Stony River by Tricia Dower

tears.
    â€œI can’t go to lunch until I say more prayers to release my father from Purgatory.”
    â€œWas he truly penitent before he died, worthy of Purgatory’s fires?”
    â€œAnd for what would he need be penitent?”
    Father Shandley sighs as though the air has been punctured out of him. He stares out toward the giant crucifix hanging above the altar and waits. He’s good at that. His silence behind the confessional grille often feels like an invisible hand reaching out to seize her secrets. He asks her, every time, to tell God how Cian came to be. Every time she responds that, if God is all-seeing, he already knows. He tells her she’s young; God will forgive her for having been seduced into sin if she is contrite. She says she wasn’t seduced. He asks on how many occasions she and her father sinned. Each time she assures him that she and James did not sin.
    Today he smiles. “The sisters claim that if Saint Peter bars you from the pearly gates, Mary will let you in the back. Maybe your prayers will open Heaven’s back door for your father.”
    Miranda realizes he’s joking—she’s getting better at that—and a tiny smile inside her expands. She pictures Heaven’s gates as the tall wrought-iron ones Doris and Nolan’s car passed through the day they delivered her and Cian to St. Bernadette’s. She imagines James going round to the kitchen door with the stray cats, petitioning Sister Ernestine.
    â€œOn Wednesday,” Father Shandley says, “I will say three Massesin honor of the dead, including those who, it is said, still ‘groan’ in Purgatory. If you make a full confession”—he gives her a pointed look—“and take Holy Communion at All Saints Mass the day before, you might gain an indulgence for your father’s soul. In fact, I guarantee it.”
    It’s more than coincidence that the dark half of a new year begins soon. At the precise moment when the Dark Moon of Samhain blocks starlight, time will belong to neither the old year nor the new and the dead will find it easier to wander among the living. On Samhain Eve—Doris calls it Halloween—she and James left plates of food for departed souls and built a fire in the hearth to warm them. She thought she could will her mother to rise out of the flames simply by wanting it badly enough. James said it would require years more study and practice before she was open for communing with the dead. And even then, it might not happen. His mother and grandmother bled through each year, but never Eileen. Miranda wonders now if her mother was trapped between worlds with no one to pray for her.
    â€œWill you wear black?” she asks.
    â€œI will.” He laughs. “You ask the most … Remind me which saint you chose for your confirmation name.”
    â€œMaura.”
    â€œAh, yes. You ask the most interesting questions, Miranda Breege Maura Haggerty.”
    â€œSister Bonita thinks not. She says curiosity wastes God’s time.” Miranda doesn’t tell him that some girls laugh at her questions about things they take for granted: hissing radiators, the walking and talking photographs of television, water in fountains bubbling up like tiny dancing balls. Say goodnight, Gracie, they croon.
    â€œDoes she? Well, you can waste my time. Nobody’s mistaken me for God yet.” He stands and extends a hand to help her up. With a warm thumb, he traces a firm sign of the cross on her forehead. “Now, to lunch, please. If need be, tell the sisters I kept you.”
    Miranda feels a quiver of hope, then fear. She will invite James to the Mass of the dead, but what must she confess to deliver him there?

    1:35 PM . Haggerty’s desk was pocked with cubbyholes stuffed with boring shit: mostly papers, some with date stamps and fancy seals. Only a moron wouldn’t have known that the two removable compartments shaped like books were