inside. After a few moments, the door opened again, and Michael saw the front of a cart emerge. He hurried to get out of the sedan.

“Quickly, now,” his uncle said. Frank opened the door to the backseat on his side and motioned for Michael to do the same. “We've got to pull him out onto here,” he said while he positioned the cart as close to the sedan as he could and then turned a crank on the end to lower the top surface until it was even with the car seat. “Once we do, it'll be easy to get him inside.”

Michael glanced around. The cemetery was absolutely silent. The night was clear and cold, easily in the single digits, but he didn't feel it. Even with just the two of them, getting the corpse out of the backseat seemed to be far easier than loading it had been. Maybe it was the adrenaline pumping through him, fueled by his fear of being seen, or maybe it was because the body had stiffened and was easier to move. At any rate, before he had fully come to terms with what they were doing, his uncle pulled the loaded cart inside the vault.

The cold, dim interior was narrower than Michael had expected. The air inside was damp and still. A large cross gleamed on the interior wall opposite the door, and beneath it were stacked several plain wooden coffins. “We always keep some simple pine caskets in here for families without the means to buy one,” his uncle said as he followed Michael's gaze. “Since it's just the two of us, it'll be easier to move this fellow without a casket.”

The other two walls of the vault were lined with what looked like identical rectangular cupboards, complete with metal pull-handles. “Most of this side is already full,” his uncle said, gesturing with his left hand. “We'll put him in one of the boxes on the right. The spring thaw is only a few weeks away, so this side won't come anywhere close to filling up before graves can be dug again.” Michael watched as his uncle unlocked the door of a cupboard with another of the keys on his ring and lined up the cart with it. It took a moment of cranking to raise the wrapped body to the necessary height, and then together they pushed it into the cupboard.

Michael stood quietly as his uncle offered another set of prayers and blessings before closing and relocking the cupboard door.

“This will do for the time being,” Frank said. “I'm the only one with access to the vault, and no one will be able to find him here or even think to look for him here. Now, let's get you back to the farm so your mother doesn't worry.” His uncle pushed the coffin cart into the far corner and ushered him toward the exit.

“What do you mean, ‘for the time being'?” Michael had experienced a moment of relief when his uncle had locked the cupboard. But it was a temporary solution, and he soon realized the answer to his question. Nobody could remain in the vault once the weather warmed. He began to feel jittery and sick to his stomach.

“The vault has to be emptied and disinfected no later than mid-May.”

“Then what? How are we—”

“Don't worry, Michael. I won't let anything bad happen to you and your mother. I know exactly what we're going to do. We just have to wait a few weeks for the right moment to come. I'll need your help then, like tonight, but the next time we're out this late in the graveyard will be the last time. After that, you won't have to worry about this whole thing ever again.”

On the way back to the farm, they rode with the windows down in order to air out the sedan. For a while, Michael closed his eyes, enjoying the feeling of the fresh, frigid wind whipping against his face. When his lips, nose, and ears were numb, he pulled up the collar of his coat and covered his face with his gloved hands.

His uncle noticed his discomfort. “It's all right,” he said as he rolled up the driver's-side window. “Put your window up, too. I've still got the ride home, and I can park with the windows open once I'm back at the mission.”

“Uncle Frank?” Michael said once he could move his lips enough to speak.

“Yes?”

“I was thinking that maybe…before you go, you could hear my confession.”

His uncle glanced over at him, and the look of surprise on his face reminded Michael so much of his mother's. His mother and his uncle bore a strong sibling resemblance. Frank was tall and burly, but he and Anna shared the same dark hair and snapping blue eyes, as well as a whole host of expressions.

“If you're feeling guilty about what happened, you shouldn't, Michael.”

Michael barely managed to whisper a response. “I killed him.”

“Yes, but you acted with the intent to protect your mother and yourself. You had no choice, and the action you took was reasonable and justified. If you hadn't, he would have harmed and quite possibly killed you and Anna and Lizzie as well. Saint Thomas Aquinas told us that it is our duty to preserve your own life and those lives under your protection. Killing in furtherance of that duty isn't a sin. The death of your attacker was an unintended but acceptable effect of your actions.”

“I've told myself that…or some version of it…but I still feel like I've done something horribly wrong.”

His uncle smiled. “You sound like so many boys who came back from the Great War. Killing another person for any reason is something that feels unnatural and wrong to most people. I've counseled so many soldiers who made it home but are shaken to the core because of what they had no choice about doing over in Europe. Michael, trust me when I tell you that you needn't confess anything about the business with the tramp.”

“Not even hiding him in the vault?”

“
I'm
the one who made the decision to hide him in the vault.
You
are entirely without fault in the matter. As for what involvement you had in the man's death, I'll say it again—you've done nothing wrong. The man had no identification. You had no idea who he was or how to find out. He broke into your home and held Anna at knifepoint. You killed him in a sin-free, completely justifiable manner, and I blessed his body and prayed for his soul—on Easter Sunday, no less—before we moved him and once we got him into the vault. Because of what we did tonight, he'll be laid to rest in consecrated ground. There's hope that his soul will meet with God's mercy. It's better that he end up in the church cemetery than alongside some road or in the middle of the woods.”

“He's going to end up in the church cemetery?”

“He's there now, isn't he?” His uncle looked over at him again and winked. “I aim to keep it that way.”

Despite his continued misgivings, the corner of Michael's mouth twitched up in a smile. He understood then how right his mother had been when she'd told him that his uncle was different than any priest he'd ever met.

They arrived back at the farm just as the sky was turning gray with the impending dawn. Lizzie was already in the barn, and she came out to wave at them as they pulled up to the house.

“Remember, now, not a word to anyone,” his uncle said, and Michael nodded. His uncle's admonition reminded him of his mother's secret silver hidden in the root cellar, and he couldn't help wondering whether Frank knew about it. He felt a powerful urge to ask, but he suppressed it. He had promised his mother he would not speak of it to anyone. It was strange, how quickly he had become a receptacle of secrets. His new burden of information was heavy, but he was determined to manage it.

His mother was pouring a cup of coffee as they came inside. She had dark circles beneath her anxious eyes.

“Everything's fine,” Frank said immediately, and Michael was happy to see some of the tension leave her face.

“Good,” she said. “I was about to make some breakfast. Can you stay?”

“If it's quick,” his uncle said. “I need to be back to say Easter Mass in just a few hours. While you cook, though, I'm going to take a look around outside. Sometimes hoboes mark a property where they've been treated well, and the mark attracts others who wander by.”

His mother nodded. “Michael, could you fill the wood box? It's nearly empty. After breakfast, I'll heat a tub of water so you can take a bath. I imagine you need it.”

“A bath sounds good,” he told her. He'd never really minded bathing in general, unlike Seamus, who had always hated the weekly washing. But today it would be an exquisite treat.

He was coming from the woodpile with an armful of logs when he heard his uncle shout to him. Frank was standing at the end of the driveway, next to the mailbox, beckoning him to come over.

“I'll be right there,” Michael yelled. He deposited the logs inside before he came back out and jogged down the driveway.

“I wanted to show you this,” his uncle said, pointing to the thick wooden post on which the mailbox was mounted. The bottom half was buried in snow, but on the top half, a symbol had been marked on the post: