What kind of talk had run through these halls last Sunday? He could almost hpar it: Hey! Didja hear? Father Bill's folks got burnt up in afire last night!… No way!… Yeah! Burnt to a crisp!… Is he comin' back?… Who knows?
Bill knew. He would always come back. And he would keep coming back until they closed this place down. No personal loss, no matter how great, would keep him from fulfilling that vow.
Only a few of the boys were smiling. Weren't they glad to see him?
As he stuck the key into the lock on his office door, Marty Sesta stepped forward. He was one of the oldest boys in St. F.'s, and the biggest. He tended to throw his weight around but he was basically a good kid.
"Here, Father," he said, his brown eyes averted as he thrust a legal-size envelope at Bill. "Dis is from us."
"Who's 'us'?" Bill said, taking the envelope.
"Alia us."
Bill opened the envelope. Inside was a piece of drawing paper, quarter folded. Someone had drawn a sun behind a cloud. Below was a flat green line with some tuliplike flowers sprouting from it. Block-printed words hung in the air: WE'RE SORRY ABOUT YOUR
MOM AND DAD, FATHER BILL.
"Thank you, boys," Bill managed to say past a steadily constricting throat. He was touched. "This means a lot. I'll… see you all later, okay?"
They all nodded and waved and took off, leaving Bill alone to ponder the incomprehensible wonders of children and what they could wring from a single piece of paper and some crayons. He'd expected a little sympathy from some of them, but never this kind of united display. He was deeply moved.
"Are you sad?" said a familiar small voice.
Bill looked up and saw blond hair and blue eyes. Danny Gordon was standing in his office doorway.
"Hi, Danny. Yes, I'm sad. Very sad."
"Can I sit with you?"
"Sure."
Bill dropped into the chair and let Danny hop up onto his lap. And suddenly the dark winter chill that had enshrouded his soul since Sunday morning melted away. The drifting sensation faded. The gaping emptiness within began to fill.
"Are your mommy and daddy in heaven?" Danny asked.
"Yes. I'm sure they are."
"And they won't be coming back?"
"No, Danny. They're gone for good."
"That means you're just like us."
And then it was all clear to him. The touching drawing, the sympathy from the kids. They'd been long-time citizens of the country to which he'd just emigrated. They were welcoming him to a land where no one wanted to be.
"That's right," he said softly. "We're all orphans now, aren't we."
As Danny jumped off his lap, unable to confine himself to one location a second longer, Bill felt a sudden oneness with the boy, with all the boys who had passed through the doors of St. F.'s during his tenure. More than mere empathy, it was like a merging of souls. The drifting sensation dissipated as his anchor found bottom again and caught.
But he wasn't entirely without family. He knew that although he was indeed an orphan like the other residents of St. F.'s, he still had the Society of Jesus. Being a Jesuit was like belonging to a family of sorts. The Society was a close-knit brotherhood. Whenever he needed them he knew his brother Jesuits would be there for him. In fact, as a priest, there was no reason why he shouldn't consider the whole Church as one huge, extended spiritual family. And in that great body of relatives, the residents of the St. Francis Home for Boys could be looked upon as his immediate family.
True, he had lost his parents, but he never would be truly alone as long as he had the Church, the Jesuits, and the boys of St. F.'s. He would always have a home, he'd always belong.
And that was a good feeling.
Bill put the horrors of last Sunday morning behind him by throwing himself back into the daily routine of running one of New York City's last surviving Catholic orphanages. He felt he'd already faced and survived the worst that life could offer. What else was left to go wrong? Whatever could go sour had already done so—in spades. Things would be looking up from now on.
And for a while, through much of that spring, his life did indeed seem to chart a steadily upward course.
Then the Loms crossed the threshold of St. F.'s.
SIXTEEN
It was a warm Saturday afternoon in early June. Bill was interviewing a young couple in his office. They seemed too young to be seeking to adopt a child. Mr. Lorn was twenty-seven, his wife Sara was twenty-three.
"Please call me Herb," said Mr. Lorn with a trace of the Southwest in his voice. He had a round face, thick brown hair receding from his forehead, a thick, stubby mustache, and wire-rimmed glasses. He reminded Bill of Teddy Roosevelt. He half expected him to shout "Bully!" at any moment.
"Herbert Lorn…" Bill said, musing aloud. "Why does that name sound familiar?"
"There's a British actor with the very same name," Herb said.
"That's it." Bill remembered the actor now—Peter Sellers's Inspector Clouseau had driven him mad.
"You've probably seen a number of his pictures. No relation, unfortunately."
"I see. And you want to adopt one of our boys?"
Sara nodded excitedly. "Oh, yes! We want to start a family right away and we want to begin with a boy."
She was tall, dark, and slim with short, deep brown hair, almost boyish in its cut, and luminous eyes. Her application said she was twenty-three but she looked younger. And her drawl was delightful.
Bill had gone over their applications before the interview. The couple had been married only a year; both were native Texans, both graduates of the University of Texas at Austin, although they'd graduated five years apart. Herbert worked for one of the big oil companies; he had been transferred to the New York office recently. His salary was impressive. Both were practicing Catholics. Everything looked good.
Only their ages were against them.
Normally Bill would have rejected their application with a gentle explanatory letter advising them to give more time to their decision to adopt a child. But the details of Sara's social and medical history, combined with the fact that the couple had not limited their request to an infant, prompted Bill to give them a second look.
"You say here that you're interested in a boy between the ages of one and five," Bill said.
That had surprised him. As a rule, what a young childless couples wanted most was an infant.
They both nodded. Sara said, "Definitely."
"Why not an infant?"
"We're realists, Father Ryan," Herb said. "We know the wait for a white newborn can be seven years. We simply don't want to wait that long."
"Plenty of couples do."
Sara said, "We know. But I'm willing to bet that those couples can occupy themselves with tests and procedures and hopes that they'll conceive their own child during the waiting period." She glanced away. "We don't have that hope."
Bill glanced at the application again. According to a summary of Sara's medical history, supplied by a Dr. Renquist in Houston, she had been struck by a car at age eleven and suffered a pelvic fracture with internal bleeding. During exploratory surgery they found a ruptured uterine artery and had to perform a hysterectomy to save her life. The matter-of-fact tone of the summary ignored the emotional impact of that kind of surgery on a child. Bill saw a girl growing through her teenage years as the only one in her crowd who didn't get her period. A small thing in perspective, but he knew how kids don't like to feel they're on the outside looking in—at anything; even if it involves a monthly mess and discomfort, they want to belong. But more than that was the inescapable fact that Sara would never have a child of her own. He was moved by the finality of her condition.
"Are you sure you can handle a toddler or a preschooler?"