We’d been married for just over a year and a half on the day I plucked our baby out of her bouncy seat and said to James, “Expect the unexpected.”
“Wait. That’s my line.”
“Yep. I’m just borrowing it. You can have it back later.”
We three dodged the ever-present media vans at the intersection, cut through a lane between two cornfields, and connected up with a side street where I’d parked my car overnight.
During the mystery drive, I told James that our landlord owed money to the bank and that our rent wasn’t covering it. He had decided to sell JMJ.
“I can’t believe this,” James said.
“I negotiated with the bank, and if you agree, I want to pay off the mortgage. We’ll own the church outright.”
“How much is it?”
“I can afford it.”
“Really? Oh. Wow. I should have guessed by now that you are loaded, Brigid.”
He said that without judgment, but, still, he sounded wounded.
“I was waiting for the right time to tell you. Is this the right time?”
“This church. You want it, too?” he asked me.
“Yes, I really do.”
Minutes later, we entered the Springfield Bank and Trust. Mrs. Stanford was waiting for us. She motioned us into chairs in front of her desk and asked to hold Gilly.
“Gilly,” she said, “you are absolutely breathtaking.”
Gilly pinched the nice lady’s nose.
We signed the papers and bought a church, and on the way home, we took the truck into a car wash. Going through that watery tunnel just amazed and delighted Gilly. She laughed, waved her hands, and burbled, making her doting parents simply fall apart.
If I noticed the silver hatchback that seemed to be around the church a lot and that had been two cars in back of us on the way to Springfield, it didn’t register enough for me to even mention it to James.
“We own our home, sweet home,” James said as we headed back to Millbrook. “You’re stuck with me now, girls. Lucky, lucky me.”
Chapter 95
WHEN MADELINE Faulkner became the pastor of a church in Pennsylvania, she was barraged by every type of media attention, from blog articles on both sides of the controversy, to unrelenting network-news pieces. A woman priest was a huge story, and my old school friend Tori Hewitt sent me links to the Italian news coverage of American Catholic heretics.
I was amazed to see our names and faces: James’s, Bishop Reedy’s, Madeline’s, and mine, all of us accused of blasphemy in top newspapers and glossy magazines.
Meanwhile, right here at home, protesters surrounded JMJ and shouted at our parishioners as they came to church. Being at the center of what could turn into mass hysteria made me sick. James was also distraught. He prayed for guidance, and he apologized to the town for the way our presence had disturbed the peace, and he thanked town leaders for their understanding.
In fact, I wasn’t sure the town board had our backs.
One morning, Gilly and I were just yards from the entrance to the Maple Street Clinic when that silver hatchback that I’d noticed peripherally cruised up to the sidewalk and braked hard.
The man in the driver’s seat buzzed down his window and shouted, “Hey! Brigid!”
He was square-faced and flushed, with thinning brown hair and a thick, workingman’s build. I didn’t know him, had never seen him before. I put Gilly behind me, stood between her stroller and the car, and asked the red-faced man, “Who are you? What do you want?”
“You’re doing the work of the devil, Brigid. I know it. God knows it. We’re not going to let you get away with this.”
We? There was no one else on the street-no cars, no pedestrians-which was absolutely normal for Maple Street at nine a.m.
I said, “Are you threatening me?” And when he didn’t answer, I dug into my enormous handbag, filled with baby things, and searched for my phone.
I felt ridiculous, but I said, “I’m calling for help.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said. “Do it. Go ahead.”
Then he stepped on the gas, and his car shot down the street like a missile. I memorized his license plate, and once I’d settled Gilly into her office crib, I called the sheriff.
“A lot of people are mad at you JMJ’ers, Dr. F.,” said Sheriff Munroe. “Just avoid this guy. He’s just shooting off his mouth.”
My next call was to my attorney, Kyle Richardson. I told him that I’d been threatened by someone who had acted truly crazy. “I have his plate number.”
Kyle made calls, and by the end of the day, I knew the name of the man who’d said I was working for the devil, and that he meant to stop me.
His name was Lawrence House, and he was a former town councilman, now divorced, but, according to police reports, he didn’t consider the divorce to be valid.
Kyle told me, “His ex-wife has complained about him, but she didn’t make it official. The cops went to her place a few times, walked him out, and warned him not to bother her or the children, and he backed off. He doesn’t have a record.”
That Sunday, JMJ was packed again. The young people in Millbrook weren’t discouraged by the press gaggle lining the street. In fact, many of them waved at the cameras and even spoke with reporters before going inside.
James was giving his homily when a man stood up several rows back from where I was sitting with Gilly and shouted, “None of you are Catholics! You will be damned to hell. Especially you, James Aubrey. Especially you, Brigid Fitzgerald.”
It was Lawrence House.
As ushers tried to escort House out of the church, he got away from them and pulled a gun. I saw the flash of metal in his hand. Adrenaline shot my heart into overdrive.
I yelled, “Everyone get down!”
The family in the pew in front of me dove for the floor. Pews tipped, making shocking cracks against the floorboards, and people screamed. I hid behind the pew and covered Gilly’s body, but in my mind, I saw that lunatic level his gun at James.
James said calmly, “Guns don’t belong in the house of God.”
“I have a carry license!” House shouted. “I can bring it anywhere.”
Pandemonium erupted as some people tried to hide and others broke for the doors. Everything happened so fast that when I looked up, I was surprised to see that James and several of the young men in the congregation had tackled House and were holding him down.
I scooped up the gun from where it had fallen as if I were fielding a bunt, and then I called the police.
This time, they came.
Chapter 96
THEY MET over drinks in the archbishop’s office at the end of the day.
Cardinal Cooney was cheerful. The men assembled around the fine cherrywood conference table in the plain, white room were the best lawyers in the city and probably the state.
Cooney knew all four of them personally and welclass="underline" Harrington, Leibowitz, Flanagan, and Salerno. He played golf with them and belonged to the same political party, banked in the same banks. There were two other people at the table, his right-hand man, Father Peter Sebastian, who was Harvard Law, and Fiona Horsfall, a public-relations heavyweight.
They had worked together and had contained most of the garbage that had come out about the Boston Archdiocese after James Aubrey had been exonerated. After Aubrey got off scot-free from the charges against him, Horsfall had fashioned a campaign to make both him and the Church look as good as possible.
That wouldn’t be their goal today.
Cooney made sure everyone was comfortable, then said, “It starts with Aubrey. He’s the match to the gasoline. Breakaway churches are bad enough, but a runaway trend is intolerable.
“Peter. You went to the wedding. Tell us about it.”