The Hour Before Dark by Douglas Clegg Page A

have seemed, I hoped in my heart that was true.
    Brooke wiped her eyes, then her nose, with the tissue. “You think it’s me.”
    “Don’t be ridiculous,” Joe Grogan said. “No one thinks that. It’s just... just the damnedest thing.” It must have been his favorite phrase.
    “I sat there, in that blood,” Brooke said. Then she covered her face with her hands. I went to her and sat on the edge of the large leather chair she was in. I stroked her back lightly.
    “I don’t want any of you tromping around by the smokehouse,” Joe said to me when I walked him to the front door. “And watch out for Ike Doone. I’ve caught him twice trying to get close to it, and he and that wife of his are all caught up with America’s Most Wanted, so I don’t want him grabbing souvenirs. Chase him off if you see him out there.”

     
    4
     
    The moment Joe’s car had pulled out of the driveway, Brooke went to the front window and stared out at the road. “Fuck!” she shouted.
    Bruno and I just sat and watched her.
    “She’s going through Hell,” I said.
    I really meant it. You grow up Catholic, and there’s some inkling that Hell is always right around the comer. It’s the place you accidentally step into when you least expect it. I asked my dad, when I was a kid, if he thought he was going to Heaven, and he told me no. He wouldn’t explain why, and it was the saddest thing he ever said about himself. I guessed, as I got older, that if you lived long enough, you spent time in Hell as you went through life.
    I figured we’d all just bought a little bit of real estate there, with this murder. We knew something about life that many people get to skim over in the papers or on the nightly news.
    Brooke had sat in Hell for hours, staring in its face.
    She had the right to her obscenities.

     
    5
     
    We could not have a funeral yet because my father’s body was needed for forensics evidence. It was unpleasant to contemplate. I had the idea of a funeral at St. Bart’s, with Father Ronnie, now nearly seventy, giving mass. Bruno shook his head to shush me up, but Brooke told me, “We had a falling out with Father Ronnie. Dad didn’t like him in the end. I didn’t like him. For a priest, he had no sense of Christian forgiveness. To him, I’m Jezebel or something. He called me a harlot once. I called him a drunk. We parted ways.” She said this last part with a bit of acid in her voice.
    “What’s that all about?” I asked. “He actually called you a harlot?”
    “You’ll hear about it soon enough,” she said. “Joe Grogan and I had a fling. Well, more than that. For nearly a year. Do not give me that Nemo look.”
    “‘Nemo look’?” I nearly laughed. It felt good to feel a little light.
    “That ‘I knew you were up to something’ look,” she said without a trace of humor. “Don’t judge me. I will not be judged by you or anyone. His wife has had affairs with men up at The Oaks every summer since they’ve been married. He needed a little happiness. I did, too. It ended badly. Dad was furious, but kept a lid on it. He felt I was ... I don’t know ... devaluing myself, I guess. He told me I’d never find a husband, and I guess I pissed him off by spitting back at him that I could find any husband I wanted, so long as the wife was away. Father Ronnie scolded Dad for allowing a woman like me to live in his house. Dad told him to fuck off. So, no absolution for us. We’re headed for limbo. Or worse.”
    “True,” I said. “I’m not sure you can ever come back from telling a priest to fuck off.”
    “He didn’t quite say it that way.”
    “It’s a relief to know we all won’t be excommunicated for your sins,” I said cheerily.
    “Always the funny one,” she said in a way that was not funny at all. It was the Yankee in her. “I never liked church. Sunday should be a day to sleep in. Ronnie’s mass went on too long. I could always smell whiskey on his breath in the