A man named Lenny Phelps was the only assailant who’d been captured alive, and he cracked under questioning. He said the ringleader of the group was the redheaded man who got away. Phelps claimed he and his dead friend had been hired only an hour before the attack and had been promised a thousand dollars to carry out the deed. The only other thing Phelps knew about the ringleader was that he’d been hired by someone in New York City, because the three of them were supposed to go to Manhattan to collect payment after the deed was done. Unless they could catch that redheaded man, they had no way of knowing who ordered the attack or if they would try again.

That meant Liam had to be guarded around the clock. The chairs on either side of his bed were constantly filled. Janet sat in one, and brawny men from the steelworks rotated shifts in the other. At first the hospital tried to enforce visiting hours, but someone from the local union paid a visit to the hospital administrator to make him think better of it.

The following week in Pittsburgh could have been torture as Patrick felt his new clients in New York dwindle away, but it turned out to be a blessing. After his two-hour shift at Liam’s bedside each morning, Patrick headed straight back to the church.

Father Murry, the man who heard Patrick’s confession, was building a school on the back of the property and always needed free labor. Patrick worked alongside other volunteers to mix concrete and lay bricks. On the days it was too rainy to build, Patrick helped Father Murry set up a system to keep his school accounts separate from the church ledger. After all, Patrick had gone to law school with the intention of managing church real estate and investments. It felt good to sink back into church work again.

In the evenings, he dined with Father Murry. He confided everything to the old priest, including his guilt for having taken a college education and three years of seminary training, then failing to follow through into the priesthood.

“Do you regret leaving?” the old priest asked.

Patrick shook his head. “I want to marry. I want to be a husband and a father so badly it keeps me awake at night. When I finally sleep, I dream of a family. They are nameless and faceless . . . but the desire to love and be loved is strong. No, I don’t regret leaving.”

“Is there a woman in particular?”

Gwen Kellerman seemed perfect. Each time they were together on the fire escape, it felt like he’d met the perfect match for his soul, but a marriage meant more than two people. It meant the joining of families and communities, and in that area, he didn’t know if they could survive the firestorm.