Becker shrugged. "Fine with me. Maybe I'll check the morgues at a couple of papers for you, see if I can turn up anything. Buzz you in a couple of days."
"Great. I appreciate that. You know the way out."
When Jim heard the door slam, he turned to Carol and grinned. "Finally! He's gone!"
She nodded absently.
"Honey, what's wrong?"
Carol's face twisted as tears filled her eyes. She began to cry. Jim rushed over and pulled her into his arms. She felt so small and frail against him.
"I thought I was pregnant but I'm not!" she said, sobbing.
He held her tight and rocked her back and forth.
"Oh, Carol, Carol, don't take it so hard. We've got all the time in the world. We've got nothing better to do from now on than work on producing little feet to patter around this big old house."
"But what if it never happens?"
"It will."
He led her toward the front door. It killed him to see her so sad. All this newfound wealth didn't mean squat if Carol was unhappy.
He kissed her.
"Come on. Let's get back to our own bed in our own little place and do some homework."
She smiled through her tears.
That was better!
Nine
Monday, March 4
1
Brother Robert knelt on the cold, rice-littered floor by the window and silently chanted the Prime. When he was through, he remained kneeling. His window faced east and he looked out at the brightening sky.
The evil was growing stronger. Every day it cast a greater pall over his spirit. And it was from there, to the east, from somewhere on Long Island, that it seemed to emanate. Martin had driven him the length of the island but he had been unable to pinpoint its source. The closer he got, the more diffuse it became—until he had been engulfed in a cacophony of evil sensations.
A sign, Lord. Show me who it is. Show me Your enemy.
And then what? How would he fight Satan incarnate?
Will You teach me, Lord?
He prayed so. He had no battle plan, no strategy. He was not a plotter, not a general. He was a contemplative monk who had given up the world in order to be closer to his God.
Forgive the impertinence, Lord, but perhaps You made a mistake in choosing me to lead this flock. The burden is wide and my shoulders are so narrow.
Perhaps he hadn't given up enough of the world. He had fasted and prayed and worked in the fields around the monastery, but still he had wanted to know. The lust for knowledge had driven him to petition his abbot, and the Abbot General himself, for permission to search out and catalog other monastic orders. Not the Benedictines and similar well-established examples, but lesser, more obscure orders that might have something to offer the monastic life as a whole.
He had been given two years, but he had gone beyond that. His trek across the world had been endlessly fascinating. He had met with some of the Orphic brotherhood and a few Pythagoreans in Greece. He had found remnants of Therapeutae and Anchorites in the Mideast, and even a trio of Stylites, each sitting alone atop a stone pillar in the Gobi Desert. In the Far East he investigated many cenobitic Buddhist sects, and in Japan he met with the last two surviving members of an order of self-mutilating monks.
He should have stopped then. His compendium of monastic orders and their ways of life was the most complete on earth. But it was not enough; he went further. He had been tantalized by hints he had heard of dark secrets buried in ancient ruins, in forbidden books. He had searched them out. And he had found some of them. He had dug into the fabled ruins, had read some of the ancient, mythic tomes.
And he had been changed forever.
He no longer lusted for knowledge. All he wanted now was to retreat to his abbey, to hide himself away from the world and what he had learned.
But that was not to be. The changes within had led him here, to these Catholic Pentecostals. Secrets were unraveling, and he sensed that the Lord wanted him here when they were revealed.
But would he be able to rise to the challenge? Neither his boyhood on a farm in Remy, nor his adult life in a contemplative monastery had prepared him for anything like this.
2
"Do you still like the Jefferson Airplane?" Carol called from the big wing chair in the Hanley library. Already she had started thinking of it as her chair.
She felt better this morning—at least emotionally. Jim had made such tender love to her last night, whispering such wonderful things in her ear that she no longer felt like such a miserable failure as a woman for not being pregnant. She had brought Laura Nyro's first couple of albums along to the mansion today and now that wonderful voice and quirky lyrics were booming from the hidden speakers of Hanley's stereo, making the big house feel a little bit more like home.
Physically, though, she felt just as queasy, just as tired as she had every other morning recently. Another blood-soaked dream last night hadn't helped, either.
Something was wrong with her. She had decided this morning to make an appointment with Dr. Albert for a good general checkup. And if he didn't find anything, she'd go to a gynecologist and really go to work on getting her periods straightened out.
But for right now she was taking it easy. She had made herself comfortable with the Arts and Leisure section of yesterday's Sunday Times. She was only now getting around to it. Jim had made her call in sick because she'd been so tired this morning.
Actually he wanted her to quit her job. After all, they no longer needed the money, he said, so why should she drag herself off to the hospital every morning? Good, logical reasons, but Carol didn't want to quit. Not just yet. Not until she had kids to stay home for. Until then there were people at MCH who needed her. People like Mr. Dodd.
Kay had called from the hospital this morning to tell her that Maureen Dodd had agreed to take her father home. She was picking him up tomorrow. The news had made Carol's morning.
"Jefferson Airplane?" Jim said around a mouthful of food as he walked into the room. He had a well-bitten apple in one hand and one of Hanley's journals in the other. He had done little else but pore over those things since they'd arrived this morning. "Don't really care for much of their new stuff. Why?"
"Oh, just wondering. Korvette's has After Bathing at Baxter's on sale for two thirty-nine."
Jim swallowed and laughed. "On sale? Honey, we don't have to worry about sales ever again! If we want it, we'll buy it at list and pay the whole four seventy-nine! We'll buy a stereo and never buy mono records again! Don't you understand? We're rich!"
Carol thought about that a second. They were spending an awful lot of time here at the Hanley place but still slept and ate and made love in their own little house. Maybe she should stop referring to it as the Hanley place. Legally now it was the Stevens place.
"I don't feel rich," she said. "Do you?"
"No. But I'm going to start working on it. It's scary, though."
"How do you mean?" She knew she was scared, but Jim?
"The wealth. I don't want it to change us."
"It won't," she said.
"Oh, I know it won't change you. It's me. I don't want to stop writing, but what if the money makes me too comfortable? What if I stop being hungry? What if I mellow out?"
Carol had to smile. Every so often he would do this—break out of his tough-skeptic persona and become vulnerable. At times like these she loved him most.