Sandcastles

by Luanne Rice

  “She’s taking us to Regis,” Cece whispered.

  “No,” Agnes said.

  But that’s just what Sisela seemed to be doing. She strode along the top of the wall…not east, toward the Sound, but west, toward the convent, and then Black Hall, and then who knew where. In that moment, with the sun as bright as Agnes’s camera flash had been the night of her accident, she knew that the picture she had taken was not of an angel at all—at least, not one with wings.

  It had been an angel with fur. Sisela must have been sitting on the wall, just waiting to jump into the void, fly toward the beach where their father had come to stay. The cat had led Agnes and the family to him, so why shouldn’t she lead them to Regis now?

  Agnes and Cece began to follow the old cat, walking toward the Academy. And even though it wasn’t a Tuesday, Agnes felt speechless. There wasn’t anything left to say, not until they found her big sister.

  It took exactly fifty-seven minutes from the time John placed his call to Chrysogonus Kelly—better known as Tom’s cousin Chris—for the star of Connecticut’s Superior Court and legal forums everywhere to drive down Route 9 from his house—a sprawling Georgian mansion on seven acres in Farmington—to Black Hall’s police station.

  John heard the engine before he saw the man; he didn’t know what Chris was driving, but it sounded expensive. The low thrum was exciting and dangerous, and a testosterone ripple ran through the whole building as Chris parked the car in the small parking lot just outside.

  “What’s that, a Lamborghini?” Officer Kossoy asked as Chris came through the front door.

  “It’s a Pagani Zonda,” Chris said.

  “Yeah? Never seen one. Got to be pretty much the only one in America,” Kossoy said, glancing out at the rare car.

  “Only one in Connecticut, anyway,” Chris said. He grinned with obvious delight.

  “Far out,” Kossoy said.

  “So,” Detective Cavanagh began. “Enough with the car talk. To what do we owe the pleasure of Chrysogonus Kelly’s company?”

  “I’m here to see my client,” Chris said, giving her his most flirtatious smile.

  “We have two gentlemen here on suspicion of vandalism, and one of them calls you?” Officer Kossoy asked.

  “Yeah, aren’t you supposed to be in Washington, arguing some low-life killer’s death penalty case before the Supreme Court?” Detective Gaffney asked.

  “I’ll be arguing prosecutorial misconduct next week,” Chris said. “But today’s business is just as important. The Sixth Amendment knows no hierarchy.”

  “That’s really a Pagani Zonda?” Officer Kossoy asked.

  “Yep. I’ll give you a ride after Detective Cavanagh,” Chris said.

  “You’re dreaming,” she said. “Ever since you grilled me on the Duncaster case, I wouldn’t go anywhere with you. You twisted my words from here to eternity….”

  “From Here to Eternity. My favorite movie,” Chris said. “Especially that scene in the surf…”

  Detective Cavanagh narrowed her eyes at him. “Defense lawyers are arrogant by definition, but you’re in a class all by yourself. I went to Star of the Sea Academy. I know all about you Kellys. You might be named for a saint…”

  “Yep,” Chris said, smiling. “I love being part of the lineup. Linus, Cletus, Clemens, Sixtus, Cyprian, Cornelius, Chrysogonus…”

  “Don’t flatter yourself,” Detective Cavanagh said. “You can talk to your client in there.” She gestured at the same room where she’d interrogated John, and John led Chris in, shaking his head.

  “You can’t help yourself, can you?” John asked.

  “What can I say?” Chris asked. “She and I have a long history in court. She can give as good as she gets, believe me. I need to be on my toes when I’m around Doreen Cavanagh. She’s one tough cop. Tell me what’s going on.”

  “First of all, thanks for getting here so fast.”

  “You’re family, John. Tom and Bernie, and you and Honor—we’re practically blood. Francis would have it no other way than that I pull out all the stops for you. I’m sorry about what you went through in Ireland, by the way. Tom and I talked about it. I wish to hell I’d been a member of the bar over there. I’d have gotten you out within the week.”

  “My barrister wasn’t the problem,” John said.

  “No,” Chris admitted. “I’ve heard. You had your own ideas about what you wanted to do, left your barrister pretty much helpless at sentencing. If the court had been in Dublin instead of Cork, my cousin Sixtus would have gotten you off.”

  John shrugged. His shoulders were so tense, he thought they’d crack. Every minute he sat in this police station was a minute Regis was out there, needing help. He couldn’t talk about it, but he had to.

  “You said Cavanagh is a tough cop,” he said.

  “She is. She nearly put a client of mine away for life, an ugly case, I won’t go into it; she would have won, too, if I hadn’t come through on appeal. A little problem with discovery. Nothing against her, though. It was all on the state’s attorney. Not one of my cousins, thank God. Why?”

  “She’s onto something about my daughter.”

  “Which daughter? They can’t possibly be old enough to have the likes of DeeDee Cavanagh onto them.”

  “Regis. She’s twenty.” And she’d been fourteen when the real trouble began…and ended.

  “What did she do?”

  John glared at Chris. He’d known him since he was born—Tom’s cousin, younger by six years. They used to tease him unmercifully, calling him “Chrysanthemum.” Even now, staring at the confident attorney in his expensive summer sports clothes, John could see traces of the young boy they used to make cry by nicknaming him after a flower.

  “It happened at Ballincastle,” John began, then stopped.

  “Go on,” Chris urged.

  “You’re my lawyer now, right?” John said.

  “Yes.”

  “Attorney-client privilege applies?”

  “Of course.”

  “None of what I tell you leaves this room.”

  “Understood, John.”

  So John took a deep breath, and then he told his lawyer what happened one stormy day on a windswept cliff across the ocean, a lifetime ago.

  Bernie couldn’t rest. It was nearly vespers, Tom was out in the garden pruning the same rosebushes he’d clipped yesterday, Honor was keeping vigil on the beach, and Agnes and Cece stood outside now, Sisela between them, staring at the building. There was such a sense of terrible anticipation. But for what?

  Bernie wondered about Brendan. Was he with John? Was her brother looking after him at the police station? She knew his last name, thought maybe she could look it up in the phone book, call his parents to let him know where he was. But something kept her from doing that.

  She had work to do, and she was worried about Regis. She knew the sisters would pray at vespers, and at compline, and on through the night; but all the rosaries in the world couldn’t keep her headstrong niece from doing what she was going to do. Because the Academy library was where Bernie felt closest to Regis, she headed there now. When she glanced out the window, she saw her other nieces and Sisela still hovering outside.

  Bernie went straight toward the rare-book room. She had a safe inside, where she kept the Academy funds; it was also where she kept important documents and her personal diaries. She had come here so often in her early days as a nun, when all she wanted to do was pray and forget.

  “Hi, Aunt Bernie.”

  Shocked, she nearly jumped, looking up.

  “Regis…” she gasped.

  Her niece stood on a stepladder, kerchief tied around her head, dusting the books on the top shelf, as if it were a normal workday. Hanging back slightly, Bernie watched as the girl took each volume down, holding it in her hands, rubbing it slowly with the flannel square before replacing it in the bookcase.

  “You were scheduled to work today,” Bernie said, “but I didn’t expect you.”

&nb
sp; “I’m taking my responsibilities very seriously these days,” Regis said.

  “Your family is looking for you.”

  “Families look for each other all the time,” Regis said.

  Bernie’s heart skipped a beat; what did the girl mean by that? “Regis, why don’t you come down? There’s really no rush to dust all these shelves today.”

  “That’s the wrong attitude to have,” Regis said, gently dusting a green book cover.

  “Excuse me?”

  “You said ‘shelves,’” Regis said, “when I’m thinking in terms of books. Do you know the last time some of these were read?” She opened the jacket and looked at the library stamp. “This one was last taken out in 1973. This might be the very first time it’s been touched by human hands since then. Poor old book.”

  “What’s the title?”

  Regis peered at the spine. “Vita Sanctus Aloysius Gonzaga.”

  “‘The Life of Saint Aloysius Gonzaga,’ in Latin,” Bernadette said. “It’s about an Italian nobleman who grew up in a castle. His father was a compulsive gambler. His mother was wretched.”

  “A lot of saints have wretched families, I guess,” Regis said. “A lot of people, as a matter of fact—not just saints.”

  “What’s gotten into you, Regis Maria?” Bernadette asked. “First I hear about you creating a spectacle last night, and then you run off and make your family worry, and now you’re saying something like that? Come down now, and tell me what’s wrong.”

  They stared at each other, Regis’s eyes sparkling with tears. Fighting to hold them back, she started down the ladder.

  “Hand me that book on Gonzaga, will you?” Bernie said. As Regis passed it over, Bernie gave her a hand, and they clasped fingers. She saw Regis’s shoulders trembling. Walking slowly, she led her niece through the library. Long and narrow, it was built on the same plan as the Long Room at Trinity College in Dublin, with a barrel-vaulted ceiling and gallery bookcases, a mezzanine encircled by an oak balustrade, and two levels of bookshelves. Tom’s great-grandfather had spared no expense. Bernie and Tom had visited the library when they were in Dublin; she remembered that every time she walked through here.

  When they got to the office, Bernadette placed the book on top of the ones about Saint Francis of Assisi: another saint who had defied his wealthy landowning father. A portrait of Tom’s great-grandfather gazed sternly down from the wall, as if he had some inkling of what her interest was in these particular books, how they reminded her of Tom Kelly. Turning her back on the painting, she faced Regis.

  “Tell me what’s going on,” Bernadette said.

  “I’d rather ask you that.”

  “Your parents are really worried, Regis. Peter is, too. He was here, looking for you.”

  “We’re not engaged anymore,” Regis said. “I gave him back the ring late last night.”

  “I know,” Bernie said.

  “The priest will be happy. He was always trying to talk us out of getting married. Did you put him up to it?”

  “As much influence as I have over the Holy See and the archdiocese, it pretty much stops dead at the doors of Father Joe’s rectory. What did he say?”

  “That we should put everything on hold, and be absolutely sure of what we want, and the usual stuff. Pretty much what you, Mom, and the Drakes were saying.”

  “And now you see the wisdom in it?”

  “Wisdom,” Regis said, “is remarkably overrated.”

  “Really.”

  “Yep.”

  “What’s better than wisdom?”

  “Love,” Regis said. “And passion. And don’t tell me you don’t understand.”

  “I’m a nun,” Bernadette said.

  “Yes,” Regis said, narrowing her eyes. “But you weren’t always.”

  Bernie’s heart skipped a beat.

  “I realized Peter and I would be making a mistake. I was marrying him for the wrong reasons; it wouldn’t have been fair to him. I was just hiding out…”

  “From what?”

  Regis shook her head. “Does it matter?” she asked. “Hiding out is just another way of keeping secrets. You should know.”

  “What are you trying to tell me?”

  Regis stared at her, steel in her lovely young eyes. Bernadette saw herself there, and she felt herself blush.

  “I know about you and Tom,” Regis said.

  Bernadette’s pulse was racing, but she didn’t react. She just stared at the stack of books on her desk. Saint Francis of Assisi had been such a generous soul, such a dreamer. He had loved all creatures, loved the poorest of the poor, left his family’s riches behind. And Tom Kelly, scion of one of the great families of the East Coast of America, was the groundskeeper at Star of the Sea Academy on the Connecticut shore, intimately familiar with, so tender about, everything within its gray stone walls.

  “Regis,” Bernadette said, approaching her. “I know you think you know something, but you don’t.”

  “He loved you, and wanted to marry you, but you wouldn’t, right? It all came together for me, all about what my father and Tom found in the wall, and why our family went to Ireland. About you and Tom going there first.”

  “Regis, it had to do with tracing our roots. Tom’s people were from Dublin, so we went there. You know that.”

  “But I didn’t know the secret….”

  Bernadette didn’t speak; she took a deep breath and stared.

  “You have a secret that started on your trip to Ireland,” Regis said, staring right back. “And I have one that started on mine.”

  “Stop,” Bernie said.

  “Your secret is that a life began, and mine is that a life ended.”

  “Regis,” Bernie said, reaching for her, but Regis pulled away.

  “Maybe I’ll regret breaking up with Peter. Don’t you ever wish you had married Tom?” Regis asked, challenging her, eyes on fire.

  “Regis, you don’t understand. Our stories are not the same,” Bernadette said. “It’s so important to me that you know that.”

  “But they are the same,” Regis said, her voice rising. “All love stories are the same!”

  “They’re not,” Bernadette pleaded. “You only think you understand. You don’t. It was so much more complicated than you think.”

  “But you loved Tom, didn’t you? You were in love with each other?”

  “I loved him, yes,” Bernadette whispered.

  “And something happened in Dublin,” Regis said, a sob breaking out. “You created a life.”

  “Regis, please,” Bernadette said, grabbing her hand. “You can’t understand, you don’t have all the information.”

  Regis reached into the back pocket of her jeans, pulled out the letter Honor had written twenty-three years ago, placed it ever so gently on the desk. Bernadette’s eyes filled with tears when she saw it.

  She saw Honor’s writing—her friend’s youth and excitement, her unconditional love and support, were manifest in the all the exclamation points she had used in the letter. Bernie had kept the letter all this time—and had drawn on the envelope one afternoon, reading and rereading Honor’s words, trying to decide what to do—the sea monster from Tom’s Kelly family crest. She felt her face grow scalding hot.

  “I kept that letter hidden all these years,” Bernie said. “I just gave it back to your mother.”

  “I know. She must have read and reread it; I found it under a placemat in the kitchen. Funny, her saying these things to you—about being honest with yourself, knowing what was important in life, telling the truth.”

  “Oh, Regis…” Bernadette said, struggling for control of her voice. “You have no idea.”

  She remembered that Honor had quoted from the diary of Bobby Sands, the young Irishman who had gone to prison and died in a hunger strike against British rule. His words came to Bernadette now, filling her heart: I am standing on the threshold of another trembling world.

  Oh, the trembling world. Bernie knew it so well.

&nb
sp; “You called my mother from Ireland, to tell her you were having a baby,” Regis said.

  “She was my best friend,” Bernie whispered. “The only person I could tell, besides Tom.”

  “She wrote to you, trying to convince you to come home and have the baby. She’d have helped you tell your family. She told you it wasn’t wrong, that you loved Tom and shouldn’t be ashamed. That you had to tell the truth, or you’d regret it your whole life. She said she’d help you through the hardest part,” Regis said.

  Bernie closed her eyes, as if she could block out the hardest part: hearing their baby cry, holding him, feeling his heart beat against hers, handing him to the nuns in the hospital…

  “When Tom and I decided to give the baby up for adoption,” Bernie said. “That was the hardest part.”

  “Why did you do it,” Regis asked, “if you loved each other?”

  “Things were so different back then. We weren’t married; we’re both from such strict Catholic families. We didn’t want to bring shame on them, or on the baby. And since you’ve read your mother’s letter, you know that something happened, that I had a vision.” Bernie watched Regis for her reaction.

  “Everyone knows you did,” Regis said. “We don’t know what it was, but Agnes, especially, talks about it. But Mom says in her letter that even you might have misinterpreted what the vision meant.”

  Bernie stared out the window toward the Blue Grotto; she didn’t want to admit to her niece that she had had many dark nights of the soul, wondering that very thing.

  “Last night,” Regis said, “after everything happened at Hubbard’s Point, and my sisters and mother went to bed, I went outside to talk to Brendan.”

  Bernie shivered, just to hear his name.

  “What did Brendan say?” she asked.

  “He was able to get birth records,” she said. “By going to Catholic Charities, and matching the information he got there with what he found, working at the hospital. It’s why he’s been hanging around here.”

  “Around here?”

  “Around the Academy,” Regis said. “He believes that Tom is his father.”

  “I know that,” Bernie said. “Tom figured it out.”