the corners of the ceiling. “What if He sent her to us?”
“Impossible.” Father Byrne ground his teeth on a piece of toast, blackened crumbs scattering over the plate like ashes. He preferred it burned just short of a crisp. “Impossible. The only solace I can take in the matter is that she’ll be moving on soon.”
“I don’t think so. First, she stayed because she missed the bus. But now I think she likes it here.”
“A ride could be arranged if she’s lacking transportation.”
Mrs. Flynn gave him a sharp look.
He raised his eyebrows at her. What?
“She’s good for Bernie,” Mrs. Flynn said. “She’s had it hard, what with John passing on. And Oona too, with the cancer.”
“Her faith has seen her through,” he said, referring to Oona.
“That and chemo. It’s a hard thing, losing your breasts, Father. It’s not something a man can understand.” She was a plain speaker, was Mrs. Flynn.
His face felt hot. He dabbed his forehead with his napkin, muttering, “I suppose not, though Bernie hardly needs the strain of a houseguest, does she? The presumption of that girl—”
“It was the other way ’round. Bernie invited her, Father. She’d been thinking about letting the room anyway—and she likes the company.”
“Taking advantage,” he continued as if she hadn’t spoken. “Does she expect a mention in her will?”
“Will? Heavens, Father. Bernie’s not going to die any time soon, and it’s not as if she’s an heiress.”
“People are always taking advantage of widows, aren’t they?” He thought of his own mother, scammed out of her retirement, in her late nineties now, living with one of his brothers in London, far from everything she knew.
“God will watch over her, Father. He will watch over them both. Besides, Bernie’s doing fine.”
“So she says.” The members of his flock didn’t know what was good for them. He would guide them back to the proper path. Only he knew the way.
“There are those among us who would undermine the community we have taken such care to build.” Father Byrne paused for effect, his eyes seeking theirs for emphasis, but the parishioners were looking down at their laps or out the windows, marking time before they could take communion and escape. “Evil is at our door.” He lowered his voice. He had their attention now. He was a warrior for God, leading them into battle. If only he had a sword, like the Archangel Gabriel. “We must drive out this contaminating influence before it is too late, before the innocence of our children, the morality of us all, is irreparably damaged.”
Bernie had never seen the priest in such a state. At first she almost found it entertaining, then she began to worry.
Outside, the sun pierced the canopy of clouds for the first time that morning, shone through the stained glass windows and lit Father Byrne from above, his robes aglow, as if he were one of the anointed. His voice filled the church, built to a roar, reverberated against the ears of the congregants, the flickering candles, the Virgin Mary and Jesus himself, traveled out the windows—cracked open, because the church could become too warm during mass—where the sound caused even the wrens and sparrows to stop their chatter, a quiet falling over the hills, as if God let the priest control nature itself, so powerful was his message.
The church had stood for over a hundred years, rebuilt after the fires and the Famine, with a special shrine for lost souls near the entrance. The church stood for something.
So did Father Byrne. This was, apparently, the moment he’d been waiting for.
Bernie remembered what her grandmother had said years before, a saying passed down from the days of hunger and revolution when men came into the villages on horseback and set everything aflame. There is none so dangerous as a righteous man. She watched the priest, fascinated and wary. How far would he go?
“The only thing we should be sharing with the world is our faith,” he boomed. He seemed larger than life, up on the altar, above them all, hands slicing the air.
“What’s he talking about?” Kate whispered in her ear, alarmed.
Bernie shook her head, waiting for more. She wanted to see where this was going, though she had a feeling…
“Some of you have already opened the door, unwittingly, perhaps, but you have done it. You have started this thing, and it must be finished.” His bloodshot eyes locked on Bernie and Kate.
There it was. The first salvo.
She blinked, sat taller. He’d singled her out. If