“Then get me water or something.” He turns back to the papers. “Or better yet, Grandma’s doing laundry in the basement. Go help her.”

I come closer, peering over the desk at his folders. “She doesn’t need help.”

He flicks the top one closed and flings it across the room. “Goody. I just need to do this in peace.”

“Do what?”

He flicks through the pages. “If I wanted you to know—”

“You’d tell me. But if you want to find whatever you’re looking for, two sets of eyes are better than one.”

“No.” He flings that folder and opens the next. “Go away.”

“I could be wrong—”

“You probably are.”

“But aren’t we on kinda the same side here?”

“Everyone says they’re on my side.”

“Then why are you doing this by yourself?”

“Because if I find what I think I’m looking for and I don’t like what it says, then I’m alone. I’m on a side of one. Me.”

“And me.”

He lets the folder close and leans back with a sigh. “Fine.”

“Okay!” I resist the urge to clap and jump up and down. I can help. I am useful, and I trust him. Getting a yes makes everything else seem doable. It’s a sliver of sunlight over the horizon. “So besides anything with that date on it, what are we looking for?”

“Dad was teaching me the business, but there were things he was waiting on until I was twenty-one. I don’t know what they are, but if it’s what I think it is…” In frustration, he flips away the folder. “I thought everything important would be in the rectory office. So the next time I think a thing, remind me the opposite is probably true.”

“Have you tried the safe?”

“My combination doesn’t work. He either changed it or never gave me the right one. When I see him in hell, I’ll ask him what the fuck.” He looks at me for a moment, considering a thing he hadn’t. “Do you have it?”

“No.”

“It’s fine. We have a guy who opens safes. He’ll be here in a couple of hours.”

There are plenty of nooks and crannies to look in before then anyway.

“Um… so the 25th.” I draw my finger across the cabinets, trying to remember how they were organized back when I tidied this office. “The archives of past things are here, the stuff he’d need soon, he piled up and told me to put here… but the future-future-day stuff was in this one.” I open a high cabinet and reach for the box on the top shelf.

“Let me help.” Massimo gets up too quickly and barks in pain.