“Your mom still goes to mass, though. It’s about the only time she leaves the house.”
“I guess it’s as good a place as any to start. At the very least, it’s something to check off the list of things we’ve tried.”
Joanne had attended seven o’ clock mass every night for months. She wasn’t very spiritual before Katie was diagnosed, but as the odds around her child’s survival dimmed, her devotion to God increased. She wasn’t the first one and she wouldn’t be the last.
“I’m surprised you wanted to come with me,” Joanne said as we drove to church together. “I know this isn’t your thing. It wasn’t Katie’s thing, either. I just had to pray harder for all of us.”
“Well,” I replied. “I am still trying to make sense of it all, and I figured church was as good a place as any to do that.”
“It really is,” Joanne said. “I don’t know where I would be now without the church to guide me.”
Katie snickered from the back seat. She always thought it was stupid that her mother found religion, and the more devoted her mom became, the stupider Katie found it. I tried not to laugh along with her. After all, I was the only person who could see her.
I didn’t know why Katie acted like she was sitting in the back seat when she was clearly floating along with us. Perhaps it was because she wanted to feel normal for a second, even though nothing about our situation was normal in the slightest.
The Church of St. Mark rested on a large plot of land in the middle of town. The church loomed large over the surrounding acreage and was equal parts welcoming and ominous, in the way that only Catholics could be.
Father Thomas smiled at us when he saw us enter the church. “Joanne, so nice to see you tonight, and you brought a friend along.”
“Yes,” Joanna said. “This is Anna Aguilar. You may remember her from the funeral.”
“Yes,” Father Thomas said, stretching out his hand toward me. “Your face does look familiar. Please, come in.”
“Thank you, Father. I was hoping you might answer some questions for me.”
The church bell rang, and Father Thomas looked up at the clock above the vestibule. “I’m afraid I’m a little busy right now, but if you stay until after the service, I’ll be happy to answer any of your questions.”
“Do you mind, Joanne?” I asked.
She smiled at me. “Of course not. Anything I can do to help bring Jesus into your heart is okay by me.”
I couldn’t bring myself to tell her that I didn’t really care about that, nor explain my true purpose, so I just politely nodded. “Thank you.”
“I thought you said that Father Thomas wasn’t at my funeral?” Katie said to me as I took a seat in one of the pews.
I turned to her and whispered. “He was there, but he didn’t preside over it. She couldn’t prevent him from coming.”
“Oh,” Katie said. “I guess that’s fair.”
Chapter 14
The church service ran long. Mercilessly long. Father Thomas sure liked to hear himself talk, and he forced everybody in the congregation to suffer through his words as well.
“This is so boring,” Katie said to me halfway through the homily. “Does he know how boring he is?”
She was trying to get me to laugh, but I couldn’t. Father Thomas was going on and on about the horribleness of abortion, and cracking a smile wasn’t something I could do without offending everybody around me, especially Joanne.
When I wouldn’t reply to her, Katie floated up to the lectern and made faces behind Father Thomas’s body. One advantage of being dead seemed to be that nobody could see you goof off, which meant you could do anything you wanted.
“I’ll be right back,” I whispered to Joanne before stepping out of the pew. I barely made it into the bathroom before I burst out laughing.
“Finally!” Katie said, floating into the bathroom after me. “That took forever.”
“What are you doing in here?” I shrieked. “You can’t be in here.”
“Relax,” Katie said. “It’s not like we’ve never hid in a bathroom together before.”
“Yeah, but that was different.”
“Different how?”
“Well, for one, you weren’t a ghost, and for two, you hadn’t professed your love for me yet.”
“So, if I was alive, cancer ridden, and hiding my feelings for you, we could share a bathroom no problem?”
“I guess. I mean, I don’t know. I just know that it doesn’t feel right.”
“None of this feels right,” Katie replied. “I’m not supposed to be dead. I wasn’t supposed to get cancer. I’m not supposed to be a ghost, and yet, here we are.”
“Okay,” I said. “Now I really do have to pee.”
“So pee.”
“I can’t with you floating there. Wait outside.”
“This is stupid,” Katie said, floating out through the wall. “But whatever.”
When I was done in the bathroom, I washed my hands and met Katie in the vestibule. Father Thomas had finally ended his sermon, and the congregation was lining up for communion. I was a heathen who hadn’t confessed her sins in years, so I didn’t qualify to receive the blood of Christ. Instead, I decided to wait in the foyer until mass was dismissed.
Joanne walked up to me with a worried look. “Where were you?”
“Sorry,” I replied. “I had to use the bathroom, and then I just decided to wait up here.”
“You missed communion.”
“I haven’t confessed in years, Joanne. I don’t think I qualify.”
Joanne waved at the priest. “Well, you can do it now, and then join me tomorrow.”
“No offense, Joanna, but I don’t think that’s going to happen.”
“If you don’t want a confession, then why do you need to talk to the priest?”
I smiled. “I’m sorry Joanne, but I’m afraid that’s between me and the Lord.”
I waited for the rest of the congregation to file outside, and when we were alone, Father Thomas walked me to his confessional in the corner of the church. It wasn’t a wooden box like I
