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Rose left Ernetta's after talking to an old priest at the Catholic church in LeCrane. Yes, the priest said, he remembered Arvin Duckworth. Such a hard-headed person. The last time he came to church he pushed a priest down on the floor: called him a "pansy" and a "fairy." As for Arvin and Ernetta's baby, so many years ago, the priest had only heard rumors. It was before he came to the parish, but he did know of a few Catholics in the area who helped place unwanted children in good homes.

Yes, there were some sisters in north Florida who did this. They had a quarterly newsletter. He fished an old yellow sheet from a filing cabinet. It was written by a nun named Sister Mary Sebastian, who taught physical education and worked with handicapped children at St. Francis School in Pensacola. She lived at the Convent of the Sisters of Good Hope. Maybe the Sisters of Good Hope had helped with the child's adoption. It was possible that they had, but also possible that they hadn't. Either way, the priest said, the information would be inaccessible. There were laws about such things. Rose thanked him and left him standing in his study at his little church.

She called Joseph Corbin from the car and left a message on his voicemail.

"Check the victim list from the bombing in Rochester. Does the name 'Arvin Duckworth' appear on it? Any other information on him? He's a Korean war vet, maybe worked for the CIA, unless he lied about that. And believe me, he might have. Let me know."

She drove on to the Gulf, her mind going over all that Ernetta had told her. What if Arvin had given the baby to the nuns and the nuns had passed it on to the Colfax family? Could Arvin have known what happened to the child? Was he still alive and did he know that Stannie was his son? If so, had he contacted him?

She had an 11 by 17 photo that Ernetta had given her. It was a professional portrait of the two of them, taken a long time ago. Ernetta sat in a wicker chair, wearing a pink chiffon dress. She looked young and happy (pictures lie, Rose thought). Her hair was coiled up tight in a curly perm. Her hands lay folded on her lap, the edges of her knuckles pink. Behind her stood Arvin, a little fat in the gut but his face the spitting image of Stannie's. Really! The spitting image!

Rose could have believed Stannie had arranged the whole picture for a joke: stuffed a pillow in his shirt and had his face cropped into an old department store portrait of Ernetta You couldn't have invented anything more spooky than this picture.

She arrived at the convent in the afternoon and knocked on the big front door. An elderly woman answered.

"Is Sister Mary Sebastian here?"

"I'm not sure, honey. She's been in and out and in and out all week. Might be with her family."

"My name is Rose Merriman. I'm here to research a book."

"What kind of book?"

Rose held up her camera. "Sort of a coffee table book. Photographs of old convents, etc."

"Well, I don't know where Sister Mary is. Let me ask Sister Theresa. She's with someone right now, but she's the assistant."

Rose sat down on the bench where Jenny and Jim had sat just a few days before, her face baptized in the same colors from the same glass window. She wore a white blouse that glowed against her smooth skin. Her eyes shone.

A moment later, Sister Theresa appeared from an elevator down the hall. The doors closed behind her with a thunk. She didn't smile or frown. She didn't look curious—only tired. She took a right turn; her chair made a crunching noise over the loose tile as she glided to the entrance–way of the building and met Rose's eyes.

"Hello," she said. "You're looking for Mary Sebastian? Her nephew disappeared this week and she's gone to be with the family."

"Oh." Rose held her eyes steady, though it was hard to look at Sister Theresa without giving off bad vibes. She felt she already knew who this young woman was. And she remembered something, too—Stannie saying he had an aunt who lived in a convent. "Mind my asking," she said, "what was the nephew's name?"

Sister Theresa started to answer, but Rose's attention was suddenly distracted by the door opening behind her. A light breeze blew into the room. Just behind it came Jim Westford, rumpled and unshaven, carrying a cardboard tray of drinks and a greasy paper bag. He smiled at the receptionist and then saw Rose.

"Oh! Good Lord! You!"

"Hi again," she said."I found you."

* * *

At the Seaborough house. Jean Colfax was in a dreamy state. Too much medicine, too little real sleep. Her sister had come to visit but she'd hardly noticed.

"Where are my sunglasses?" said Jean. "It's bright in here."

"Here they are, on your table. And Ida's brought you some water. You're not feeling well, honey. I should have come sooner."

"She's been in a bad state," said Ida's voice from some corner of the room. "The doctor has doped her up good."

Jean took a sip of her water and let Mary put on her sunglasses. "I missed you. What if there was a hurricane? I guess they'd let me die."

"Ida's here taking care of you."

"Ed's gone somewhere. He just took off. Bill's gone. I think he went to play golf. He doesn't give a damn about anything. And the girls are gone. And Stannie's gone."

Mary squeezed her hand. "I know you're worried about him, honey. But I think he's just out enjoying himself somewhere. He's going to pop up soon and surprise everybody."

"Ed's going to pop up?"

"No—"

"Bill?"

"No! Stannie's going to pop up."

"Stannie. Oh God. Somebody told me what he said in the magazine. He really hates me."

"Why should he hate you?"

"He asked me how you got him, where you got him from when he was a baby."

"He asked you that?"

"So what's the answer? Where did you get him?"

Mary took a deep breath. "Just from a priest who knew about a needy family."

"You're a liar."

"Where did Ed go, Jean? Did he go to look for Stannie? Can you remember anything?"

"Ed? What does Ed care? I'm so tired. I don't know what you're saying or what you're doing." Jean drifted down into her stack of pillows and heard the other voices in the room, but couldn't understand them.

"Good Lord," said Mary, looking down as her sister's eyes rolled toward the back of her head. "Ida!"

Ida came into the room. "Yes, Sister?"

"I've never seen her this bad."

"She's been this way for two days. I was hoping you'd come. Nobody pays any attention to her, here. Except Mr. Flint, but he hasn't come around."

"Where is he? Do you know?"

"I don't know."

Sister Mary looked up, frowning. She thought quickly of Ed's last phone call."Give me a job at that school," he'd said to her. "You know what I done for children. You know what I done!"

"You will never, ever work at this school."

"You high and mighty bitch."

"You've killed people."

"I can shut you down with one phone call! One call! I don't even have to say my name!"

"How dare you claim to love children?"

"I do love children."

"Till they're how old? Thirteen? Fourteen? I heard a thirteen–year–old girl died in that clinic in Miami."

"A whore is a whore at any age."

"You're crazy, my friend. I guess you're crazy and sentimental at the same time. You don't really love anybody. You kill people."

"Just try me, bitch. It might be you, next. Or your sister."

She hated him: she hated just the thought of him, but he wasn't going to go away this easy, she was pretty sure. She'd hoped for years now he'd go away, but he'd only weasled closer in. She wished she'd never met Arvin Duckworth, never agreed to take a baby from him (not knowing it was his own child—he'd just told her the baby "weren't wanted"), never placed it with her own sister, who had wanted a baby so badly. Jean had had the makings of a good mother before drugs and drinking got the better of her.

Mary had wanted so much to help: maybe she'd had a desire, too, for a child of her own. I'll love this boy like a son … Only she hadn't loved Stannie the way she'd hoped to: he wasn't naturally lovable, and the troubles at home turned him into a brat. He sneered at her: he never knew how much he owed her.

Still, everything might have been fine: for the first fifteen years, she never saw Arvin Duckworth, and hoped he'd forgotten her. But then one day she came to her sister's house and found out that a handicapped man had been hired as a caretaker. He was good with machines, and he looked like one himself. That was the much–repeated joke made up by Bill Colfax, who said he'd hired Ed Flint because he was a veteran and hiring veterans was good for public relations, especially if he, Bill, ever decided to take a shot at public office like big brother Jim.

Sister Mary thought of that as the biggest joke of all: whenever she imagined her sister as a political wife, she laughed out loud—once right in the middle of her morning prayers! She'd always thought that Bill Colfax was stupid and lazy: but who could be that stupid? Then one afternoon she stood out on the patio in Seaborough, looking at the ocean, and suddenly there was no joke about anything: it all became deadly serious. Ed Flint came quietly to her side and in a very careful, though muffled voice, said, "You don't recognize me, do you?"

"No," she said.

"There used to be a poor fellow named Arvin. Sad sucker. Sad what happened to him at that clinic in Rochester." He walked off, leaving her stunned.

It took her a long time to accept that she couldn't do anything about it: couldn't tell anyone who Ed Flint really was or make him go away, though she asked him repeatedly to leave, even offered to pay him. Most of the time nowadays, she pretended not to see him. Except on the rare days when he cornered her in Seaborough, or showed up at the convent to ask for a job, she treated him like an invisible man. She prayed for him to go away; he was a cancer in her sister's life. But so far God hadn't taken Arvin anywhere. God had His own plans, His own purposes, which He did not reveal to mankind.

Copyright © 2001 by the author or Christianity Today/Books & Culture Magazine.
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