There was a six-story building on Yonge Street, on the corner of Shaftesbury Avenue. Em and I had talked about it. Both the shield and the name of the Archdiocese of Toronto were inscribed above the glass doors, where the words CATHOLIC PASTORAL CENTRE were written. The building didn’t look like a cathedral could be contained inside it. We never saw nuns coming or going—not a single priest with a collar, not that we could remember. Matthew must have gotten tired of hearing us wonder out loud about the place. He’d gone online, which only added to the Catholic mystery. There were archives, collections, artifacts; researchers could book an appointment, after consulting with the reference archivist. “Usually, or often, there is a photo of Pope Francis by the glass doors—he looks very nice, in a beneficent way,” Em had said.

This was where I found her, one December morning—in front of the beneficent-looking Pope Francis, or someone with the pope’s generous smile. I’d read only the last sentence of Cardinal Law’s obituary—the part about the pope’s presiding over the cardinal’s funeral rites in St. Peter’s, “an honor accorded to all cardinals based in Rome.”

I suggested to Em that she move away from the photo of Pope Francis. It isn’t always the pope who is pictured there; the photos change. But I’m pretty sure it was Pope Francis this December morning. “Someone might think the pope has died, and you’re saying good riddance to him,” I said to Em. The longer we stood on the Yonge Street sidewalk, the more we were in the way of people headed for the subway—or people coming from the subway station on Shaftesbury Avenue. That was when the young priest suddenly appeared, as if he’d been born with his hand holding Em’s arm in her warmest winter parka. He had the unflagging enthusiasm of an assistant coach on an athletic team, or like someone new to his job.

“You look unhappy—good riddance to what, or to whom?” he asked her. We’d not seen him emerge from the glass doors of the archdiocese building. Maybe the young priest had nothing to do with the Catholic Pastoral Centre; he could have been coming from the subway, or he might have been on his way to it. He’d appeared so suddenly, it was as if he descended from heaven.

“Cardinal Bernard Law is dead—good riddance to him,” Em said, almost shyly. “He knew about those sexually abused children—he protected the pedophile priests,” Em told the young priest, slightly more assertively. His scarf was knotted loosely, his overcoat unbuttoned, as if the winter weather didn’t affect him; the whiteness of his priestly collar stood out on the gray sidewalk. “The Vatican rewarded Cardinal Law—they made him a high priest of some big-deal basilica,” Em said, more boldly.