and his children, to his whole family, to me and my family, if he let Tessio and Carlo go
free. They would have been a danger to us all, all our lives."
Kay had been listening to this with tears running down her face. "Is that what Michael
sent you up here to tell me?"
Hagen looked at her in genuine surprise. "No," he said.
"He told me to tell you you could have everything you want and do everything you
want as long as you take good care of the kids." Hagen smiled. "He said to tell you that
you're his Don. That's just a joke."
Kay put her hand on Hagen's arm. "He didn't order you to tell me all the other things?"
Hagen hesitated a moment as if debating whether to tell her a final truth. "You still
don't understand," he said. "If you told Michael what I've told you today, I'm a dead
man." He paused again. "You and the children are the only people on this earth he
couldn't harm."
It was a long five minutes after that Kay rose from the grass and they started walking
back to the house. When they were almost there, Kay said to Hagen, "After supper, can
you drive me and the kids to New York in your car?"
"That's what I came for," Hagen said.
249
A week after she returned to Michael she went to a priest for instruction to become a
Catholic.
From the innermost recess of the church the bell tolled for repentance. As she had
been taught to do, Kay struck her breast lightly with her clenched hand, the stroke of
repentance. The bell tolled again and there was the shuffling of feet as the
communicants left their seats to go to the altar rail. Kay rose to join them. She knelt at
the altar and from the depths of the church the bell tolled again. With her closed hand
she struck her heart once more. The priest was before her. She tilted back her head
and opened her mouth to receive the papery thin wafer. This was the most terrible
moment of all. Until it melted away and she could swallow and she could do what she
came to do.
Washed clean of sin, a favored supplicant, she bowed her head and folded her hands
over the altar rail. She shifted her body to make her weight less punishing to her knees.
She emptied her mind of all thought of herself, of her children, of all anger, of all
rebellion, of all questions. Then with a profound and deeply willed desire to believe, to
be heard, as she had done every day since the murder of Carlo Rizzi, she said the
necessary prayers for the soul of Michael Corleone.