Keeping the dog with him for protection as he peered out through a front window, Davy saw a man climbing out of a big black car parked in the driveway. As soon as the man stepped up onto the porch, Davy recognized Father Damien, the young priest from San Xavier.
Even Davy knew that having a priest come to the house in the middle of the night could not mean good news. He hurried to the door. 'What's wrong?' he demanded through the still-closed door as the priest's finger moved toward the button on the bell.
'I'm looking for someone named Rita Antone,' Father Damien said hesitantly, as though he wasn't quite sure whether or not his information was correct. 'Does she live here?'
'What is it, Davy?' Rita asked, materializing silently out of the darkness at the back of the house.
'It's Father Damien,' Davy answered. 'He's looking for you.'
Nana Dahd unlocked the dead bolt and opened the door. 'I'm Rita,' she said.
The priest looked relieved. 'It's Father John, Mrs. Antone,' he said apologetically. 'I'm sorry to bother you at this hour of the night, but he's very ill. He's asking for you.'
Rita nodded. 'Get dressed right away, Davy,' she said. 'We must hurry.'
They left the house a few minutes later. There was never any question of Davy's staying at the house by himself. Ever since Andrew Carlisle had burst into the house on that summer afternoon, there had been an unspoken understanding between Rita and Diana that Davy was not to be left alone. On their way to town, Rita rode in the front seat with the priest while Davy huddled in the back.
'Where is he?' Nana Dahd asked.
'He was at Saint Mary's,' the priest answered. 'In the intensive care unit, but this afternoon he made them let him out. He's back at the rectory.'
At the mission, Rita took Davy by the hand and dragged him with her as Father Damien led the way. They found Father John sitting propped up on a mound of pillows in a small, cell-like room. He lifted one feeble hand in greeting. On the white chenille bedspread where his hand had rested lay Father John's rosary-his losalo-with its black shiny beads and olive wood crucifix.
Davy Ladd was an Anglo-a Mil-gahn — but he had been properly raised-brought up in the Indian way. He melted quietly into the background while Rita sank down on the hard-backed chair beside the dying man's bed. Out of sight in the shadowy far corner of the room, Davy sat cross-legged and listened to the murmured conversation, hanging on every mysterious word.
'Thank you for coming, Dancing Quail,' Father John whispered. His voice was very weak. He wheezed when he spoke. The air rustled in his throat like winter wind whispering through sun-dried grass.
'You should have called,' Rita chided gently. 'I would have come sooner.'
Father John shook his head. 'They wouldn't let me. I was in intensive care. Only relatives…'
Rita nodded and then waited patiently, letting Father John rest awhile before he continued. 'I wanted to ask your forgiveness,' he said. 'Please.'
'I forgave you long ago,' she returned. 'When you agreed to help us with the evil Ohb, I forgave you then.'
'Thank you,' he said. 'Thank you so much.'
There was another long period of silence. Nodding, Davy almost drifted off to sleep before Father John's voice startled him awake once more.
'Please tell me about your son,' the old man said quietly. 'The one who disappeared in Korea. His name was Gordon, I believe. Was that the child? Was he my son?'
Rita shook her head. There was a small reading lamp on the table beside Father John's bed. The dim light from that caught the two tracks of tears meandering down Rita's broad wrinkled cheeks.
'No,' she answered. 'I lost that baby in California. When I was real sick, a bad doctor took the baby from me before it was time.'
There was a sharp intake of breath from the man on the bed, followed by a fit of coughing. 'A boy or a girl?' Father John asked at last when he could speak once more.
'I don't know,' Rita said. 'I never saw it. They put me to sleep. When I woke up, the baby was gone.'
'When I heard about the murder, I assumed Gina was…'
Again Rita shook her head. 'No. Gina was my husband Gordon's granddaughter, not yours. Gordon took care of me when I was sick in California that time when I lost the baby. If it hadn't been for him, I would have died, too. Gordon was a good man. He was a good husband who gave me a good son.'
'Gordon Antone.' Father John said the name carefully, as if testing the feel of the words on his lips. 'Someone else I must pray for.'
'Rest now,' Rita said. 'Try to get some sleep.'
Instead Father John reached out, picked up the rosary, and then dropped it into the palm of Rita's hand before closing her fingers over it.
'Keep this for me,' he urged. 'I have used it to pray for you every day for all these years. I won't need it any longer.'
Without a word, Rita slipped the beads and crucifix into her pocket. Father John drifted off to sleep then. Eventually, so did Davy. When he awakened the next morning, the room was chilly, but Davy himself was warm. Overnight someone had put a pillow under his head and had covered him with a blanket. Rita, with her chin resting on her collarbone, still sat stolidly in the chair beside Father John's bed, dozing. She woke up a few minutes later. The priest did not.
At age seven, this was Davy Ladd's first personal experience with death. He had thought it would be scary, but somehow it wasn't. He knew instinctively that in the room that night he had shared something beautiful with those two people, something important, although it would be years before he finally figured out exactly what it was.
In the three years David Ladd had been in Chicago, he had come to Calvary Cemetery often in hopes of establishing some kind of connection between himself and the names etched into the marble monuments of the Ladd family plot. The worldly remains of Garrison Walther Ladd II and III lay on either side of a headstone bearing his grandmother's name. The only difference between Astrid's grave marker and the other two was the lack of a date.
Respectfully, David put the wreath on his grandfather's grave first. He had come to Chicago several times to visit his grandparents, first as a youngster and later as a teenager, flying out by himself over holidays along with all those other children being shuttled between custodial and non-custodial parents during school vacations. The flight attendants who had been designated to transfer him from plane to plane or from plane to the Ladds had always assumed that Davy was the product of a cross-country divorce. And some of the time he had gone along with that fiction, making up stories about where his father lived and what he did for a living. That was easier and far more fun than telling people the truth-that his father was dead.
Finished with his grandfather's grave, David turned to his father's. Breakfast with Astrid had lessened the impact of the latest visitation of the recurring dream. Vivid and disturbing, it had come to him every night for over a week now. Each time it came, he awakened the moment he saw his sister's lifeless body in the middle of the kitchen floor. And when his eyes opened, his body would launch off, sweating and trembling, into yet another panic attack.
Night after night, the two events came together like a pair of evil twins-first the dream and then the panic attack. One followed the other as inevitably as night follows day. Davy went to bed at night almost as sick with dread at what was bound to come as he would be later when it did. As the days and virtually sleepless nights went by, anticipating the attacks became almost as shattering as the attacks themselves.
Up to that moment in the cemetery, the attacks themselves had always happened at night, in the privacy of his own room and always preceded by the dream. But right then, kneeling beside the marker bearing the name of Garrison Walther Ladd III, David felt his pulse begin to quicken. Moments later, his heart was hammering in his chest, knocking his ribs so hard that he could barely breathe. His hands began to tingle. He felt dizzy.
Not trusting his ability to remain upright, David sank down on the ground next to his father's headstone and leaned against it for support. He tried to pray. As a child, the old priest, Father John, had taught him about the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. And Rita had taught him about I'itoi.
But right then, in Davy's hour of need, there in the hot, still air of that Chicago cemetery, all he could hear through the trees was the sound of traffic buzzing by on Lake Shore Drive. From where Davy sat, both Heavenly
