The last place.
I sat stock still, both hands on the tabletop. It felt like all the air had been sucked out of the room. Nothing but me and an idea unfurling like a flower, one horrifying petal at a time.
With each passing second my core tightened, my center drawing in on itself. I’d collapse soon, be nothing but a black hole, a void where a stupid, stupid man had once been.
How had I missed it? It had been right there the whole time.
And there was one way to prove it.
I stumbled into the living room and grabbed my phone from where it lay on the windowsill. Pulled up the browser and typed. Hit the phone number that appeared on the screen. I glanced at the clock. Had she already gone home? Please, please, please pick up.
The ringing on the other end stopped, and Jill’s voice came through the line. I cut her off before she could say the church’s full name.
“Jill, it’s Andy. I need a favor from you.” I was still collapsing, condensing with each word. Getting slower and heavier. “The spreadsheet Mary left behind—can you look at it for me?”
“Andy, how are you? I heard about you and your dad. Are you guys okay?”
“Yeah, we’re fine. The spreadsheet, Jill—can you find it?”
A pause. “Well, I was just heading out, and I’m late picking up Justin from day care.”
“Jill, please.” The desperation in my voice must’ve translated, because the next sound I heard from her end was the sliding of file drawers.
“Okay, hold on. Lemme look.” More clacking and a few exasperated sighs, then she said, “All right, got it. What do you need?”
“You said the dates were sporadic for the donation amounts, right?”
“Yeah. They range over the last six or seven months, a few days here and there.”
I took a breath. We were at the edge. Ready to go over. “Do any of those dates coordinate with Father Mathew filling in for Father Thomas?”
A drawn silence from her end, then the squeak of her office chair. I could see her settling back into her desk, turning on her monitor. God bless you, Jill. “I can look, I guess. All the schedules notate who does Mass on a particular day.”
I passed from room to room, unaware of movement, of anything outside the sounds of Jill’s keyboard, her mouse clicking.
“Well, that’s weird,” Jill finally said. “Yeah, you’re right, Andy. All of these correspond with visiting sermons. Father Thomas has been gone ten times in the last six months, and they’re all the dates on Mary’s spreadsheet.”
We went over the edge.
Falling.
“Andy? Did I lose you?”
“No,” I managed. But I’d been lost. Lost in the weeds this whole time while the path was right there in front of me.
“What’s this all about?”
“Thanks, Jill, I have to go.”
“Andy—”
“I’ll call you soon.”
My thumb punched the little red button, and she was gone.
I was gone.
My collapse was complete. Only a void left. A paradox if there ever was one.
I slapped myself hard across the face, and everything came rushing back.
Everything.
All the layers peeled away. All the circles closed. Everything.
Because now it all made sense.
And I knew where Rachel and the boys were. I’d known all along.
28
At least a part of me had.
The part that woke up when I dreamed. The subconscious, where all the real work happened, where all the sausage got made. That’s where I knew.
I’d been dreaming about endless stairways fading into darkness.
Of hands clawing at locked steel doors.
Oh symbolism, thou hast failed me.
It wasn’t just subconscious mental alliteration. Somewhere, I’d known and had been screaming at myself to wake up and see. To think.
The day Rachel and the kids disappeared, she’d been seen around town. People had spotted her at the farmers market, the grocery, and lastly pulling into the church parking lot to pick up her boys from school.
What if they’d never left?
Nine-one-one? No, I needed to forgo the red tape and speak to someone on the same level. I found the number for the police department and stuttered that I needed to speak to Detective Spanner. A bit of hold music, and then Spanner was saying hello, and I was already talking over him.
“They’re in the church basement. Father Mathew’s keeping them there. He’s behind it all. He’s been taking money from the church donations. He’s the one who tried gassing us.”