The Blessed - By Tonya Hurley Page 0,55

you are right,” he said. “Perhaps not.”

“Look around you,” Frey suggested, pointing out the antique furnishings of the residence. “Your time has passed.”

“I’ll reserve my right to a second opinion, Doctor,” the Monsignor replied defiantly, a sly smile crossing his lips. “I think we are done. I know you. I know your kind. You will not get what you seek from me. Not this time.”

“The decision to turn the boy over was yours; don’t blame me,” Frey said. “It is too late for regret now.”

“It’s never too late.”

The vesper bells ceased. Piazza blessed himself and his unwelcome guest as he departed.

“Don’t waste your time,” Frey scoffed.

As the gray light of late afternoon squeezed past the edges of the warping window boards, the Church of the Precious Blood was revealed in all of its decrepit glory. Sebastian was sitting silently in front of the church. Agnes and Cecilia walked the perimeter of the nave and were soon joined by Lucy, who appeared to have an honesty hangover. They stopped to notice odd markings on the wall, fourteen in all, evenly spaced and about head-high, shapes more than anything else but not instantly recognizable until Agnes put it together. These were shadows burned into the plaster walls, bordered now by peeling paint and sawdust, following decades of exposure to the rising and setting sun.

“The Stations,” Agnes said.

“The Stations of the Cross,” Lucy added.

“Stations of the Lost, more like,” Cecilia nodded, noting the missing icons.

“I don’t get it,” Lucy said out loud, shaking her head. “Never did.”

Something they could all agree on.

“A man is humiliated, tortured, and killed for what?” Lucy pondered. “So a pretend rabbit can crap a basket of chocolate-covered crème eggs and jelly beans.”

“You could say there is beauty in suffering,” Agnes said almost wistfully, calling attention, however unwittingly, to her self-inflicted wounds. “And sacrifice.”

“You’re not comparing yourself, are you? We’re not talking curfew fights with your mom or issues with your boyfriend here,” Lucy said, pointing up to the VI standing out from the faded paint around it. “This is anguish on a whole different level.”

“Talk about carrying the weight of the world,” Cecilia said, scrutinizing each image as they continued walking. “Puts your own problems in perspective.”

“You think . . . ?” Lucy said.

They began their walk, as Sebastian watched from the head altar, finishing up a makeshift meal for them.

I, II . . .

Cecilia stopped at number two. She stood there in front of an image of this holy, loving man carrying a cross through a crowd of people. A heavy burden that he so willingly took on. Being lashed and spit on.

III, IV, V, VI . . .

Agnes stopped at number six. She sat down in the pew in front of it. She stared at an image of a beautiful woman, on her knees, in front of Jesus, who was suffering, carrying his cross. She was holding up a gauzy white veil, about to wipe his beautiful face.

“That’s all she had. All she could do. And that gave him strength,” she said in amazement.

VII, VIII, IX, X . . .

Lucy was stricken by number ten. Jesus was stripped of his garments. How humiliating it must have been for him, being stripped almost naked, flesh on his cloak because he was so mangled from his journey, stripped of his dignity. As they prepared his cross in front of him. He would die with no worldly possessions.

After a meditative moment of silence, they gathered together again and continued their walk.

XI, XII . . .

“This,” Lucy realized suddenly, at number twelve, “is what I was talking about. This is big.”

Jesus Dies on the Cross.

“Jesus Christ, superstar?” Agnes chided. “Is that your point?”

“I did that in middle school. I was Mary Magdalene,” Cecilia said with a shrug.

“Shocker,” Lucy said, then suddenly reached again for her brow and fell backward onto the wall behind her.

“This symbol of the cross is recognizable to everyone for all time. You see it and you instantly know the story. You feel something. You understand,” Agnes said.

“The difference between a flash in the pan and eternal fame,” Lucy said. “Talk about branding.”

“There’s meaning,” Cecilia said. “Everyone can relate to suffering and sacrifice to some degree.”

Lucy felt a sharp shooting pain behind her eye pulse and then spend itself, leaving a path of floaties in its wake, like the last gasp of a July Fourth sparkler. Cecilia reached to hold her up, but Lucy waved her away.

“That’s a nasty-looking bruise,” Cecilia observed. “I wish we had some