I was halfway down the hall when I remembered Frenada. I counted dates frantically on my fingers. Even though I didn’t have a third blank to use as a replacement, I ran back to the study and took the tape for two weeks before July Fourth. As I was leaving the second time, I remembered to switch Baladine’s vanity recorder back on. I hurried down the hall again, through the girls’ playroom, past acres of Barbies and stuffed animals, and down the stairs to the kitchen. I stopped briefly in Rosario’s room to thank the Virgin of Guadalupe.

I’d been upstairs ninety minutes—nerves had made it seem even longer. I slipped outside and down the drive without anyone stopping me. Morrell was waiting for me at the bend in the road. His face was pinched with anxiety, but I felt lighter–hearted than I had in months.

Chapter 45: Fugitive

45 Fugitive

Morrell arrived early the next morning with the papers and a couple of cappuccinos—Father Lou breakfasted on sweet tea and bacon sandwiches and didn’t keep coffee or fruit in the rectory. I’d already been up for a few hours when Morrell arrived. Game–day nerves, I suppose.

Father Lou had been up for hours, too. He started Labor Day as he did every day, with mass. This morning he startled me considerably by asking me to serve, since none of the children in his acolytes group had appeared. When I told him I’d never even been baptized, he grunted and said he supposed some hairsplitter would consider that a barrier, but would I at least keep him company by reading the lesson.

I stood in the Lady Chapel of the enormous church and read from the book of Job about how God desires humans to see the light. As Father Lou began the prayers for the mass, he prayed first for the souls of Lucian Frenada and Nicola Aguinaldo, for the working people of Chicago, for everyone who worked hard and had little to show for it. Along the way he surprised me by asking for light on my enterprise, to see whether it was good to let it prosper. I thought again of Miss Ruby, warning me that revenge didn’t make a good meal.

At the end of the mass I stood in front of a wood statue of the Virgin of Guadalupe, stubbornly arguing my case in my head. Even if it was revenge, didn’t I have a right to live and work in this town? I said as much to Father Lou while he fried bacon in the cavernous kitchen.