Maine - J. Courtney Sullivan [166]
“An indulgence comes from devoting oneself or one’s goods to those in need,” she said, snapping at him the way she might have at one of her children. “You can’t just give it to me.”
“Alice. If this whole thing is motivated by guilt, I can’t accept it in good faith. You know that.”
“It’s not guilt,” she said. “Giving you the house is my last chance to do something meaningful. It’s too late for anything else.”
She thought of St. Agnes, her comfy old church in Canton, which was set to be demolished with a wrecking ball in the fall. How had she let that happen? Not since the months and years following Mary’s death had she spent so many sleepless nights wondering how something so beloved could simply slip through her fingers like water.
“Understand the property is mine and no one else’s,” she said sternly. “Whatever hysteria you may have witnessed yesterday, no one loves the place more than I do. But let me be clear. I would burn that house to the ground today if it meant that St. Michael’s could still stand. If it wasn’t for the Church, I probably wouldn’t have made it. I probably wouldn’t be sitting here now. I don’t even want to think of a world where people won’t have that sort of thing in their lives.”
He nodded. “I appreciate that. I just want to make sure you’re doing this for the right reasons.”
“It’s done and it won’t be undone,” she said. “I gave it plenty of thought before I signed the papers.”
“Well, then, I thank you again,” he said. “Your kind of generosity is rare in this world, Alice. You’re going to be the key to our survival.”
She thought of an afternoon a few weeks earlier, when she had stood beside him in a hospital room, watching as he read a dying man his last rites. The man had been so truly comforted by it. She wished her children could understand that sort of power. She thought that perhaps she was being too hard on Father Donnelly this morning.
“I think you’re the key,” she said, and she felt more confident in her decision than ever.
Maggie
The morning after the fight, Maggie woke up to find her mother and Ann Marie sitting out on the deck, drinking tea. It must have rained earlier—here and there were pools of water on the wood, drying up in the hot morning sun. Kathleen was reading the paper and Ann Marie appeared to be gluing tiny buttons onto squares of blue fabric. For a moment, Maggie thought that perhaps a miracle had occurred and the two of them were getting along. If that was the case, she would swear right now that peace in the Middle East would be achieved in her lifetime.
But as soon as she slid the screen door open and said good morning, Kathleen looked up from her paper and said, “Mags, there’s this amazing story about Whitey Bulger in today’s Globe. You’ve got to read it.”
Whitey Bulger was an Irish mobster from Southie who had risen to power mainly because of a shady relationship with the FBI. His brother had gone the other way—attending law school and eventually becoming president of the Massachusetts state senate. They had grown up in the same neighborhood as Ann Marie; her brother was once some sort of low-level criminal in Whitey Bulger’s gang. Kathleen loved mentioning anything vaguely related to this fact when Ann Marie was around, simply because she knew it would embarrass her.
Now Kathleen said, “Did you realize Whitey Bulger had a child? It says here that the little boy died of some rare disorder and that’s part of what made Whitey and his boys so vicious. Fascinating, huh?”
Ann Marie had been smiling seconds earlier, but now she looked at her lap.
Maggie hated it when her mother went into bully mode. She shot her a look.
What? Kathleen mouthed, as if she had no clue what she had done.
This exchange, like so many other things lately, reminded Maggie of Gabe, even though it had nothing to do with him, really. Maggie had been obsessed with the Bulgers as a kid; she assumed everyone knew who they were. But when she mentioned them to Gabe once, he had laughed