kidnapped from a hospital setting in Phoenix. After that unsettling event, Ali had talked with her about making sure she could defend herself. She had resisted strongly.
St. Bernadette’s Convent in Jerome was a home for troubled nuns. Sister Anselm had spent the last three months dealing with an elderly nun-older than Sister Anselm anyway-who was recovering from hip replacement surgery as well as suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. Sister Louise had been walking home from a pharmacy to her convent in Dallas when she was attacked by a carload of young thugs. They had thrown her to the ground and wrenched her purse and shopping bag out of her hands. No doubt hoping to find money and/or powerful painkillers, the thieves had gotten away with a little over six dollars in change, Sister Louise’s three-month prescription for Boniva, and a box of Depends. Passersby had found her a few minutes later and summoned an ambulance. She had been taken to Parkland Memorial Hospital, where an orthopedic surgeon successfully replaced her damaged hip. What the Parkland physicians had not been able to fix was her sense of well-being.
That was Sister Anselm’s job, and she had been working on it. But dealing with Sister Louise’s troubles had brought home to Sister Anselm-more so than even her own kidnapping-that there were evil people in the world who were more than happy to target someone they thought to be helpless.
So now, when Sister Anselm drove from one end of the state to another, going about her business normally, there was one major difference. She had a weapon discreetly stowed in the pocket of her blazer. Her nonlethal protection was a gift from Ali, who’d warned that it should be carried on one’s person and not in a handbag. In Sister Louise’s mugging case, her purse had been taken out of play almost immediately.
Just because Sister Anselm was out in the world doing God’s work, there was no reason to be a victim, not if she could help it. If anyone tried to take her out, they’d be in for a big surprise.
12
12:00 P.M., Saturday, April 10
Patagonia, Arizona
That Saturday morning, it took Phil Tewksbury longer than usual to run his mail delivery route. Everyone he met along the way wanted to talk about the Santa Cruz deputy who had been shot while on duty the night before. Phil knew the guy’s name, Jose Reyes, and where he lived, because he was on Phil’s delivery route, but that was all he knew. Details about the shooting itself were pretty scarce, although when they were available, Phil figured that the Patagonia post office would be information central.
Once his mail truck was back in its spot inside the fenced lot behind the post office, Phil hurried home and settled in to spend the rest of the weekend painting the weathered outside trim on his house and garage.
Considering the problems inside the house, including several thorny issues he was not yet ready to tackle, the paint and the new double-paned windows were like putting lipstick on a pig, but for the first time in years, he was working on the house with a sense of purpose rather than a sense of despair. To his amazement, he found himself whistling while he worked. That hadn’t happened in a very long time.
Not that anything had happened. It hadn’t. Not yet. But there was the possibility that something would happen. He had a hope that something might happen, and that made all the difference.
Finished with the trim on the dining room window, he moved on to the ones in the living room. That was when the whistling stopped. For years, the broken seal in the old windows had left a film of fog between the living room and the outside world. Through the blur, no one could see in or out. Now it was all there and clearly visible- Christine, or at least the shabby wreckage of Christine and the dilapidated fifteen-year-old Christmas tree with its burden of dusty ornaments and strings of mostly nonworking lights.
He had told Christine years ago that once the last of the lights burned out, the tree was gone. No matter what she said, he was taking it down then. Recently, he had come to suspect that she must have a secret stash of lights hidden somewhere and was using the spares to replace one or two dead bulbs at a time. It reminded him of that lady in one of the old Greek legends he had read back in high school. Her husband had gone away on a trip and was supposedly lost at sea. Someone wanted to marry her, and she said yes, but she told her would-be suitor that she had to finish weaving a rug first. So every day she wove like crazy, and every night, when no one was looking, she tore up that day’s work.
If that was what was happening, Christine was a lot cagier about it than Phil had given her credit for being. On the other hand, maybe some of those old lights, made back in the day when Christmas lights came from the U.S. instead of China, were just that much better than the ones you could buy today. Better or worse, depending on your point of view.
Christine sat there now, in her chair next to the tree, watching him, but not with any kind of curiosity or connection or interest. He might have been a living color image performing on a television screen; not that she watched TV, either. She mostly stared at the tree, day after day, year after year.
Phil stopped painting and studied her. Trying to remember the old Christine, which wasn’t anything like the old Christine who had been on television a year or two ago. His wife’s hair had been reddish brown back then. She had worn it short and curly. He hadn’t realized until much later that the curl came from the beauty shop and probably most of the color, too. Now it hung past her waist in long gray strands that were lank and greasy.
That was something Phil knew he’d have to deal with tonight-bath night. Once a week, on Saturdays, they waged the bath night war, and it was hell. Once a week, whether Christine wanted to or not, he insisted that she get up out of her chair and strip off that week’s shapeless muumuu and grubby undergarments. After what was often a physical struggle, he’d maneuver her into the shower and turn on the water. He remembered seeing clips on
Eventually, he would wear her down. She’d give up. She’d go ahead and soap her body and shampoo her hair, but it never happened without a fight. It made him glad that his grandfather had built his little house in the middle of five acres. Otherwise the neighbors, hearing the racket they made each week, might have assumed he was trying to kill her.
Which he wasn’t. All on his own, Phil was doing what he could to care for Christine, or at least what was left of Christine, and doing it to the very best of his ability. He owed it to her. Because what had happened to her was his fault-all his fault.
Things were so different now, it was hard to remember how happy they’d been once. He and Christine had moved back home to Patagonia after Phil finished putting in his twenty years in the military. They had moved into the house his grandfather had built and which Phil had inherited when his grandmother died. He’d gotten the job working in the post office, and life was good.
By then it had seemed clear that he and Christine weren’t going to have any kids, ever. They’d tried. It hadn’t worked. End of story. At least that’s what they thought. But then, much to their astonishment and right after Christine turned forty, she also turned up pregnant.
Christine was ecstatic when Cassidy was born. So was Phil. Life was wonderful for a time, right up to Christmas Eve fifteen years ago, the night everything changed. Phil and Cassidy had been on their way home from a last-minute Christmas-shopping trip to Tucson. Between Patagonia and Sonoita, a drunk driver came across the double line into their lane. Somehow Phil managed to avoid being hit, but he lost control of the car. It rolled. Cassidy died.
The original accident wasn’t Phil’s fault, but Cassidy’s death was. Her mother always made sure Cass was properly belted in. Insisted on it. That day when they started home, Cassidy, who was seven, said she was tired. She wanted to lie down in the backseat to sleep, and Phil let her. When the car rolled, Cassidy was ejected, and the car landed on top of her. She died instantly. Sometimes Phil wished he had died then, too.
When he gave Christine the news, she didn’t say a word. She didn’t have to. Instead, she leveled an accusatory look that shriveled his heart. He had known right then that she would never forgive him, and she had not.
Cassidy’s funeral was two days after Christmas. When they came home from the funeral, the decorated Christmas tree and all the wrapped presents were there in the living room, taunting them and showing them how much they had lost. Phil’s first instinct had been to take it down and get rid of it, but Christine had stopped him. She
