Wait—that’s it?? It had taken Thomas a minute to recover his wits. He looked around. The chapel was unoccupied. The air was heavy and still, and the building was eerily silent. And, oddly, he thought, there was no one in line for confession. “Father?” Thomas called out, but there was no answer. He walked back to the confessional and, after a brief pause, drew the curtain aside with a single swift motion of his hand. It was empty.
Thomas stood there in contemplation for a moment, having ascertained that there was no other way in or out of the booth. And then, on something slightly more substantial than a whim, he made straight for the library. Edna Draper was sitting at her station in the archives room, sipping a cup of tea and reading a romance novel. “More research?” she asked when she saw Thomas walk in.
“You’re onto me,” said Thomas. “Could I please look at those records again?”
Edna Draper, without taking her eyes off her book, reached over, picked up a binder, and handed it to him. “I figured you’d be back,” she said. Thomas glanced at her as he took the binder. He opened it where he stood and found the student roll for 1911–12. On the facing page was a list of priests who had been in residence at the school for the same year, serving as administrators and teachers. He hadn’t noticed it the first time he looked. “Are there any pictures from these years?” he asked Mrs. Draper.
“Back section, right after the divider,” said Edna Draper, still not looking up. Thomas obeyed and found himself looking at faded black and white photographs of the student body for each academic year. There were also pictures of the chapel, the dormitories, and a classroom building, as well as a group photo of the priests for each school year. He looked closely at the 1911–12 photo of the priests—they were standing on the stairs in front of the chapel. And there he was! The old priest stood in the second row on the end, complete with the Albert Einstein hair. He looked no different than he had fifteen minutes earlier when he stood up to walk into the confessional.
“Mrs. Draper! Who is this priest?” Thomas was holding the binder up so she could see the photo. The tip of his index finger rested just below the face of the old priest.
“Fr. Cyril,” she answered matter-of-factly, her eyes glued to her novel.
“You’re not looking!”
“Don’t need to.”
Thomas let out a sigh of frustration. He turned to the front of the binder and consulted the list of priests for the 1911–12 academic year. There was a Fr. Cyril Callaghan on the list. Thomas closed his eyes for a moment and contemplated. He then opened them. “Mrs. Draper? When we spoke the other day, did you mean The Holy Ghost? Or that there’s a ghost in the chapel, one who happens to be holy?”
Mrs. Draper finally looked up. One corner of her mouth curled just slightly. “You’re very clever, young man. Takes most people a lot longer than that. Whatever he said, I’d listen to him if I were you. Wisest man I’ve ever met.”
Thomas walked out of the library and onto the quad. He took in a deep breath and, as he exhaled, watched the warm air from his lungs form a cloud in the cold December air. He followed the sidewalk until he found himself standing in front of the chapel. There was a green wreath on each door. He pondered the nativity scene behind those doors, and he wondered for a brief moment if he would ever see the old priest again. He knew the answer.
Without knowing why, he turned around so that he was facing the firepit on the quad, its shape only vaguely discernible under the cover of snow. As he looked, lost in thought, the surrounding snowscape faded from his consciousness, and he found himself standing under a moonlit sky, observing the bonfire from Halloween night of his senior year. The crowd was immersed in conversation, the students warming themselves at the fire and drinking from beer cans. He saw himself standing with a group of friends, including Sophia, to the left of the fire.
Off to the right of the fire, in the midst of the crowd, he saw his mother, wearing the pink blouse and blue skirt that she wore in the family portrait from his youth. She was with the beautiful young woman in the blue dress and the veil. His mother looked just as she did in the portrait, except that she was wiping tears from her eyes. Despite their age difference, his mother’s posture before the young woman was one of deference—she was pleading with her. No one seemed to notice them.
As the two of them spoke, Thomas became distracted by one of the students in the crowd, someone he didn’t know. The student was conversing with friends, his back to the fire. He was closer to the firepit than anyone else, and, taking an inadvertent step backward as he spoke, he stumbled. Struggling to catch his balance, his arms waving wildly, he staggered and fell into the fire. He was instantly incinerated. The fire gave forth with an audible crackle and then exhaled a small black cloud of smoke. The socializing about the bonfire continued as though nothing had happened.
Thomas looked back over in the direction of his mother. He watched as the young woman in blue gently placed a comforting hand on her shoulder and, after speaking briefly, held out her other hand. His mother took the Rosary beads from around her wrist and gave them to her. They were then joined by a third woman. She was facing the other two, so that Thomas could only see her back, but he knew who she was. She wore a gray cropped wool blazer, and her brunette hair spilled out from under a rust-colored beret and settled onto her shoulders. It looked as though the other two women were instructing her, and she nodded as they spoke. Three more students were incinerated over the course of their conversation, to no reaction from the crowd. His mother and the veiled woman then walked away from the fire and slowly faded from his vision until they disappeared altogether. The girl in the beret turned and headed over to the opposite side of the bonfire. Thomas looked in that direction and saw that he was standing with his back to the fire, closer to it than anyone else in the crowd.
At that moment he was jolted back to consciousness—someone was shaking him gently by the shoulder. “Are you okay?” Thomas found himself staring at a man dressed in a campus security uniform. “Sir, do you need help?”
“No, I’m okay.” Thomas mustered a weak smile. “Thanks.”
The security officer walked off, but not without looking back twice before disappearing down a sidewalk. Thomas had unconsciously slipped his right hand into his coat pocket and clasped the set of Rosary beads that rested there. He pulled them out, looked down, and ran his finger over
his mother’s initials. Looking again at the shapeless mound of snow on the quad, he made a decision. Pulling out his phone, he opened his contacts and swiped up, watching intently as names and matching photos rolled off the screen. He brought the scrolling to a halt when he caught a glimpse of a rust-colored beret. Hesitating briefly, he tapped.
“Thomas??”
Thomas heard the voice on the other end and froze.
“Thomas? Hello?”
“Yeah, I’m here. … Sorry, I didn’t think you’d answer. I was wondering … Do you think we could grab a cup of coffee? I wanted to ask you something. Or, I guess, show you something. Or maybe tell you something. I’m not sure which. But I think you’re the person I’m supposed to talk to.”
“I know. I’ve been waiting for over a year. Can you be at the coffee shop in twenty minutes?” “Yeah.”
“I’ll be waiting for you. I’ll be in the corner booth.”
