After a quick but scalding shower, Karla and pulled on the slightly loose pair of jeans she had borrowed from Jessica, along with her own tank top and cardigan. A chill still lingered in the cottage from another frosty night.
The other girls had already gone back to work at the cheese house, pressing curds into forms. Karla fully intended to join them once she felt human again. The strong pot of coffee Jessica had left behind was certainly helping that cause.
Anxiety crept through her bones like some insidious parasite. It disturbed her to think of James frittering away in some clammy basement. She could sense the pain in his eyes, even though she knew he couldn’t feel it in Root.
And she was having severe reservations about sending Jessica up north alone. People who entered Edmund Raeth’s orbit had a habit of disappearing. It had begun in Rome with a boy who had lived next door to them. And then it happened to the young woman who delivered flowers to the rectory of their parish. But it took the disappearance of Father Carlo to make the police finally take notice.
Her mother was already gone by then, not disappeared, but marriage annulled, wasting away in a psychiatric hospital in her home town of Napoli. Carlo was an enlightened young priest who had the misfortune to be assigned to the SSPX-dominated parish in which Edmund had served as an extraordinarily influential deacon. He and Edmund butted heads until one Friday when Father Carlo failed to show up for vespers.
The police sent a pair of detectives to interview Papa. For hours they sat with him in the paneled dining room while Karla prayed they would take him into custody. But they had not.
Instead, Edmund had proposed to her stepmother-to-be, a convent dropout named Emma McCourty, and they were packing for a permanent move. Karla had tried to run away, but Edmund’s people had tracked her down at the apartment of her boyfriend’s grandmother. Medicated into passivity, she had descended into a life even more severe than what she had endured in Rome.
No traces of the neighbor boy, flower girl or Father Carlo were ever found. Not a smear of blood or shred of fingernail. Karla feared the same might happen to James and to Jessica if she let her go north on her own.
She burst outside and rushed across the farmyard. The day had warmed up nicely from a chilly start. She almost didn’t need the sweater.
She pushed open the door of the barn and five heads turned her way, including a young man Karla didn’t recognize. His leg was in a cast that went up to his knee. No one was working at the tables and vats. They were all clustered around Isobel.
“Karla? I’d like you to meet Harry,” said Jessica. “He’s just back from the hospital.”
“Pleased to meet you,” said Harry. “It’s been great having James here on the farm, I tell you. Helps counterbalance the sea of estrogen.”
“Oh yeah, Harry?” said Jessica. “And what would you know about testosterone?”
“You see what I have to put up with?”
“What happened to your leg?” said Karla.
“Oh, just a bad twist and a break in the old ankle. They had to pop a few screws in there to keep it all in place.” He looked up at Jessica and glared. “And no comments from the peanut gallery, please!”
“I wasn’t going to say anything,” said Jessica, smirking at Helen.
Karla took Jessica by the elbow. “Did you talk to Renfrew yet?”
Jessica looked uncomfortable.
“There’s … a problem,” she said. “Izzie kind of beat me to it, and he … sort of blew up.”
