5:15 P.M., TUESDAY, DECEMBER 9, 2008
NEW YORK CITY
Monday and Tuesday had been good days for everyone, except James, who had to field a call from Luke on both mornings, neither of which provided encouraging news. After Shawn and Sana had left each day for work, Luke had informed the cardinal that the devil was being completely resistant to Luke’s attempt at changing Shawn’s mind.
Instead, Luke had had to report that Shawn was becoming resistant to even discussing the issue. James’s response had been to encourage him to pray harder and not to give up, and that James and the Church were counting on him to eventually succeed. He explained that persistence would be key.
“Have you explained to him how much his casting doubt on the Blessed Mother’s assumption will affect you?” James had asked, trying to be helpful and encouraging, as he had no plan C.
“As much as he’ll allow me,” Luke had responded, “although now he immediately changes the subject whenever I bring it up. He’s even threatened to ask me to leave.”
“How about his wife?”
“She’s been most hospitable,” Luke had said. “She has made up for him and then some.
I’m convinced that if I can change his mind, she will agree as well. She’s not nearly as committed as he.”
“Please keep trying,” James had said. “There’s still a good portion of the week left.” Other than making the two calls to James and having little luck with Shawn, Luke had enjoyed himself immensely, despite the continued uneasiness of being out in the world and exposed to sin. Both mornings Sana had awakened early and prepared a sumptuous breakfast for Luke, explaining to him that she loved to cook and was continuously disappointed that Shawn didn’t care if they had fast food or gourmet food. Luke had confessed that in contrast to Shawn as well as his brothers, he loved to eat good food and had been rewarded with an outstanding dinner the night before and looked forward to the same that night.
Even more than the food, Luke had enjoyed Sana coming home early on Monday, the day before, saying that she’d made wonderful progress on her DNA studies and had gotten the pulp samples already into the PCR stage, which Luke had not understood at all. Not that it mattered, since Sana had used the free time to take Luke out to buy him clothes that fit instead of wearing Father Karlin’s, which didn’t.
For Luke shopping had turned out to be a delightful experience, as he had not shopped for clothes for as long as he could remember, and he appreciated Sana’s input as he tried things on and struggled over choices. He’d also enjoyed the festive holiday atmosphere with a mere fourteen shopping days left before Christmas. Then to cap the day, Sana and Luke had stayed up after dinner to enjoy another fire, while affording Sana a turn to tell her life story and even her current problems. Luke had been sympathetic when his impressions had been confirmed that Shawn was not treating her as Shawn did when they were first married, particularly in the intimacy realm, as Luke knew that Shawn slept in a guest room on the second floor while Sana slept in the master bedroom on the third floor. Although Luke did not pretend to understand everything Sana said, he had told her that he’d pray for her, and that he couldn’t understand why Shawn did not want to sleep with her, because he thought she was beautiful.
“Thank you for the reassurance and the prayers,” Sana had said. “But, to be truthful, at this point, I prefer not to sleep with him.”
Similar to Sana, Shawn had made real progress as well over the previous two days. He’d reached the stage he’d hoped for, where the unrolling of the first scroll was proceeding much more rapidly. Monday he’d finished only a single page, but that day, Tuesday, he’d done more than two. Taking the time to read the unrolled portion, he was also feeling better about Simon not being quite the ogre he was reputed to have been. Even though he recognized that Simon was writing about himself, Shawn thought the better he came off as a person, the better witness he would be to the identity of the bones.
“Luke!” Sana called up the stairs. She and Shawn had just arrived home. When she heard Luke answer in the distance, she assumed he was saying his afternoon prayers.
“We are home!” She then followed Shawn into the kitchen, where she unpacked the groceries they had just bought. While she was busy doing that, Shawn poured himself some scotch as his first cocktail of the evening. Just a few days previously, Sana had gotten disturbed at Shawn’s progressive drinking, but not that night. In fact, she wanted him to drink as much as he pleased, as it caused him to retire early. As had been the case the two previous evenings, she was looking forward to spending time with Luke without Shawn’s interference or Luke’s attempt to bring up the progressively incendiary Virgin Mary issue, which he’d been unflaggingly continuing to do, despite Shawn’s increasingly negative response.
It had been two good days for Jack as well, and mainly because it had been good for JJ
and Laurie. When Jack had returned home Monday evening, Laurie had reported that JJ
had had the best day he’d had in months, with no crying whatsoever. Jack expected a similar story that evening, because Laurie had called him about three p.m. to say things had been going similarly all day.
Taking the stairs by two or three steps at a time, Jack poked his head into the kitchen. As he assumed would be the case, Laurie was involved with dinner preparations, and JJ was contentedly playing in his playpen. Jack quickly went over to Laurie, gave her a quick peck on the cheek, and looked in on JJ. To Jack’s delight, the boy smiled.
“I believe he’s going to allow us to have a real dinner tonight,” Laurie said.
“Fabulous,” Jack replied. “Are you going to feed him and put him to bed beforehand?”
“That’s the plan.”
“With him as content as he is, I’d like to play basketball for an hour or so.”
“I think that’s a good idea,” Laurie said. Then with a wink she added, “Just don’t get yourself too tired.”
Jack enjoyed thinking about what she had in mind for the evening as he wasted no time getting into his basketball gear and heading back down the stairs. With JJ apparently feeling as well as he was over the last two days, Jack tried to keep his excitement in check to avoid future even more serious disappointments, but everything was going so well that it was difficult. The previous morning he’d gone back to see Bingham yet again and asked for some time off, not to avoid coming into the office but just from autopsies. As he’d suggested he would, Bingham had agreed immediately, although he’d asked Jack, in return, to at least sign out the murder case where the on-call ME had forgotten to have the hands bagged, so the issue could be put to bed. Jack had been happy to inform him it had already been done.
Freed from additional autopsies, Jack had been able to spend more of both days with Shawn and Sana, where things were also going well as moving along at a rapid pace.
Sana expected to do the mitochondrial sequencing the next day, which Jack and James were hoping would tell them where the individual whose bones they were had originated. The question being whether they were from the Middle East, in which case they might still be the Virgin Mary’s, or from Rome, where they’d been ultimately buried, meaning they couldn’t be the Virgin Mary’s. As Jack ran across the street and entered the playground, he thought it ironic that just when he’d found the perfect distraction, JJ was doing better than he had for more than a month. Jack wondered if it would be appropriate with such a change to have JJ’s mouse antibody level tested in case they could again start his treatment.
As far as Luke was concerned, the dinner had been equally delicious as it had been the evening before and so different from what he was accustomed to, it was beyond his ability to describe. Unfortunately, what also had been the same was Shawn’s behavior.
He’d totally refused to talk about the issue with the Virgin Mary and the ossuary, and, with scotch before dinner and wine making him drunk, he’d taken himself up to his room, supposedly for a short rest. By a little after nine, when Sana and Luke had finished the dishes and had come into the living room to stoke the fire and enjoy their Coke and wine, he still hadn’t appeared.
“I think I’ll check on Shawn,” Sana said, putting down her wine and before allowing herself to truly relax.
“He’ll be fine,” Luke protested, preferring not to see the inebriated and frustrating man again that evening.
“I’m thinking more about us than him,” Sana said with a smile while heading for the stairs.
Luke sat on the couch and listened to her footfalls on the stairs and the squeaking of the joists as she went into the room Shawn was using. Luke pondered her comment. He wasn’t sure what she meant, so when she returned he asked her.
