But I had felt His presence here. And today I had brought my faith with me to St. Paul’s, where I had always felt love and safety.
My bad father was wrong.
I had come home again.
Chapter 68
I WAS sitting in the front pew and was deep in prayer when a door slammed behind me. A priest came into the nave wearing jeans and a black shirt with a priest’s collar. He was saying into his phone, “Let him know James Aubrey called. Thanks.”
Then he saw me and said, “Oh. Sorry about that. I didn’t mean to interrupt your prayers.”
“Not a problem,” I said. “I was nattering. God has heard it all before.”
He gave me a big smile and said, “That’s funny.”
The priest was probably in his early thirties. He had a round face, sandy hair, and beautiful blue eyes. Despite the smile, his eyes were sad.
“I’m Father Aubrey,” he said. “James.”
He reached out his hand and I did the same, and we shook.
“Brigid Fitzgerald.”
“Nice to meet you, Brigid. You’re new to the neighborhood?”
“Not exactly. When I was a kid, my mom and I used to sit right here every Sunday.”
He looked at me for a long moment, then said, “Forgive me for noticing, but you look a little lost, Brigid. No judgment. Just, do you want to talk?”
He was a pretty good read. I’d lost my loved ones as well as my father, my father’s entire family, my trust in my mother, and pretty much my identity from the time I was able to say “da-da.” Did I want to talk?
Apparently I did.
“I’m, uh, in mourning. I just lost my husband and baby girl in a terrible accident. I feel kind of dead myself.”
James Aubrey told me that he was very sorry, then sat in the pew across from me and asked questions. I told him a little of the story, but it was hard to talk about Karl’s and Tre’s deaths without melting right down.
I switched the subject, telling him that I’d just come back from Jerusalem and had been yards away when the bomb went off.
“I’m a doctor,” I said. “I tried to help. I couldn’t do anything. It was just a bloody nightmare of a disaster, and after that, I came here. I’m kind of a homing pigeon, I guess.”
“I’m sorry, Brigid. I can hardly imagine the horror you’ve been through.”
I nodded, but I didn’t want to talk anymore. My voice was splintered, and I thought I might just crack up entirely if I kept talking. I managed to say, “I have to go find a place to stay. I’ll be back another time.”
James Aubrey said, “Good. I’m almost always here. God be with you, Brigid.”
Sometimes He was. Sometimes I carried on, on my own.
Chapter 69
A CAB was waiting for the light to change on DeWolfe Street, right outside the church. I grabbed the opportunity, threw myself into the backseat, and asked the driver to take me to the Dinsmore Motor Lodge, right off Route 2.
I knew of the Dinsmore, but I’d never been there.
The driver was a reed-thin man of indeterminate age wearing a knitted cap pulled down to his eyes and a Fitbit on his right wrist. He checked me out in the mirror, then he started the meter.
I watched without seeing as he drove us up Memorial Drive, along the Charles River, through North Cambridge, but I came back to the present when we closed in on my chosen destination, a skeevy motel in the worst part of the city, planted on the verge of a rumbling highway.
My driver stopped his cab in the motel’s forecourt, beside the cracked plastic sign reading Vacancies WiFi Coffee Shop. Happy B’day Sean.
I asked my cabbie to wait, then bolted out of the cab before he could say no and fast-walked to the office.
I asked the towering teenage boy behind the desk if room 209 was available, and he nodded while staring at me.
I was getting a lot of strange looks these days, and I knew why. My black hooded coat looked like a storm cloud, and I was in the center of it, with my shaven head, my pale skin, and my generally deathlike appearance.
Never mind deathlike. I looked like the real thing.
I said, “May I see the room?”
Giant Teen unhooked the key from a board behind him and slapped it on the counter.
“You mind if I ask why 209?”
“Yes,” I said.
I snatched the key.
The parking area around the Dinsmore Motor Lodge looked like a dumping ground for all the drug-addicted, jobless, homeless, hopeless people in Cambridge.
I said to my driver, “I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
“I can’t wait more than five. I need to get back to the garage.”
“Ten minutes, that’s all. I’ll give you a good tip.”
He sighed, then shrugged. I took that to be a yes.
I jogged up the stairs to the second floor, found 209 three doors down from the landing, and opened the door to the room where my mother had died.
I’d seen police photos of the room and expected it to be a hellhole, but it was far worse than that. The windows were opaque with dirt. The bed was covered with a stained spread, the hard surfaces were grimy, and insects scurried when I turned on the bathroom light. The stink of smoke and fifty years of unwashed human beings clung to the carpets and curtains.
I stared at the revolting bedspread and thought of my mother lying there, half-naked, her heart exploding from a heroin overdose. And I saw my father lying next to her, watching her die.
The day after Dorothy Fitzgerald died at the age of forty-five, G.S.F. was arrested and charged with negligent homicide.
The prosecutor was young and determined, but this case was thin on facts, based on circumstantial evidence.
George S. Fitzgerald had signed for room 209 and charged it to his card, and the police had found him in this bed stoned out of his mind. A drug dealer admitted to selling him drugs, but said drug dealer was a very sketchy witness. And, even if he had been a font of truth, that G.S.F. had shared his H with my mother didn’t make her death a homicide.
The case against G.S.F. came down to his statement to me the day before my mother died. He had been sitting on the stoop outside our house when I came home with take-out pizza.
“Your mother,” he had said, “is a waste of oxygen. I wish to hell she was dead. I think I’m going to kill her.”
I’d testified to that, but it was my word against his, and his attorney tore me into small pieces on the stand. Even if the jurors believed me, the proof against G.S.F. never rose above the level of reasonable doubt.
As soon as the case was dismissed, I fled to Baltimore, got my MD, and kept running.
Until now.
My driver was honking his horn, and there was nothing more for me to see. I slammed the door and left room 209 behind me. I had a moment of fright when I couldn’t find my cab in the parking lot, but then I saw it parked on the street.
Giant Teen was trotting toward me.
I shouted, “I changed my mind!” and tossed him the key.
I got into the cab.
My driver said, “I was about to go. Where to now?”
“Portman House,” I said. It was a small and decent boutique hotel about five miles from this spot and near the MIT campus. Parents of college kids stayed there.
“Good choice,” said my driver. He turned the cab around, and as we headed back into the better parts of Cambridge, I wondered what I was going to do, where I was going to live, what my life was going to be like now and from this point forward.
I wondered if God was going to let me in on any plan He might have for me. Or if it was all up to me.
I knew the answer. Up to me.
Chapter 70
THE FRESH images of my mother’s death, combined with the excruciating losses of Karl and Tre, washed over me like a tsunami, overwhelming me and leaving me gasping for meaning that just wasn’t there.
I asked the driver to stop at the closest liquor store and wait for me. He gave me a look that told me he deeply regretted letting me into his cab, but he pulled up to Liquor World on White Street and kept the motor running.