“When will he be released?”
“There is no plan to discharge now,” the nurse advised. “You’ll have to talk to Dr. Frey about that and any other questions you have.”
A cold chill ran through Sister Dorothea at the mention of Frey’s name.
“I’ll be sure to do that,” Sister said, trembling and stepping toward the elevator.
“Don’t worry,” the nurse called to her. “We’ll keep a close watch on him.”
3 Martha rushed for the door, hoping it might be Agnes. She pulled the lace curtain aside and looked out the window to make sure it wasn’t any of the “weirdos” that hung around outside. All she could see was a car double-parked, emergency flashers blinking. She opened the door a crack.
“Good evening, Mrs. Fremont.”
“Oh, Captain Murphy,” she said anxiously.
“You seem disappointed,” he offered. “Are you expecting someone at this hour?”
“No, well, I was hoping.”
“Hoping?”
“That it was Agnes at the door.”
Martha could see the concern in his eyes and held the door open, signaling Murphy to enter. She wanted to talk.
“Isn’t she here?” Murphy asked. “I came over to check in on you both.”
“No.”
“When was the last time you saw her?”
“Earlier this evening. I left her with her boyfriend.”
“Boyfriend? I didn’t know she had a boyfriend?”
“Well, no, not a boyfriend. You know, a boy who’s a friend, from school . . .”
“What is his name?”
“Finn. Finn Blair,” she said.
“Did you say Finn Blair?”
“Yes.”
Murphy did his best not to let his expression give him away.
“I left them alone thinking they might get to know each other better.” Martha laughed. “How often do you hear a mother say that in this day and age?”
“I understand,” Murphy said. “You trust her.”
Martha was clearly on the verge of breaking down. “That’s just it. I don’t. I don’t trust her judgment at all anymore. I just want this nonsense to stop. These people outside to go away. Some normalcy.”
“Are they harassing you or Agnes?” he asked sympathetically. “I can send a car to disperse them.”
“It’s not them. They’re just looking for something. I can see that.”
Murphy nodded, still wondering what, if anything, he should say about Finn. The thought of worrying Martha unnecessarily was a high priority, but so too was finding Agnes if she might be in danger or worse.
“Do you think she left with Finn?”
“No,” Mrs. Fremont replied, reaching into her pocket.
“Are you sure?”
She produced a note, handwritten on Agnes’s stationery. It mentioned Finn. The attack on her. Not to respond to him if he tried to get in touch. A moot point now, Murphy thought.
“Why didn’t you call us?” Murphy asked, perplexed.
“It says she didn’t want anyone to know.”
“You understand that’s not a good reason?” Murphy answered, the tension in his voice prompting a more detailed explanation from the woman.
“You want to know what I did when I read this note? I called Dr. Frey.”
“Frey?”
“Because he treated Agnes and Finn,” Martha continued. “I thought it was good that they had that in common. Open her up a little.”
“I didn’t know that.”
Martha went quiet and began to shudder, like a pregnant volcano about to blow or a listing ship about to sink.
“Do you know what it’s like living with a child that’s different?” Martha challenged, the frustration inside her turning to anger.
“No, ma’am,” Murphy admitted.
“I don’t know whether anything she says or thinks is true anymore,” Martha admitted. “I’m worried sick for her, but also embarrassed for her and for myself. Do you know how guilty that makes me feel?”
“I can’t imagine.”
Mrs. Fremont approached the captain, her fist and teeth clenched tight.
“No, you can’t. I have a daughter with a death wish. Who actually believes that she might be some kind of reincarnated saint. And there are twenty people out there all hours of the day and night praying to her. How do you fight that?”
“I promise I’ll do everything I can.”
Martha dropped her head and threw up here hands, convulsing in tears.
“I don’t want promises, Captain.” Martha wept. “I want our life back. I want my daughter back.”
Cecilia and Agnes burst into the room. Lucy stiffened and shuddered as her eyes widened and began to sparkle. Her head flew back. A blinding light spread throughout the room from the canister containing Sebastian’s heart. In the beams of light, he appeared. Like a vision. Cardinal DeCarlo recoiled, dropping the torture implement on the table. It was clear to Agnes that this was more than just her imagination.
He saw Sebastian too.
Lucy stopped. Sebastian smiled gently at her. Cecilia approached, urumi in hand, ready to pounce on DeCarlo. Sebastian shook his head. She stopped too, awed by his presence.
Arms open wide, Sebastian beckoned. A sense of calm fell over Lucy. And determination.
“Save yourself,” she whispered.
“Lucy, no!” Agnes screamed.
Lucy turned to Agnes, then Cecilia.
“This is why,” Lucy said.
“Please, don’t,” Cecilia begged.
“I love you both,” she said peacefully. Lucy reached down to the table and grabbed the rusty implement, brought it to her brow. She took one last look at Cecilia and Agnes and then looked in the direction of Sebastian. He smiled at her and their lips moved in unison as his image faded from their view.
“There is a time to fight and a time to yield.”
She turned toward the video camera and spoke, quoting again from her vision in the chapel.
“I am the sacrifice.”
As she did, she plunged the implement into her right eye, and then, into her left, gouging them out. She trembled and cried out in agony, reaching again for the table, for the canister. She raised it and held it tight to her chest as blood filled her eye sockets, staining her dress and pooling on the floor beneath her.
“You . . . you were so . . . beautiful!” DeCarlo mumbled in shock and disbelief.
“Now I am only beautiful to him,” Lucy said, crimson tears running down her porcelain face.
“She’s blinded herself,” Cecilia called out.
“No, it is only now that I see everything,” Lucy said with a smile spreading across her face.
Lucy was weakening fast.
Cecilia and Agnes raced to her aide to stanch her bleeding. DeCarlo stood back.
“She’s dying!” Agnes screamed.
Suddenly, a loud commotion outside of car tires screeching accompanied by sirens blaring descended on the scene. It was a diplomatic motorcade and police escort. The lights from the vehicles were blinding, shining through the front door and the foyer all the way into the archbishop’s office. A large entourage exited the string of vehicles and assembled as they walked through the front door and toward them.
“It must be the Vatican investigator,” Agnes cried.
Robed men, nearly a dozen, approached; Agnes and Cecilia could see more clearly who had arrived.
“Yes,” Cecilia said in amazement.
The cardinal looked at the figure approaching him and backed away from the girl.
“Holy Father,” he said, bowing his head before the appearance of the pope himself. “Where is the investigator you promised?”
“I am the investigator,” he replied.
Lucy, blinded, bleeding out, and mutilated, turned on wobbly legs to face the pope. She began to walk uncertainly toward the sound of his voice, holding the relic tight, carrying it to him.
“I have the files!” D
eCarlo shouted in desperation. “They are blasphemers!”
“Silence,” the holy father ordered. “I will see for myself.”
“Lucy!” Cecilia screamed, running to her with Agnes close behind.
Lucy felt her friends’ hands on her and let the momentary comfort they brought sweep over her.
“Let us help you walk,” Agnes said. As Agnes placed her hand on Lucy, Lucy felt immediately at peace, with less pain.
“You are my eyes now,” Lucy responded weakly, to both Agnes and Cecilia.
“Come to me, my child,” the pope requested.
Cecilia and Agnes stepped aside, and Lucy continued a few steps farther before falling to her knees. Cecilia’s and Agnes’s wailing filled the room, and the cardinals in the pope’s entourage blessed themselves and bowed their heads.
Lucy crawled the last few yards to the pope, who removed his miter and knelt down before her, to receive her and her gift. She handed the canister to him.
“Forgive me,” she said.
“It is we who should request forgiveness of you,” the pope said, placing his hand on her head, blessing her, and offering her absolution. “Ego te absolvo a peccatis tuis in nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spritius Sancti. Amen.”
“Holy Father, do not be fooled!” DeCarlo shouted.
“I am not fooled, Cardinal DeCarlo.”
The pontiff placed his finger near Lucy’s cheek, took her tear of blood, and brought it to his lips. The sweetest taste filled his mouth and lingered on his tongue.
“Her tears of blood, turned to milk and honey,” his holiness said. “Santa Lucia,” he declared, raising his eyes upward. “Pray for us.”
DeCarlo made a final plea for the pope’s good graces as the police descended on him. “The heart has power to influence, to deceive the faithful. It has already brought death and despair.”
“No,” the pope declared. “The power of the heart is love.”
He called Cecilia and Agnes over to them to comfort to their dying friend. They cradled her in their arms, weeping, as Lucy took her last breaths.
“Only love.”
With her last breath, Lucy smiled and reached her arms upward, as if to welcome the grasp of someone picking her up. Carrying her home. Just like he promised.
Agnes grabbed the camera that had recorded it all and hid it away in her bag.
The motorcade processed through the streets of Brooklyn, thousands lining the sidewalks, not just to see the pope, whose surprise visit had been revealed, but Cecilia and Agnes, who sat beside him, and the hearse carrying Lucy to her funeral mass. Even the hastily made arrangements could not dampen the outpouring of emotion for her.
The news reports of her death galvanized the city and the rededication of Precious Blood was now a foregone conclusion. The media turned up in droves, cameras flashing, bloggers posting, bystanders tweeting. Some carried signs with messages of reconciliation and respect. ALL IS FORGIVEN, read one. Another, LUCY, PRAY FOR US. Others blasted their horns both in anger at the pomp and the inconvenience it was causing.
“I’m tryna make a living here!” a cabbie groused out his driver-side window.
Lucy would have loved it, the ruckus she was causing, Agnes thought. All of it.
Inside, Precious Blood was packed with political and religious dignitaries from the city and the Vatican sitting side by side with local parishioners. Temporary pews and a simple altar had been hastily built. Loudspeakers were affixed to the exterior of the church to pump out the service to those unable to gain entrance.
A reverent silence fell as the pope entered, carrying Sebastian’s remains, with Lucy’s glass casket behind him. Cecilia and Agnes followed, like bridesmaids, carrying his heart. Lucy was dressed in white and adorned with a headpiece of lush roses.
Glorified.
Agnes looked down at her hand, the one holding his heart, and noticed that Sebastian’s hair inside her ring was growing once again. The pope stopped. He bowed his head at the spot where Sebastian was killed, said a prayer, and continued to the altar. The church was still a ruin, without electricity, shattered stained glass and rubble still strewn about the aisles. The pope had insisted the church not be cleaned up for his visit, but that it be left exactly as it was following the storm and the fire and the murder. Nevertheless, it felt transformed from crime scene to cathedral.
Lit only by rows of votives, the darkened space filled with the heavy smoke of incense, exuding a raw and ancient majesty befitting the ceremony that was about to begin. To Cecilia and Agnes it felt as the earliest Christian ceremonies must have, taking place in secret, in caves, in cellars and in underground aqueducts of the Roman Empire.
But there was more than smoke in the air. There was heart. There was soul. There was magic. For Cecilia it was the kind of magic she’d only felt at the best shows. The congregation singing in unison with the choir, a lead vocal strong enough to raise the roof and reach the ears of Heaven itself. Agnes took CeCe’s hand in hers and CeCe squeezed it tightly as Lucy’s bier was placed in the sanctuary of the church, feet facing the altar as was customary. She was incensed and sprinkled with holy water as the faithful watched and waited in reflective silence.
“She is so beautiful,” Agnes marveled, tearfully.
“She always will be,” Cecilia replied.
The funeral mass began, the pope speaking the Requiem in Latin and following with the traditional Roman funeral rite.
“Réquiem ætérnam dona eis, Dómine; et lux perpétua lúceat eis.”
(Eternal rest give to them, O Lord; and let perpetual light shine upon them.)
The gathering responded. “Amen.”
Agnes and Cecilia stood, sat, and knelt at the appropriate times along with the congregation, in honor of their fallen sister. The mass progressed and the pope began to chant the “Deis Irae,” a medieval hymn reserved for the mass of the dead that describes the Day of Judgment.
Deis Irae! Dies illa
Solvet saeclum in favilla
Agnes whispered her translation simultaneously, as if reading it from some supernatural teleprompter.
Day of wrath and doom impending
Heaven and earth in ashes ending
And so it continued, line by line, verse by verse, with increasing urgency and solemnity.
Confutatis maledictis
Flammis acribus addictis:
Voca me cum benedictis
While the wicked are confounded,
Doomed to flames of woe unbounded
Call me with thy saints surrounded
Lacrimosa dies illa
Qua resurget ex favilla
Ludicandus homo reus
The day of tears and mourning
From the dust of earth returning
Man for judgment must repair him
Agnes spoke the final line with him.
Dona eis requiem. Amen.
In line for communion, Agnes spotted a middle-aged man weeping inconsolably as he approached the bier and altar, begging forgiveness under his breath at first, and then so loudly, he overwhelmed even the choir. He collapsed at her coffin, heaving with sorrow.
Cecilia recognized him as Lucy’s dad from news clips, as did others in the church, who looked upon him with little sympathy. Cecilia stepped into the aisle with Agnes before the ushers could reach him and have him removed.
“Mr. Ambrose,” Cecilia whispered as she knelt.
“It’s too late,” he moaned, over and over.
Cecilia lifted him up to his feet and Agnes cradled his face in her hands, comforting him. “It’s never too late.”
Agnes and Cecilia accompanied Lucy’s dad to the Holy Father who administered communion to him.
“Thank you,” he said softly, and headed silently for the exit.
The mass was ended and the pope said a final few words before dismissing the congregation.
“The renewal of faith, of hope, of love is at work before your very eyes if only you choose to see it,” he advised. “Go in peace.??
?
After a long while, the church emptied.
The pope accompanied Cecilia and Agnes downstairs to the chapel where Sebastian’s heart was placed in a gold-and-glass case. Lucy’s funeral bier was placed beside them. He gestured for the papal retinue to leave them.
Agnes took her Victorian tear catcher from around her neck and emptied all of the tears she’d cried for Sebastian over his heart.
The pope stood back and watched. As did Cecilia.
The pope then walked over to the table where the three had left their chaplets and chose one—Lucy’s. He lifted the glass coffin lid and gently slipped the bracelet over her wrist.
Restored.
He took the other two in his hands and prayed over them. “I believe these belong to you,” he said, offering one to each of them.
Agnes and CeCe slipped them on.
“The world owes the three of you a great debt. By your deeds, your sacrifice, and your example, there will be more good. The path is prepared stone by stone until the road is complete.”
“One at a time,” Cecilia whispered.
The pope gave a final blessing to Lucy, to the relics, and to Cecilia and Agnes. The girls approached Lucy’s casket, placed their hands on it gently, and kissed the glass.
“Our guide,” Cecilia whispered through her tears. “You showed us the way.”
“A light in the darkness for us to follow,” Agnes added.
The two girls turned to face the pope, seeking comfort, seeking answers. Agnes found herself suddenly overcome with emotion. “Are they in heaven?”
“I believe they both will find immediate favor with the Lord.”
Agnes reached for his hand, to kiss his ring in the traditional act of homage, but the pope pulled it back. He opened his arms broadly and leaned in for an embrace and kissed her on the cheek. He did likewise with Cecilia.
“Why us?” Agnes asked. “If anyone knows it must be you.”
“For a short time here in this world, I am pope,” the pontiff responded. “That is God’s decision.”
“Why now?” Cecilia pressed.
“The time has come,” he said. “God needs you.”
Silence filled the room as they meditated on what had been said. The importance of it.