CHAPTER FOUR

The chubby priest who performed the rites was sitting on the brown leather couch in the living room, small plastic plate heaped with cold cuts in hand. He wore black and the white Catholic collar. He was alone, everyone ignoring the weird guy at the party, as if all this nonsense were his fault.

“I want to thank you,” she said to him.

Caught with his mouth full, the priest covered his lips, nodded, and his ears flared red. At his feet, the carpet was indented from where the couch had been before she moved it to vacuum. Shelly had almost fought Bri over the vacuum that morning. You shouldn’t be cleaning, she’d said, your husband’s dead. The loose change Bri had found on the floor was still her pocket. In there with the envelope.

When the priest could speak, he apologized. “God will watch over your husband.”

Bri wasn’t sure if she believed in Heaven or God or even a soul, but it was a nice thought.

“Thank you,” she said.

The priest put down his plate and took her hands, cradled them. She’d endured this gesture a million times today, but this time she didn’t desperately want to yank her hands away.

“Ward was a wonderful man,” the priest said. “I am very saddened, but he is in a better place. I believe that with all my heart. God will keep him now and He will keep you too, if you want.”

It might be boilerplate, but the priest’s words tweaked something inside her, something painful yet welcome. “I remember when he first came to me,” the priest said. “I thought he was a yearly, someone who worships on the big holidays, Christmas and Easter, but Ward had quite the soul.”

She and Ward were yearly congregants, attending with her parents on Christmas Eve and singing carols in off-key, egg-nog fueled voices. Attending church once a year was tradition like Thanksgiving at The River Pier down on the Hudson.

“Thank you,” Bri said again. Behind her somewhere, Shelly was telling someone that Bri hadn’t really faced the loss yet, hadn’t truly let herself grieve.

“Some people hope God will fill them up. They feel empty inside and seek His comfort and love. They are the lost ones who wander afraid in the dark. Other people are already full, hearts overflowing with love. People for whom the sun is always rising. Your husband was like that.”

“I’m sorry,” Bri said. “You spoke with him?”

“Many times. I always looked forward to his visits. He was full of questions. Deep philosophical stuff. The things most people don’t want to ponder. Most people want answers. Reassurance that it’ll all work out in the end. Ward wasn’t like that. He wanted to discuss.”

Slowly, Bri asked, “What did he want to discuss?”

The priest thought. “He told me about his friend Tyler.”

She knew the story. Tyler and Ward were friends back when they were ten or so, riding bikes everywhere, hanging out, laughing, doing whatever young boys do before girls become the only concern. They liked the same things—cop movies, G.I. Joe, any joke about poop (about which they knew a lot) or sex (of which they knew only vague ideas and fuzzy fantasies gleaned from the porno mags stashed under their beds).

They also shared an even stronger bond: abusive parents. Ward never offered more details than saying his father occasionally hit him while his mom spent her nights downing a few bottles of wine. Bri had tried to elicit more information but Ward could sidestep conversation topics in skilled, politician-like pivots—You want to know more about my parents, of course. It’s funny, you know, I read a quote once that suggested you can’t ever know anyone unless you knew that person’s parents when they were kids. Isn’t that interesting? I wish I knew you when you were a kid. I bet you were the cutest little girl.

Had he shared something more with this priest? Why hadn’t he felt comfortable enough to tell her, his wife? She had searched the internet to confirm that Ward’s father broke his neck falling off a ladder and his mother died from liver disease. She had not done this out of suspicion that he was lying, though likely withholding, but just because she wanted to know more. She wanted to know her husband. Men could be very closed off that way, but if he was going to share, why the hell didn’t he share with her? When she pressed him, Ward never said more than “they were bad parents and they died.”

He might not have discussed his own traumatic childhood, but Ward didn’t hesitate when it came to his friend Tyler’s, whose dad wasn’t a drunk but he might as well have been: his anger erupted like solar flares. Ward had been over their house many times and on more than a few occasions, Tyler’s father had thrown a plate of food across the kitchen or given Tyler’s mother a few punches. Or both. One of those times, Tyler tried to stop his father and ended up on the kitchen floor cradling a broken arm. The abuser never touched Ward, just called him, “Tyler’s little fag.” Tyler’s mom lied for her husband, so a broken arm became Tyler falling off his bike. Silly uncoordinated boy. Don’t tell anybody because Daddy will be very upset.

Ward couldn’t look her in the face while he explained how one day he went to see Tyler and was told he was sick. I sneaked around the house, Ward said. Peaked in his room. He was there, like his mother said, but his face was discolored and swollen, a huge inflated balloon of dark purple and red. Both of his eyes were swollen twice their normal size—he couldn’t even cry. His father walked into the room and I ran. Two days later, Tyler was dead.

“How much did he tell you?” Bri asked the priest.

“Enough,” he said. “He shared many things with me, but never in bitterness. Whatever rage he might have felt, he had let it go long before we met. He considered himself blessed.”

“He said that?”

The priest’s hands squeezed hers and she was unable to rub her eyes which were itching madly, about to tear.

“He was a wonderful man,” the priest said. “If you ever want to talk, please don’t hesitate. I would be delighted. Ward loved you so much.”

“Thank you,” she said and chuckled as the first tears clouded her vision. “I’m sorry, I don’t even know your name. I’m so embarrassed.”

His smile was the kind you wanted to see, the type that actually comforted. “I’m Father Marshall.”

When she turned from him and went to the bathroom to clean her face, ignoring Shelly’s stare, Bri felt like a dense fog had clouded her mind. Why had Ward been visiting this priest? Why, if he was so damn blessed, did he need to talk to a man of God? Why not talk to her? Ward told him about Tyler, which might mean he told him all kinds of things. All kinds of secrets. All kinds of stuff he felt he couldn’t share with his wife. And why was that? Because she had been too engrossed in her own, endless pity party that he didn’t want to burden her any more. Or was it worse? What if he had been living a whole other life? What if there had been another woman? What if he had been looking to make a break?

She pulled the envelope from her pocket and loose change sprang free to clatter across the floor. She picked up the envelope and sat on the toilet.

Tears pushed around her eyes, and she smudged them away. She had to think about this damn letter. Was it real? Ward’s distinctive, rigid penmanship couldn’t be denied. She knew her husband’s handwriting. Ah, but did you really know your husband?

Suppose the letter was completely real. Okay then, so Ward wrote the note knowing he was in some sort of danger and that if something should happen to him, she would be in potential danger too. Never mind why right now. Ward seals the letter, gives it to Gurlop, even makes him sign some sort of contract forcing him to keep it sealed and deliver it to her in the event of Ward’s death. So now then . . . was she in danger?

She had to do something. Hop on the internet or search Ward’s office, maybe interrogate that priest some more. If she went back out there and started slinging questions at the priest, it wouldn’t be long before someone, Shelly probably, escorted her away as if Bri were a child who was up past her bedtime.

Or worse: everyone would think she was losing her grip.

She squeezed the envelope. The crinkling echoed around her.

“Fuck you, Ward,” she whispered.

A trio of tears blotched the paper in scattered droplets.

Next Chapter: Chapter Five: The Man in Black