Rite of Wrongs Read online

  Miriam was just about to ask about Deon when it hit her that Nikki taught fourth grade at Henry Cross Elementary. “You don’t happen to have one of the Gardner children in your class, do you? Fourth grade would probably be—”

  “Eloise. Yes.” Nikki returned her glass to the bar. “Which is part of why things have been so incredibly insane.”

  “Is she still out?”

  Nikki nodded. “Her siblings, too. It’s been tough on the rest of the class, wondering if she’ll be the same when she comes back. Wondering if something could happen to their mothers. We’ve talked a lot about parents and random violence. The children have so many questions.” Nikki’s eyes dampened with empathy. “Are you on that case? Her mother?”

  “Yep,” Miriam said, toying with the stem of her glass. “What kind of student is she?”

  “Until this happened, she was straight-A model.” Nikki gave her a harsh side-eye. “Is this an official interview? Because we talked to Ballard when he came to the school last week. I’d rather not go through all of it again.”

  Miriam didn’t need to go through all of it. “Did you ever have any interaction with her mother? Her father said she did the homeroom-volunteer thing for all of the kids.”

  “She’s been at every school party this year. She bakes amazing cookies.” Nikki stopped, her hand shaking as she reached for her drink and drained it. “Baked, I mean. She baked.”

  “It’s okay,” Miriam said, emptying her own glass as Nikki swallowed, then reaching for her friend’s hand and holding on tight.

  “A fourth-grade girl losing her mother to a murderer? No, that’s not okay. Nothing about that is okay. I don’t understand how you can deal with that every day. Putting yourself out there, seeing what you do.” Nikki shuddered, then waved to Sugar for a refill. “You want another?”

  “I can’t.” Miriam glanced at her watch. “I have to leave in a few.”

  “Ah.” Nikki straightened her shoulders, her relief at the change of subject obvious. “The reason for the makeup. Hot date? New man?”

  Even a bad date held more appeal than what she had to do. “It’s not a date. And he’s not exactly . . . new.”

  That had Nikki turning and lifting a hand. “Uh-huh. Don’t even say that. I do not want to hear a word about the preacher.” She circled a finger near Miriam’s nose. “And I really don’t want to think that you put on this face for him.”

  She didn’t know why she’d put it on. She’d certainly never done her face for Augie in the past. Doing so now was going to look desperate.

  She should go home and wash it off. “Priest. He’s a priest. Not a preacher.”

  “Isn’t that, like, ten thousand times worse?” Nikki asked, looking over as Sugar replaced her drink and her napkin.

  Miriam waited until they were alone, then said, “I have to go see him.”

  “No. You don’t.”

  “It’s about work.” She rubbed at her forehead, stress pulling there like fat rubber bands.

  “Keep telling yourself that,” Nikki said with a huff, lifting her glass with both hands and licking a spot on the edge free of salt.

  Miriam should’ve ordered a second, too. “Judah’s sending me.”

  At that, Nikki snorted. “Why can’t he send Ballard?”

  “Augie hates Ballard. Or he did when he was a cop and hate was allowed.”

  Nikki swirled the ice in her glass. “You just had to say his name, didn’t you?”

  Say his name. Think his name. What did it matter?

  It lived in her head, in her heart. She dreamed about him. She smelled him at the oddest times, whiffs of his aftershave worn by other men, the smoke from his cigarettes, his tequila. She tasted him when she drank, which was a big part of why she did.

  She slid from her stool. “I gotta go.”

  “That’s all I get? No ‘You look amazing, too, Nikki?’ No ‘Thanks for being my bestie’?”

  Miriam ducked through the strap of her crossbody, then moved toward Nikki and kissed her cheek, her ear, her jaw. “Thanks for being my bestie. I don’t know how I’d ever manage without you in my life.”

  “Because I tell the truth, you mean?”

  There was that. “That almost sounds like you’re calling me a liar.”

  “Are you? Lying? Because from where I’m sitting, I’m finding it hard to believe that you tried to get out of going to church.”

  Was she really that transparent? “If I admit that I want to see him, would that make you happy?”

  “You wanting to see him? No. You telling the truth?” Nikki nodded. Then she asked, “Do you?”

  Miriam sighed. It was the only answer she had for her friend because it was the only one she had for herself. “I gotta go.”

  “Tell the preacher hi.”

  PART TWO

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Wednesday, 9:00 p.m.

  The last pew on the right in the Saint Mark’s Episcopal Church sanctuary was Father Augustine Treece’s favorite place to sit at the end of the day.

  During the week, he kept regular office hours. He took lunch meetings. He heard committee reports. He voted as a member of the diocese’s governing board.

  All of that while ministering to the members of his congregation, and finding time to study the Word, as well as for the prayer that kept him sane.

  He spent a lot of time in prayer.

  Who knew the Lord’s work had become a corporate enterprise?

  He’d thought more than once about relocating, looking for a small church to pastor, one whose members’ offerings would be made with home-baked bread and fried chicken and chocolate layer cake. Tomatoes from the garden. Corn and okra.

  He’d get his yard mowed. Gutters cleared. Damaged shingles replaced while he studied. His dripping faucet repaired while he prayed. Pennsylvania. West Virginia. Wales.

  Who was he kidding? His brother was here. His father. If his mother came back, he needed to be here where she could find him.

  At the end of the day, all these thoughts faded while he sat in his favorite pew. There, he achieved peace, staring at the stained glass: ivy leaves and a big bright sun and a crown of thorns. There, he was soothed, smelling the beeswax candles and Murphy’s Oil Soap.

  The flowers Mrs. Rice and Mrs. Hannigan brought in from their beds every third day perfumed the air, too. Roses most of the time, though tulips in the spring, and lilies. The creaks and groans of the old building settling comforted him. The occasional hum from the organ when the AC unit behind their shared wall kicked on provided a sense of calm.

  Lately, he’d needed a lot of calm.

  For a pastoral-size congregation, Saint Mark’s had a ridiculous obsession with committees. He didn’t think a single church member wasn’t involved in at least two. The committees had a ridiculous obsession with meetings. Not a week went by without one. And for a reason that would no doubt be just as ridiculous if he could figure it out, he was expected to attend all of them, no matter what night, or how late.

  So much for having time to spend unwinding in his favorite pew.

  Tonight’s emergency session, immediately following Holy Eucharist, had been about the music director failing to adhere to the music committee’s recommendations.

  Austin Keen was twenty-eight and a graduate of SMU Meadows School of the Arts. He wore his black hair in a man bun, his beard full. Augie would’ve done the same if the public-standards committee would have let him get away with it. The beard, anyway. Not the bun.

  The way Augie saw it, recommendations were just that: suggestions to be followed if they made sense in the scope of the department’s vision. Sadly, Augie had been outnumbered, though at least the chairman being called to work had kept the meeting short.

  This music director’s particular vision was the reason he’d been hired, but now it seemed there was some question about his secular leanings, and what messages were being conveyed through his song choices and choral arrangements and blah, blah, blah.

  Laug
hing to himself, Augie tugged the chain to douse the light from the stained-glass lamp that shined down on his desk. Both office fixtures were as old as the Rolodex of yellowed cards he flipped through daily, and the leather blotter with ringed coffee stains he’d tried throwing away a half-dozen times his first month on the job.

  Five years later, he and the blotter were both still here, partners in a wary truce. He was determined to be the last one standing, no matter how many committee meetings he had to attend, no matter how many times he had to be the voice of reason and take the unpopular side. He might not get his way straight out of the gate, but he would prevail.

  Wasn’t that what the good guys did?

  Along with the office furnishings, he’d inherited Saint Mark’s congregants and their idiosyncrasies, and as much as he wished his position required he do no more than impart the Word of the Lord, it didn’t. Even being a police officer had meant paperwork, he mused, closing his door and pocketing his keys as he headed into the sanctuary.

  Personally, he liked the music Austin Keen chose. It wasn’t Charlie Sexton or Doyle Bramhall II; though both infused their songs with a whole lot of church, neither would meet the Saint Mark’s music committee’s standards. A shame, really, he mused, thinking back to the last live music show he’d seen. Live music that wasn’t the youth choir. Live music played left-handed, the guitar chords plucked upside down—

  “Hello, Augie.”

  Her voice slammed him to a stop. It had been five years since he’d heard it, and the last time he had, they’d been in the ER after he’d killed a man to save her life.

  He’d stopped thinking about that night, and about her, when he’d walked out of the hospital. He’d gone straight to the station, leaving his badge and his department-issue Glock with the deputy chief. Then he’d headed home and downed enough Maker’s Mark to forget he’d ever been a cop. To forget he’d killed a man.

  To erase the fact that he’d ever loved Miriam Rome.

  He’d sobered up long enough to sit through his interview with Internal Affairs, then gone back to drinking while waiting for the DA’s ruling. It had come quickly. The shooting was justified. Judah had stopped by to deliver the news. Being let off the hook so easily, even for a life taken in the line of duty, left him conflicted, his heart heavy. The next day, he’d packed a bag and driven to an Episcopalian retreat in the wooded hills of East Texas. There, he’d contacted a former divinity professor who’d given him guidance as he returned to his roots. Because long before he’d joined the armed forces and later the police force, he’d received his degree at seminary. It had been time to revisit his calling.

  While at the camp, he’d made the necessary connections and arrangements that had eventually landed him at Saint Mark’s. It was a good life, complicated at times, completely fulfilling at others, though safe in that he knew he’d never need to settle conflict with a gun.

  He leaned a hip on the bench across the aisle from hers and crossed his arms. He did not sit. “Hello, Miriam.”

  She shifted to face him, but she did not stand. “Can we talk?”

  Interesting. “About the church bazaar and the police union’s contribution?”

  She shook her head.

  Okay. “About converting?”

  Another shake, her throat working.

  “About the night we spent listening to DB2 sing ‘Cry’ over and over again on stakeout?”

  About how they’d lost their mark because she’d dropped her pants and crawled into his lap and left him nearly unconscious. That night had turned their working relationship into something neither one of them had understood, or been able to put a name to, or quit.

  “About a case,” she said, her voice breaking as she swallowed around the words.

  “I gave up the badge for a reason.” He’d given up the badge for her. Because of her. They both knew that. But he’d sworn to himself he would never speak the words. Not to her or anyone. “I can’t imagine any case I’d ever want to talk about.”

  “Fine, then,” she said, her face tightening.

  She looked older, but in a good way. Like she knew a lot of things she hadn’t in the past. Her hair was cut in the same layers and waves that fell around her face like a curtain she could turn into and hide. He didn’t see any gray, but the sanctuary didn’t have much in the way of lighting this time of night. For the best, since it kept him from seeing her eyes too clearly. He didn’t want to look into them and give in. Because it was liable to happen.

  She was his weakness. He couldn’t imagine that had changed.

  “How’s the religion thing working out for you?”

  He huffed. “I don’t wake up every morning wondering whether to holster my duty weapon or eat it, if that’s what you mean.”

  The words fell between them, a truth no one but the two of them and the Lord above knew, and that was two too many for him.

  Dear Lord, forgive me my weakness, for thinking my life was mine to take, instead of looking to your Son, through whom I am strong enough to do all things. Amen.

  “I’m not sure what I mean,” she said, after he’d opened his eyes. “But that’s good to know. I’d hate to read about your body being found. Or worse, be the one to find it.”

  He gave another huff at that because the thought of her doing so had never once, not in all the times he’d wondered how his gun would taste, crossed his mind. “Holy Eucharist was hours ago, and last I knew, you weren’t much interested in”—how had she put it?—“the religion thing. So unless there’s something else I can do for you—”

  “About the religion thing.” She used four fingers to rub at the stress in her forehead. “Seems I’m in it up to my elbows with a case.”

  Elbows. Not eyeballs. They’d always argued which was worse. Augie shook his head. “I’m not a cop anymore. I don’t do that anymore.”

  “That.” Her eyes were sharp, her voice cutting.

  He crossed the aisle, picked up the Bible from the pew in front of the one where she sat. She leaned back and looked at him as if weighing the best way to take him down.

  “You mean you’ve given up puzzles? Finding the pieces, snapping them into place, watching the picture take shape? Or do you mean the games we played?”

  Five years. He’d made it five whole years without feeling the burn in his gut that had ended his law-enforcement career, that had finished everything he’d felt for this woman.

  That had very nearly finished his life. “I’m done looking for the reasons men do what they do. Now, I do what I can to keep them out of those situations.”

  Her sarcasm was apparent in the lift of her brow, in the way she crossed her arms. “You don’t want to hear—”

  “No,” he said, raising the Bible in front of him, a shield, a flag, an impenetrable wall between them. “I don’t want to hear anything you have to say. Because I can’t help you.”

  “You won’t help me, you mean.”

  “In your case?” He tried not to laugh. He really did. “One and the same.”

  She looked away, snorted, and shook her head. Then she took hold of the pew in front of her and got to her feet. “You’re lying to yourself, Augie,” she said, leaning toward him. “You’re lying to me. And as little as I know about the religion thing, I’m going to guess that means you’re also lying to God.”

  A part of him wished he were lying. The truth being the truth wasn’t any easier to live with now than five years ago. “Last time I tried to help you, I killed a man. Fifteen years on the force. Not once had I fired my service weapon. Not once had I done more than threaten to draw it. I was damn proud of that fact. I’m not willing to risk having that happen again.”

  “It happened once. Once,” she said, holding up a single finger, her hand shaking. “It was never a regular thing, so using that as an excuse is pretty damn douchey. As is you thinking I’m still that—”

  “Careless?”

  “I was never . . . careless.”

  Still holding the Bible, Augi
e crossed his arms. “You didn’t contain the threat. A man tried to kill you.”

  “Lucky for me you were there.”

  “It wasn’t me who saved you,” he said, choked by vivid flashes of the man racking a shotgun shell. He’d been wired. He’d pulled the trigger prematurely. The gun had misfired. It was the only reason Miriam was standing here now.

  She just looked at him. “Guess I’ll have to work this one out for myself, too.”

  Too? Really? “I could’ve sworn Judah told me you had a partner. Though that never did stop you from doing your own thing, did it?”

  “I do have a partner. He’s my rock. I don’t know what I’d do without him.”

  “Sounds as if you finally found someone to give you what you need,” he said, then felt a pang of regret when she tightened her jaw and turned away. He was better than this. Both of them were better than this. Egging each other on because the past still hurt. “Miriam—”

  “No, you’re right. That was childish.” She shook back her hair. “And uncalled for. I’m not sure why I’m lashing out.”

  “Aren’t you?” he asked, his tone stung, the words like blades on his tongue. “Because I’m pretty sure I know why I am.”

  “Guess we should’ve talked things out back then.”

  Back then, he’d been all out of things to say, and he hadn’t had an ounce of nice in him. “Instead of me walking out of the ER and vanishing into the night?”

  Her mouth pulled into what was a grin in name only. The emotion behind it was regretful and sad. “It was a pretty dramatic statement you made there, that disappearing act. I just wasn’t quite sure what you were trying to say.”

  “To be honest, neither was I.” He needed to get away from her before he started confessing the things he’d never been able to tell anyone else. “It took a few weeks to get things sorted out.”

  She looked around the sanctuary, at the altar, the pulpit, the stained glass. Mrs. Rice’s and Mrs. Hannigan’s roses. “Looks like you’ve done a good job.”