The kitchen door was open, so he went down into the yard, which was fragrant with gardenias, and called for him. He checked the old workshop and the leaning garage, finding only the smells of rust and kerosene. He walked back inside and upstairs, passing through the bedrooms and the little office. They were all empty. He sat among his father-in-law’s tangled sheets and used the phone on the night table to call Aunt Nellie:

“Hello?” she said in the middle of a fit of coughing.

“You better quit those cigarettes.”

“What you want, Paul?”

“I’m supposed to watch Mr. Jeansomme, but I can’t find him anywhere.”

“Did you look in his workshop?” She did not sound worried.

“Yes.”

“Well, what’s today? Friday?” There was a long silence on the other end of the line as she inventoried the old man’s habits. She coughed fiercely and then gasped. “Open the top drawer to his chest and see if his rosary’s there.”

He did what she asked and found an old Sunday missal, a Way of the Cross booklet, a novena book, several holy cards, and a dozen handkerchiefs. “No rosary,” he reported. “What’s this about?”

“Nothing. Friday at six-fifteen, the Ladies’ Altar Society has a Mass and says the rosary. That’s why his rosary’s gone. Remember? When you were a little bitty, you used to serve that Mass. Swing by the church and pick him up, honey.”

He walked four blocks, turned a corner, and saw the rosy brick church, a Gothic design built before the Civil War. He pulled open a twelve-foot-high door and saw that the east windows were blazing with sun, Adam and Eve being driven out of the garden, St. Blaise healing a throat. Mrs. Adele Foret was coming down the aisle, a pixie smile painted on her powdered face.

“Paul, baby, he’s sound asleep,” she told him, motioning to the middle of the long church. “He’s been that way forty-five minutes. We just went on without him, you know?” She reached up and straightened the collar on his work shirt, then moved off toward the door.