Goddamn it. I run my fingers through my hair and glance at the clock. Not even midnight yet. The f**king day’s not even over. I’m sure something else will go wrong if I just hang out a little longer. I might as well just go to bed. I point the remote at the TV to turn it off when I see the headlines. Nine killed in military-style attack on home-grown terror cell west of Cheyenne.
Holy shit, I totally deserve to see that. That’s what I get for turning the TV on. I point at it again to turn it off and then stop.
The whole world f**king stops.
Sasha Alena Cherlin’s face flashes across the screen. Wounded in the firefight, is all it says.
What f**king firefight?
I just stare at the TV for a few seconds, trying to process this new reality. She’s in the hospital after being attacked in a family hunting cabin twenty-five miles north of Cheyenne. There’s no mention of Merc or the gun deal, no names of the dead are released, but poor Sasha. The reporter says her grandparents are picking her up and taking her home tonight—and that can only mean one thing. Her father is one of the unnamed dead.
I almost can’t think straight as I try to come to terms with what this means for that smiling little girl this morning.
She sold me a present she bought for her mother, just so I could give it to my mother. And my mother will probably never see it because I’m an anti-social freak who can’t bring himself to celebrate a holiday with his own family.
Family. That’s something I take for granted, even after all that shit with my dad. I bet Sasha would kill to have a mother calling her up on Christmas Eve.
What kind of piece of shit am I?
I look back over at the clock. Eleven forty-two. I know where my mom will be in twenty minutes. Hell, she’s probably there now. I walk back to my room and flip the light on in my closet. I put on a gray suit, comb my hair back, slip on my navy cashmere topcoat, and grab my keys and phone.
I’m going to church.
Chapter Nine
St. Margaret’s is a traditional brick Catholic church with massive cathedral ceilings, dark wooden pews, the gigantic organ up in the corner, the lavish altar, and the stained glass windows. I haven’t been in here in years, but as soon as I walk in the smell of incense overtakes my senses and I feel like I never left.
We have a spot where we sit. In fact, almost everyone has a spot. Midnight mass is tricky in this regard, because our spot on Saturday evening mass might be someone else’s spot on Sunday morning. But when I look over at our spot, there’s my mother.Sitting alone.
I am such a bad son.
The interior is set up in a circular configuration. The altar is the top of the circle, then there are three sets of pews that span out from there. It’s not a half-circle of pews, even though that’s the best way to describe it. It’s slightly more than half a circle, and to my mind this never made sense. It bothered me when I was six and it bothers me now. I can’t stand asymmetrical or uneven designs.
I do realize this is not normal. To hate this place because the architect wanted the pews to take up more than one-half of a circle so more people can fit in for the service. But I do. I hate this room.
It makes me uneasy just to be in here.
But I suck it up and walk to our pew and say, “Excuse me,” in my most polite voice as I inch my way past the people already sitting in their spots, and plop down next to my mom. She likes to sit in the middle. Not just the middle of this section, or this pew, but the middle of the entire church.
I guess I take after her in that regard, because sitting here almost cancels out the uneven layout of the pews.
“Ford,” she says in her soft church-whisper voice. She leads by example and I was always a little too loud as a child, so that voice was practiced to no end.
“Sorry I walked out earlier. I didn’t mean it the way it looked.” I pause. “If it looked like I disapprove, then I didn’t mean it that way. You have a right to be happy.”
She looks up at me surprised.
“I hope he didn’t stay away because of me. I’d feel terrible.” Of course the reason she’s alone is because of me, but it’s done. Nothing I can do about that, so I don’t dwell. She appreciates the sentiment and if the guy’s worth a shit, he’ll still be available tomorrow when she calls to smooth things over.
Then the choir starts up and the ceremony begins so our conversation is cut short. I look over at the section of pews at my left and through a small break in the crowd, I see Ronin smiling at me. Laughing at me, I think. Elise is on one side, and Antoine on the other side of her. And on Ronin’s other side is Rook. She’s belting out Hark the Herald Angels Sing like she owns it.
God, I love that girl.
She is my herald, a living proclamation that my life can get better.
Rook is so beautiful I constantly want to stare at her. Tonight she’s wearing a cream colored suit and she has a red scarf around her neck. Her hair is down and flows over her shoulders in big bouncy curls. She looks up for a moment, to watch the priest and his attendants ascend the steps to the altar, and her bright blue eyes flash in the low light.
She takes my breath away. I reluctantly redirect my gaze over to the other side of the church where Spencer’s family sits. Mass begins as I gawk at all the familiar faces. Spencer’s parents are still together and they sit on either side of him. He’s an only child as well, which was why we gravitated to each other as children. His eyes wander my way and when he spots me sitting in the pews, he fakes an exaggerated look of surprise. Or maybe not so exaggerated, since I haven’t been here in years. Then he shoots me with his finger and someone behind me flicks my ear.