prisons and I imagine the red door behind me throbbing like a heart.
“She was devoted,” Father Murphy says, “to the Word of God. And she pulled me aside that day in hopes of gaining a deeper understanding of it. I greatly respect her for that. She was fourteen, you know. Many girls her age would have been more concerned with the pile of gifts on the table.”
I narrow my eyes at the blatant sexism.
“Actually, the gifts,” he adds, a crease in his brow. “That’s when we noticed she was gone.”
I pull away from the wall. Stand pillar straight. “What do you mean?”
“Well, her mother announced that it was time to open the presents. But when we looked around for her, she wasn’t there. Not ten minutes before that she and I had been having a conversation, and then she was—gone.”
He stops speaking—lost, it seems, in the memory.
“That must have been terrifying,” I prompt.
Father Murphy shoves his hands in his pockets, and for a moment, he looks like one of my middle schoolers, nervous and guilty about something.
“Not at first,” he says. He takes out his handkerchief again, wipes his brow. “Jacob and Ruth—they thought that maybe Astrid had gone inside. But when they didn’t find her there, they called someone. A friend of hers. Another parishioner—one of the only ones who wasn’t at the party. But the friend’s parents assured Ruth that their daughter was upstairs, alone. The two girls weren’t allowed to see each other—they’d gotten into some kind of trouble together—but the parents said they’d call if Astrid showed up.”
He stuffs his handkerchief back into his pocket. “Anyway, it was another half hour or so before people gave up and started to go home. But I waited there, at the Sullivans’ request. Ruth was certain that Astrid had gone to see the friend, and that the parents would call them back any minute. She wanted me to be there, when Astrid got back, to counsel her about disobeying one’s parents, how doing so leads you away from God. But I…”
He swallows. His Adam’s apple bobs against his collar.
“What’s wrong?” I ask.
His smile looks like a wince. “Oh, just old regrets,” he says. “But it’s been twenty years. I’ve made my peace with them, through the help of our Heavenly Father.” He takes a breath, his shoulders rising and falling. “I do wonder, though, how much time we might have wasted, waiting to hear from the friend’s parents. Because I didn’t say it at the time, but I didn’t believe she went there. As I said, Astrid and I had just had a very good conversation. And in that conversation, I got the sense that she cared—deeply—about obeying her parents. She wanted to be a good child to them, as well as a good child of God.”
He sighs, and I feel his breath cross the distance between us. “But I’m a priest. Not a parent. And as such, I let them handle her disappearance from the party the way they saw best. I stayed with them until dusk, waiting.”
“So it wasn’t until… several hours later that her parents called the police?”
At first, he doesn’t answer. Only stares at me. Blinks once, twice. Which is answer enough. But then he says, solemnly, “It wasn’t until the next morning.”
The air hisses in my throat as I suck it in. Parents who get it all wrong. Parents who see threats in something innocent, then miss the real monsters, let them get away.
“I do regret that we didn’t know sooner,” Father Murphy finally replies. “As I said, almost the entire parish was at the party. We could have driven around, gone looking for her.” He shrugs. “Maybe it wouldn’t have mattered. I guess we’ll never know…”
As he trails off, I glance at the red door behind me. Almost the entire parish was at the party, he said. Almost. That word feels like a clue meant only for me.
“She isn’t down there,” Father Murphy says.
A chill shoots down my spine. “Excuse me?”
“The red door,” he answers, gesturing toward it. Then he tilts his head, considers me for a moment. “You didn’t really know her, did you?”
My throat goes dry in an instant. “Yes, I did,” I say. “I even saw—I think I saw—”
“It’s okay.” He stops me with a hand in the air. “You’re not the first person to read the memoir and come here.”
“But I haven’t—”
“It’s okay,” he repeats, looking at me like I’m a child who’s been caught. Like his forgiveness will