Chapter 458: Mallory VI—Continued Mystery
Perhaps God had not meant for any of this to happen, and his attempts over and over to do this one thing, this right thing were mere presumption and futileness. But how could God not want for this to happen? How could God want a child to be lost forever, an innocent little girl, despite the efforts of a priest and save and redeem her? What could be a more beautiful gift to the child and to the heavens?
The mystery
clung to Mallory’s throat and the inside of his skull and it sent him to tears
in
Even his attempts to contact the woman, who had to be Chloe’s last chance at a real family, had fallen through. Repeatedly he’d called and he tried to express in the message the urgency in his voice, surely she would hear it and call him back. Surely she couldn’t be simply destroying the messages without the slightest bit of curiosity. Perhaps she had a roommate or lover who never saved the messages. Could there be a reason for that as well?
All of it somehow crystallized and became clear to Patrick Mallory beginning when he saw Katrina Volanges approaching, appearing seemingly out of the frost to cross his path on the sidewalk. He’d come here hoping to catch her, it felt odd to trail her like a shady stalker but with his failure in California and her seeming refusal to return any of his phone calls, it seemed to be his last option. And as he waited he’d wondered if he’d be able to recognize which tenant she would be of this apartment building.
Stunning! The dainty features of her face, almost sculpted, like the unreal imaginations of a doll maker come to life. Women this beautiful did not exist in day to day life and escape exposure in advertisements and the movies. Of course this would be her. He hadn’t seen her eyes yet, but her face, the ebony hair and eyebrows, and he felt his heart flutter. Even Cecile, bless her pure innocent soul, was not as stunning as this woman, and the closer she got to him, other things became clearer, around her eyes, in her cold, slitting expression.
She was not simple and she was more than worldly, she was dangerously cold. He even felt frightened to speak when he did, “Miss Volanges?”
I’m not buying anything.
Her reaction swift and cold, as he would have expected. And
as they talked, she became increasingly less threatening to him, and he felt
relaxed. She even offered him money to go away and he told himself that she had
the flint like abruptness of someone raised in the East, perhaps not spending
all of her life in Georgia like Nick had told him she and her sister were from,
but a good deal in those direct towns where nonsense is not tolerated. Too used
to the friendliness and casual manners of people in the middle of the country,
a far cry from the types that can be found in
But she couldn’t be completely a woman of business and no heart, and so he told her. “Miss, it’s hard to explain in great detail but you need to know this,” he reached out and touched her arm, not knowing a good way to prepare her for this. “I have to tell you about your sister.”
Apart from epiphanies at shrines, and pilgrimages, Patrick had never before seen a woman actually faint in his presence; at least he’d never thought it really could happen. But Katrina did faint, her eyelids fluttered and she fell to the ground, not really unconscious, at least with enough presence of mind to land on her bottom, but Mallory hated himself for not at least making an effort to stop her fall. What man didn’t move to catch a swooning woman?
Well at least he knew now he’d found the right woman. Katrina looked up at him, stunned, her face pale and her eyes red rimmed, and green, a green as deep as her sister’s, no denying the connection. He leaned over, and took hold of her, helping the frail feeling young woman to her feet. “Take me inside, please,” she whispered.
By the time they had reached her apartment, Katrina felt strong enough to walk on her own powers, displaying that fact by growling and brusquely shrugging his hands from her. “You better not be lying or masking some sales pitch, Father Mallory,” she said not glancing over her shoulder and unlocking her door. “Or I’ll kill you, understand? I don’t care if you are a priest.” And now she looked at him, eyes narrowed but they seemed to sparkle unnaturally, just for a moment, making him aware of only the green, as if the white to them didn’t exist at all… a feeling he’d had before, but with… And then she blinked and they were back to normal. She opened the door and held out her arm. “After you.”
For a moment, Mallory hesitated. Asinine as it was, he felt something cold come from her welcome, and if he accepted any sort of hospitality from her or crossed her threshold, somehow he might never return. But return to what from what?
Oh Lord do guide my steps, help me… his mind muttered and he felt nothing stop him anymore and he walked, assuming with God’s blessing into her apartment. He glanced quickly around as she walked in behind him and closed the door. Clean, pale, full of expensive things but not cluttered, a beautiful place to live, expensive, too expensive for a girl barely past her twenty first year to live in alone, without help.
“Here let me have your coat,” she said her voice hard, and tired, it sounded old. She’d taken off her own coat, and she held her long pale arm out for his. For an instant he looked at her body, long and slim, in clothing that seemed light and airy and expensive. An emerald pendant sparkled at the base of her throat, shining gold, a man’s foolish gift. “Or you can just stand there, if your cold, I don’t care. I’m not going to offer you a drink or anything.”
Mallory coughed and he felt his cheeks redden, he took off his coat, for some reason glad not to be in his black robes, and he gave it to her. She took it from him and glanced at him with a slight smirk. “Right.”
Had he been that obvious? Mallory felt himself burn down to his neck now and he coughed. “I’m sorry, Miss, I just, I just admired your beautiful necklace, it…”
“Matches my eyes, yes I know,” Katrina sniffed, “That was the thoughts exactly of the man who gave it to me, what a girl wouldn’t do for a little sapphire every now and then. But that can’t be helped. Now cut the shit, father, and tell me right now, what you know about my sister, tell me her name for starters. I need to know that you aren’t lying.”
“Would you like to sit down first?” he said meekly, gesturing towards a coach.
“Just tell me!”
“Chloe.” The name fell from his lips and he saw instantly from the way her mouth fell open, and the blood left her cheeks, and the way she staggered that it had stabbed through her breast. And he even repeated it, “Her name is Chloe.”
“I need to sit down,” she whispered and she walked past him, her back unnaturally straight, her chin pointed and set. She fell onto a soft recliner chair, sitting at the edge of it, her fingers tense over her knees. Mallory stood still, paralyzed by uncertainty, normally he knew how to comfort bereaved women and children, it came second nature to him, but this time… When she spoke her voice was low and almost graveled. “Do you know how long she’s been on my mind, how hard I’ve tried to find her, how I avoided even thinking about her sometimes, and left off looking for her just because I’ve been so terrified that I couldn’t live with her fate?” She looked at him, lips slightly turned down, eyes sparkling with unshed tears.
Mallory shook his head.
Katrina raised her eyebrows. “I don’t know what to say right now. I’ve almost given her up for dead at times, and I as hard as I try to look for her, I can only get so close as a fingertip and then, and then you just walk in and have information on her.” She blew out a laugh, incredulous, disbelieving, “Well where is she? Did you bring her? Is she in a car, is she waiting for my phone call? Because,” and she stood up her eyes wide, her cheeks red, her fists balled and emanating a trembling anger that Mallory could only associate with the most morally offended of saints, he felt power coming from the body of this slim woman, absolute power. “Because if you haven’t come here to give her to me, if you haven’t come in here to tell me that she’s mine again, and all you have is a glimpse of a shadow that you once caught in the night, I swear to God…”
And extraordinary, she lapsed into French, of all languages, French. Mallory did not understand French but he knew what the language sounded like, and this woman did not even seem to realize she no longer spoke in English. Was that her mother tongue? Where did she come from, where did her sister come from? What purpose did their existence serve?
“Well?”
Mallory swallowed and he felt a weakness in her knees, he felt fear, he felt trembling, and it overpowered him, almost to the point of falling to the carpet and begging for her gentle touch. Now she couldn’t be that beautiful, and he didn’t even know her but something commanded him. If she asked right now he would be her servant, if Chloe asked he would do the same, and it frightened him and angered him because why should these women have this sort of awesome power when it served no foreseeable purpose? Why should she be gifted with control over a man of God? And he said it, God help him, he said it. “She’s dead, Miss Volanges. I’m sorry. But your sister is lost to us forever.”
God forgive me but I am not lying.
Katrina’s lips trembled and blanched almost white, gray, and even the skin surrounding them seemed to turn blue. He wondered if she would faint again but she did not. And when she spoke his blood froze. “How could you? What right have you to,” she licked her lips and took a step forward, “Who the hell are you to tell me this? How do you know this?” And her voice rose with an almost masculine deepness. “You son of a bitch you come here right now, you come here and look at my eyes and you tell me everything right now because as God watches us right now I am going to kill you.”
Mallory lifted his chin; he would not be intimidated by a woman’s threats made during grief. This poor woman, he had to remember her as such, a poor woman. “Miss Volanges I was informed of your sister’s plight through a friend of mine who had been trying to extract her from… from…”
Oh God I cannot tell her this! She couldn’t know this!
“From where?” Katrina whispered.
No he couldn’t let those disgusting words leave his lips. He closed his mouth tightly but he couldn’t look her straight in the eyes and he could only blush and that perhaps did worse than speaking itself. Katrina covered her mouth, her eyes wide, almost bereft of sanity. “NOOO! No! NOOO!” She would not break eye contact and found himself riveted in place the closer she got, the colder he felt and then once she came to him, her hand lashed out and Mallory cried out in pain and shock to feel her fingers entwine in his hair and yank his head to one side, twisting and paralyzing him with pain.
“Tell me you did not find her there, and then leave her! You fucker I’ll rip your eyes out of your sockets if you tell me you could have rescued her and then left her, you LEFT her?”
“God help me!” He gasped, his skull splitting on one side in agony from the pressure and then feeling her free hand actually on his face, her nails threatening at his eyelid. He couldn’t even think to struggle or kick, he could only touch her wrist, helpless.
“God ain’t gonna save you now,” she hissed, “I about killed a man before don’t think I won’t do it again, I’m strong enough to finish it this time Father and if she’s dead I ain’t got nothing left, so think about it carefully.”
And curiously now she sounded Southern, her accent not as deep as Chloe’s by any means but proof that she’d once adopted it. He could only breath slowly, try to calm his pulsing heart, try to adapt to the pain splitting his head and he sighed, “Please, let me explain.”
Ah the blessed relief, blessed freedom, she let him go and Mallory fell to the ground clutching his face and head, feeling the worst headache he’d ever experienced throbbing his temples. Almost, he almost wanted to cry, but he couldn’t in front of her and God. “God help me, I did not know at first her predicament, I didn’t.”
God save me for a liar.
Katrina squatted, stabbing him with her glare. “Go on.”