Good Graces - Lesley Kagen [85]
That laugh—the one that is still echoing around our empty house and filling my heart with the worst kind of scared—that is my sister’s revenge laugh.
Whatever genius plan she’s been brewing for the past couple of weeks, I knew it would bubble up to the surface eventually and I was right. Tonight at the Latours’ is when aaalll will be revealed. Somebody who has done my sister wrong but good is about to get theirs and even though I can’t be sure, I think I know who Troo’s got in mind. God help us all.
Chapter Twenty-three
I’m not going over to the Latours’ the way Troo told me to. I don’t want to hear her plan. I’m afraid to hear her plan. That’s why I’m running over to the Piaskowskis’ as fast as I can. Dave’s still over there getting his sister’s house up to snuff for her return.
One part of me wants to rush in the front door of the house and tell Dave that he has got to drop whatever he’s doing because Troo is right this minute preparing to seek revenge, but the other part of me knows if I rat Troo out, she’ll never forgive me. Ever. Even after she’s dead. And I couldn’t really blame her. It’s bad enough to rat out your sister, but to tattle to Dave, the man who took Daddy’s place? I can’t even begin to think what she’d do to me. But what about keeping her safe the way I promised Daddy I would?
I’m still going back and forth, listening to an angel on one shoulder and the devil on the other, not sure which is which, when I come round the corner of 56th and Lloyd and one of the other places where everyone in the neighborhood spends so much of their time looms over me.
Mother of Good Hope Church.
Next to Gesu, which is downtown and so fancy that it makes you feel sorry for people who aren’t Catholics, our church is one of the most beautiful ones in all of Milwaukee. It’s got two spires, a bell that peals every hour and lots of windows with stained-glass pictures of sheep and saints and the inside is gorgeous, too. There’s row after row of pews with red leather kneelers. The confessionals are made out of cherry-colored wood. They’re where you have to go and tell on yourself at least once a week if you’re me, more if you’re Troo. The altar up front is white marble and there’s lots of gold dripping off everything and Jesus is hanging on the cross, blood oozing down his forehead from his crown of thorns. Votive candles are always flickering with ten-cents-a-pop prayers in front of statues that have got these special kinds of eyes. Like the ones in the stuffed deer head that hangs behind Jerbak’s bar, those eyes follow you around no matter what direction you go in like it’s all your fault they’re dead. The exception to that rule is the Blessed Virgin Mary. Her eyes are chipped and she’s got outstretched blue arms that, if nobody is around, you can climb between and breathe in the incense that sticks to her cloak, especially around her neck.
Behind the church is the school that’s two stories high and made of red bricks, same as Vliet Street School. Father Mickey kept telling everybody that we’d outgrown it and needed more classrooms so that’s why there’s a giant hole next to the cafeteria that has DANGER signs hanging off the rope around it, which is just asking for trouble. That hole is like putting a chocolate cake with chocolate frosting in front of kids and telling them hands off. Denny Desmond already broke his collarbone. He fell in after B.O. Montanazza challenged him to walk the plank across the hole on the first day of summer vacation.
They’re going to get busy building the rest of the school as soon as Father Mickey has taken in enough money from his parishioners, which he’ll hand over to Mr. Tony Fazio, who I recently found out in a rude way