I got back into bed, but sleep was a long way off. I started planning how I would begin to look for Mack. I thought about going to Lucas Reeves, the private investigator whom Dad hired, but then changed my mind. I was going to treat Mack’s disappearance as if it had happened yesterday. The first thing Dad did when we became alarmed about Mack was call the police and report him missing. I’d begin at the beginning.
I knew people down at the courthouse, which also houses the District Attorney’s office. I decided that my search would begin there.
Finally I drifted off and began to dream of following a shadowy figure who was walking across a bridge. Try as I would to keep him in sight, he was too fast for me, and when we reached land, I didn’t know which way to turn. But then I heard him calling me, his voice mournful and troubled. Carolyn, stay back, stay back.
“I can’t, Mack,” I said aloud as I awakened. “I can’t.”
2
M onsignor Devon MacKenzie ruefully commented to visitors that his beloved St. Francis de Sales Church was located so close to the Episcopal Cathedral of St. John the Divine that it was almost invisible.
A dozen years ago, Devon had expected to hear that St. Francis would be closed, and he could not in honesty have contested the decision. After all, it had been built in the nineteenth century and needed major repairs. Then, as more apartment buildings went up in the area and older walk-ups were renovated, he had been gratified to see the faces of new parishioners at Sunday Masses.
The growing congregation meant that in the past five years he had been able to carry out some of those repairs. The stained-glass windows were cleaned; years of built-up soil removed from the murals; the wooden pews sanded and refinished, the kneeling benches covered with soft new carpeting.
Then, when Pope Benedict decreed that individual pastors could decide to offer a Tridentine Mass, Devon, who was proficient in Latin, announced that henceforth the eleven o’clock Sunday Mass would be celebrated in the ancient tongue of the Church.