'You like dogs, I guess.'
'Oh, I love dogs.'
A radiance arose in her as she talked about dogs, and joy made her eyes appear less wounded than they had been.
'I had a dog,' she said. 'He was a good dog.'
Intuition warned me that questions I might ask about her dog would take us places I could not bear to go.
'Did you come to talk about dogs, Mr. Thomas?'
'No, Christmas. I came to ask a favor.'
'What favor?'
'You know, the funny thing is, I don't remember. Can you wait here for me, Christmas?'
'Sure. I got a dog book.'
I rose to my feet and said, 'Sister, can we talk?'
The mother superior and I moved to the farther end of the room, and confident that we could not manhandle him, the Russian joined us.
In a voice almost a whisper, I said, 'Ma'am… what happened to this girl… what did she have to endure?'
She said, 'We don't discuss the children's histories with just anyone,' and fried the Russian with a meaningful look.
'I am many things,' said Romanovich, 'but not a gossip.'
'Or a librarian,' said Sister Angela.
'Ma'am, there's a chance maybe this girl can help me learn what is coming-and save all of us. But I'm… afraid.'
'Of what, Oddie?'
'Of what this girl might have endured.'
Sister Angela brooded for a moment, and then said, 'She lived with her parents and grandparents, all in one house. Her cousin came around one night. Nineteen. A problem boy, and high on something.'
I knew she was not a naif, but I didn't want to see her saying what surely she would say. I closed my eyes.
'Her cousin shot them all. Grandparents and parents. Then he spent some time… sodomizing the girl. She was seven.'
They are something, these nuns. All in white, they go down into the dirt of the world, and they pull out of it what is precious, and they shine it up again as best they can. Clear-eyed, over and over again, they go down into the dirt of the world, and they have hope always, and if ever they are afraid, they do not show it.
'When the drugs wore off,' she said, 'he knew he'd be caught, so he took the coward's way. In the garage, he fixed a hose to the exhaust pipe, opened a window just wide enough to slip the hose into the car. And he took the girl into the car with him. He would not leave her only as damaged as she was. He had to take her with him.'
There is no end to the wailing of senseless rebellion, to the elevation of self above all, the narcissism that sees the face of any authority only in the mirror.
'Then he chickened out,' Sister Angela continued. 'He left her alone in the car and went in the house to call nine-one-one. He told them he had attempted suicide and his lungs burned. He was short of breath and wanted help. Then he sat down to wait for the paramedics.'
I opened my eyes to take strength from hers. 'Ma'am, once last night and once today, someone on the Other Side, someone I know, tried to reach me through Justine. I think to warn me what's coming.'
'I see. I think I see. No, all right. God help me, I accept it. Go on.'
'There's this thing I can do with a coin or a locket on a chain, or with most anything bright. I learned it from a magician friend. I can induce a mild hypnosis.'
'To what purpose?'
'A child who's been dead and revived is maybe like a bridge between this world and the next. Relaxed, in a light hypnosis, she might be a voice for that person on the Other Side who wasn't able to speak to me through Justine.'
Sister Angela's face clouded. 'But the Church discourages an interest in the occult. And how traumatic would this be for the child?'
I took a deep breath and let it out. 'I'm not going to do it, Sister. I just want you to understand that maybe, doing this, I could learn what's coming, and so maybe I should do it. But I'm too weak. I'm scared, and I'm weak.'
'You're not weak, Oddie. I know you better than that.'
'No, ma'am. I'm failing you here. I can't handle this… with Christmas over there and her heart so full of dogs. It's too much.'
'There's something I don't understand about this,' she said. 'What don't I know?'
I shook my head. I couldn't think how to explain the situation.
After retrieving his fur-trimmed coat from Paulette's bed, Romanovich said in a rough whisper, 'Sister, you know that Mr. Thomas lost one who was most dear to him.'
'Yes, Mr. Romanovich, I am aware of that,' she said.
'Mr. Thomas saved many people that day but was not able to save her. She was a girl with black hair and dark eyes, and skin like this girl here.'
He was making connections that could only be made if he knew much more about my loss than was in the press.
Previously unreadable, his eyes were still storyless; his book remained closed.
'Her name,' Romanovich said, 'was Bronwen Llewellyn, but she disliked her name. She felt that Bronwen sounded like an elf. She called herself Stormy.'
He no longer merely puzzled me. He mystified me. 'Who are you?'
'She called herself Stormy, as Flossie calls herself Christmas,' he continued. 'Stormy was abused as a girl, by her adoptive father.'
'No one knows that,' I protested.
'Not many do, Mr. Thomas. But a few social workers know. Stormy did not suffer severe physical damage, mental retardation. But you can see, Sister Angela, the parallels here make this most difficult for Mr. Thomas.'
Most difficult, yes. Most difficult. And as a mark of how very difficult, no twist of wit came to mind in that moment, not even a pucker of sour humor, no thin astringent joke.
'To speak to the one he lost,' Romanovich said, 'through the medium of one who reminds him of her… too much. It would be too much for anyone. He knows that using this girl to channel a spirit would be traumatic for her, but he tells himself her trauma is acceptable if lives can be saved. Yet because of who she is, of how she is, he cannot proceed. She is an innocent, as Stormy was, and he will not use an innocent.'
Watching Christmas with her book of dogs, I said, 'Sister, if I use her as a bridge between the living and the dead… what if that brings back to her the memory of death that she's forgotten? What if when I'm done with her, she has one foot in each world, and can never be whole in this one or know any peace here? She was already used as though she were just a thing, used and thrown away. She can't be used again, no matter what the justifications are. Not again.'
From an inner pocket of the coat draped over his arm, Romanovich produced a long vertical-fold wallet, and from the wallet a laminated card, which he did not at once present to me.
'Mr. Thomas, if you were to read a twenty-page report on me that was prepared by seasoned intelligence analysts, you would know all that is worth knowing about me, as well as much that would not have been of interest even to my mother, though my mother doted on me.'
'Your mother the assassin.'
'That is correct.'
Sister Angela said, 'Excuse me?'
'Mother was also a concert pianist.'
I said, 'She was probably a master chef, too.'
'In fact, I learned cakes from her. After reading a twenty-page report on you, Mr. Thomas, I thought I knew everything about you, but as it turns out, I knew little of importance. By that, I do not mean only your… gift. I mean I did not know the kind of man you are.'
