What was wrong with her?
He wasn’t a bad man.
He was kind. Funny. Respectful. A role model to so many students. A good principal. She’d learned a lot from him.
But she didn’t love him, and that thought weighed more heavily on her than any look of reproach he could give.
For him, divorce wasn’t an option. But it had been on her mind daily for the last year. Or was it two?
She didn’t hear him get up. The open window and the glass of wine she’d sipped at the orientation had given her an unusual full night’s sleep. His alarm had been set for five—no wonder she hadn’t heard him.
Had he kissed her head while she slept? Or had he just picked up and left?
She glanced at the clock: 7:46. By now he’d be there. Loading up the ATVs, probably.
Funny how she knew exactly what he’d be up to, even though she’d never been on one of these expeditions. He’d been at it for as long as she’d known him.
It had been just like this—half a dozen messages on a phone she was too busy to answer or hadn’t heard ring. A long, adrenaline-fueled trip to the hospital—this hospital. Days and nights sitting up in a chair—this chair.
Meeting with the doctors, the surgeons, the nurses. And later the police. His friends. Dropping by for the first few days, then never again.
His students sending cards. And then offering Mass. A prayer included at every school function, like a ritual, a nod to the favorite teacher who’d spend the rest of his life in a hospital bed.
Chapter Eleven
Jil had spent the past two days locked in Rebecca’s office, going over video footage of the night Tasha had been killed. The dark night, coupled with the fact that some of the video cameras were not functioning—and the one that was working was angled the wrong way—made it nearly impossible to establish any reliable account.
Still, she’d managed to track the comings and goings of most of the staff on video, and had narrowed down the list of people present at the aquarium that night to three: Rebecca, who’d left for home at her usual time; Ramone, who’d shown up on one of the cameras in the back halls around 7:00 that night; and a male trainer she couldn’t identify. Only the back of his head made a brief appearance on camera as he rounded a corner, and it wasn’t possible to tell hair color or anything else on the black and white footage.
Rebecca was out for the day meeting with lawyers, so she made a note of Ramone’s activity and kept watching. Tasha had been killed sometime after dark, which, at this time of year, meant anytime after 7:15.
At lunch, she stretched and her stomach growled, reminding her that she hadn’t eaten since six.
She let herself out of the office and went in search of the hotdog stand—the only source of food in the park, unless you brown-bagged it, which she had no intention of doing.
“How’s your tax appraisal going?” Ramone asked, squirting ketchup on a hotdog as she approached.
Jil shrugged. “Not bad. One, please,” she said to the vendor.
He turned and handed her a jumbo-sized dog.
“What’s good?” she asked Ramone.
He smiled around a bite of hotdog. “Corn relish. Or straight ketchup. Whatever you like.”
Jil laughed. “I was hoping for iguana paste or something we didn’t have at home.”
Ramone shook his head. “Naw. Though I guess you only have frozen hot dogs in your neck of the woods, eh?”
She fixed him with a look. The man’s love of idioms was hilarious. “You know we do have four seasons, right? Only half of them are winter.”
He laughed and sat on a bench overlooking the dolphin training lagoon.
“Canadian government must have some pretty strict rules to make it worth Rebecca’s money to fly you out here.”
“I’m worth my fee,” Jil said, winking. “Though things are certainly a lot more complicated with this…incident.”
“Incident. More like a nightmare,” Ramone said. “My own kid used to feed that whale. Imagine if something had happened to him. Imagine if she’d snatched him from the side.”
He looked genuinely upset.
“Is that why you don’t let him come around anymore?”
Ramone nodded. “He’s too curious. Could get hurt.”
“Where’s his mother?” Jil asked.
“At work. We’re all at work. Me, my wife, my two oldest. Even my mother. But Abuela can work and watch Emi at the same time. He’s in school, but only half days, right? Used to bring him with me, but not no more.”
“Were you here the night she was killed?” Jil asked.
Ramone gave her a strange look. Then he shook his head. “No. I leave at five every night, after my shift.”
Jil looked at him and nodded. But she’d seen him on camera. Why was he lying? She couldn’t ask without blowing her cover.
Ramone shuddered. “What a disaster.”
Jil stayed silent for a few moments. Ramone was lost in thought.
“How did they get her out of the tank?” she asked.
“Next morning, early,” Ramone said. “When the first staff came in and we found her.”
“She wasn’t found until the next day?”
“She’d been in the water all night. The pool was red. Her body was all bloated… Never mind.”
He looked sick.
Jil just waited. He didn’t seem like he needed any prompting. Obviously, this night was weighing on his conscience—whatever the reason.
“Tsunami was carrying her around the pool.”
Jil was surprised. That hadn’t been in the case notes. “Carrying her?”
“Something orcas do sometimes.”
“In her mouth?”
“No, on her nose. Holding her above the water, swimming round and round the tank. At first we didn’t know what to do. We could tell she was dead, of course, but we didn’t know how to get her out. We called the police. Called Rebecca. We tried to get Tsunami into a different tank so the rescue workers could get to Tasha’s body, but…it was an effort.”
“How so?”
“Well, Tsunami was agitated. She wasn’t listening to commands, and everyone was on edge. Finally, Leonard come and got her to move. He baited her with something—a salmon, I think, and she moved away. Baz was a wreck. Max was crying, even. It was terrible.”
“Why was she here?” Jil asked.
“I don’t know. I’ve been trying to figure that out ever since it happened. What was Tasha doing here at that time of night? Why did she come back?”
Jil studied his body language. He seemed truthful—genuinely distraught and confused—but he was still lying. He had been here that night. What had he seen? Or done?
“Any clues?”
He shook his head. “Baz said they had a date but she didn’t show up.”
“But you don’t believe him?”
Ramone got up. “I have no reason not to believe him,” he said. “They were a cute couple. Now, let’s make this long story short. We have animals to feed, right?”
Jil stared after him as he left, more confused now than she’d been before.
Chapter Twelve
Young men attending Friday morning confessions always amused Jess. Good Catholics getting ready to purge their sins before a weekend of random sex and binge drinking. Maybe she was getting cynical in her old age, or maybe it was the fact that she knew teenage boys better than their own mothers did—years of teaching high school ingrained memories she’d rather have forgotten—images she could never get out of her head.
So when the young man held the door for her, she smiled at him. Good for you for at least making an effort, she thought. He looked like a college student. First in line for the confessional, ducking in just before the time began.
She took off her coat and laid it in a pew, then made the sign of the cross and slipped into a kneeling position. A borrowed rosary would have to do. As she ran the white plastic beads between her fingers, she wondered how many babies had sucked
on it during Mass, using it as a pacifier.
The door opened and closed behind her, and footsteps sounded to her left. She looked up, wondering if Father McGillivray was on his way into the confessional.
Someone stood beside her and she looked up. The young man from the doorway smiled down at her, wearing a black shirt and a clerical collar.
“Really?” she said before she could stop herself.
He grinned. “I’m new here.”
“I can see that.”
“Are you here for Confession?”
“Well, yes, but, Father…”
The name felt strange on her tongue. How old was this kid? He had to be older than he looked to have had time to get through seminary.
“Something else?”
“Well, generally, it’s supposed to be anonymous.”
He chuckled. “I’d already seen you, so I thought I might as well introduce myself. I’m Gus Makarios.”
“Father Makarios?”
“Father Gus, around here. Makarios seems a bit hard for the kids.”
“Well, welcome.”
Jess struggled to get onto the pew, and Father Gus held out a hand. With a surprisingly strong grip, he helped her from kneeling to sitting.
“Thanks,” she muttered.
He slid into the pew beside her. “Since there’s nobody else here,” he said, gesturing to the empty room. He reached down to put the kneeler back up and retrieve Jess’s fallen rosary.
She leaned back in the pew and crossed her legs at the ankle. “Thanks for that as well.”
He looked at her. “What if we have a conversation instead of a confession?” he suggested.
“I don’t even think I’d know where to start.”
“Would you prefer the more traditional approach?”
She thought for a second. Listing her sins:
Impure thoughts.
Adultery.
And if she pulled the plug…manslaughter?
“I don’t know what I have to confess, Father.” She realized as she spoke that this was what had been holding her back from Confession. This very reluctance to call what she and Jil had built a sin at all. To frame it in a way that needed an apology and divine forgiveness. She couldn’t go to Mass and sleep with Jil every night, but she refused to confess to a life. A partnership.
“My husband is dying,” she said instead.
Father Gus looked at her with concern. “I’m so sorry to hear that. You’ve very young, so I imagine he is too.”
“He is forty.” Forty. God, when had that happened? They’d gone out on that trip to celebrate his thirty-fifth birthday. He’d left that morning.
She’d gone to the bakery on her lunch hour to pick up his cake.
That night, she’d received the call.
And that cake had stayed in the fridge a week before she’d thrown it out.
Forty. How could he be forty? He hadn’t lived for the past five years.
“Jessica?”
She realized she was staring at nothing. “Time’s gone on, Father. Without him. I know that. I’ve been living without him for five years. But it’s just a shocking thing to think about, suddenly. He’s forty years old.”
“Your husband, Mitch Blake, am I right?”
“Yes, Father.” She wasn’t surprised he knew Mitch’s name. The students at his school still had Mass said for him at least twice a year.
“It’s been five years, you say, since his accident?”
“Yes. He’s developed septicemia from a bed sore. His organs are toxic.”
“He’s dying,” Father Gus finished.
“Imminently,” Jess said. “But slowly. And painfully, I’m afraid. I don’t know. I agreed to all the drugs, all the pain management, but I don’t know how much pain he’s in. I don’t know how much he’s suffered lying unconscious.”
“And you are struggling with his death now?”
“I’m struggling with the fact that the doctors have just as well as told me to pull the plug.”
Father Gus leaned forward, resting his hands on the back of the pew in front. “I see.”
“Do you?”
“I see why that would be a struggle, yes. On one hand, you don’t want to prolong his suffering; on the other, you don’t want to cause his death.”
“I haven’t got a right to either,” Jess said. “And I think I’ve lost the right to make decisions for him. I’m no longer sure I’d know exactly what he’d say. What he’d want. But his mother…his mother is adamant that we do nothing.”
Father Gus tilted his head from side to side, as if physically weighing options. “Well, it seems to me that both choices are in the hands of others as well as you. God Himself will play the final role, don’t you think?”
“Yes, probably,” Jess said. “But I wish He’d hurry up.”
“God’s timing…” he said softly.
“Has never been mine.” She smiled ruefully.
“What if it is his time now? What if God is calling him home, and you only have to let him go?”
She stared at him. “If it were me, I would have wanted it to end a long time ago,” she said.
“You would have refused extraordinary measures?”
“I would have, yes.”
“So why did you not refuse for him?” His open, frank way of speaking made her feel like telling him everything.
She breathed out hard, blowing the hair out of her eyes. “I didn’t even consider it at the time. Letting him go. He was so young. His accident was so sudden, and the doctors weren’t sure whether the damage was permanent. There were so many uncertainties. They said they were going to stick him on that machine, and I said fine.”
“And now?”
“Now, he’s dying. He’s septic. The smell, Father.” Her voice caught.
“And what is it you’re afraid of?”
His insight was remarkable. He seemed so much older than he looked.
“Not his death in itself…”
“No.” She breathed out. “I’m afraid that his death would uncomplicate my life.”
“That you’d be free to move on?”
“Yes.”
“To find happiness?”
“Yes.”
“And you’re afraid that your desire for freedom is impacting your decision to let Mitch go?”
She nodded.
He frowned for a second, looking out over the pews.
“I wonder—what if this is your release as well as Mitch’s? What if this is Mitch’s call home, and your call to the rest of your life?”
“I guess this is where we list my adultery?”
Father Gus nodded. “Seems like a good time, yes.”
“With another woman?”
Was she trying to shock him on purpose? See how far she could push this liberal young priest before the understanding in his eyes clouded over and he decided that she really should have been in the confessional from the start?
He leaned forward, his smile turning into a look of concern. “I see. Ever more complicated.”
“Any time you want to stop listening, Father.”
He looked at her. “Why would I want to stop listening? You are a member of my parish and you are in need of council. Please talk as long as you like. What’s the name of your partner?”
“Jil,” she said, a little surprised.
“You met Jil where?”
Jess thought back to the very first day she’d met Jil Kidd—undercover in her school. She hadn’t even known her real name back then.
“At work,” she said.
Father Gus looked at her, as though he wanted to ask something else. “There’s probably more to that story, but we’ll come back to it if you feel like it,” he suggested.
“Probably a good idea, yes.”
A memory had taken firm hold…of Jil pushing her against a wall, slipping a very skilled hand down the front of her pants…
She felt herself blushing and purposely turned her gaze to a mural on the w
all until the flush could leave her cheeks. She smiled up at Father Gus benignly.
“Were you from a very open seminary?” she asked before he could turn the conversation back to her.
He shrugged. “Not really, no. But I was raised by two mothers.”
“Really?” She couldn’t hide her surprise.
He laughed. “Yep, that’s usually the reaction I get. Except that you seem more pleased-and-surprised than shocked- and-surprised.”
“I am definitely both pleased and surprised. How did you decide to become a priest?”
“My mothers weren’t Catholic, actually, but they accepted my call to God, even if they didn’t understand it.”
Jess tried to imagine that. How she and Jil would raise a child—have him baptized, bring him to church. She couldn’t.
“Well, you are certainly an interesting person, Father Gus.”
“As are you, Ms. Blake.”
“I think I’ve done enough confessing for today.”
“We have certainly covered a lot of ground.”
She smiled, waiting.
He seemed to suddenly catch on to why she was sitting there still.
“Would it make you feel better to have penance?”
Wasn’t that why people usually came to Confession? To undergo the illusion of atonement? Prayers washed the soul clean, didn’t they?
“It would, probably. Because Mitch was old-fashioned.”
“Not because you are?” He smiled.
She stopped. She’d never considered herself particularly traditional. “Maybe a little. Catholic school principal and all that.”
“I’d say it was definitely a trapping of your line of work.”
She bowed as he made the sign of the cross over her head and absolved her of sins she hadn’t actually confessed. Still, the tears that slid down her cheeks felt healing.
“I think you need more counseling than confessing,” Father Gus said quietly.
She pulled her purse closer to her and made to stand up. “I think you may be right, Father.”
He stood up first and helped her out into the aisle, where she turned to the altar and made the sign of the cross from a standing position.
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