Free Sign of the Cross by Anne Emery

sexual assault, a child victim at that.
    “I have no objection to a ban, Your Honour. It was never my intention that this should be public.”
    My client got two and a half years. When I turned away from the bench, I noticed that Robin Reid had fled the scene. Disillusioned no doubt, but with whom?
    My clerk was gone. But Father Burke was there. Sitting at the edgeof the public gallery, in civilian clothes, his face as pale as the envelope he gripped in his hand. He rose and came towards me with the envelope. His write-up of the Leeza Rae affair. I took it. His black eyes looked into mine and I was unable to turn away. His face was without expression but I knew he was spooked. Whether by me, or by something he saw in his own future, I could not have said. I was jostled by someone behind me and twisted to let the person pass. When I turned back, Burke had vanished.

Chapter 4
    So taunt me and hurt me, Deceive me,
desert me. I’m yours till I die, So in love with you am I.

— Cole Porter, “So in Love”
    I
    The following Monday I reached Tyler MacDonald on the phone, and we agreed to meet that afternoon in the St. Bernadette’s gymnasium. I arrived soaked from a cold, wind-driven rain. Eileen Darragh caught sight of me and handed me a paper towel. She was dusting her photos.
    “Cleaning house in your spare time, Eileen?” I asked her. She struck me as a woman whose spare time was limited. But it might well be filled with fits of tidying up.
    “You should see the dust on the tops of these old frames. Would you watch the phone for me for two seconds, Monty? I’m going to run down the hall to find a proper cleaning rag.”
    “Go ahead.” She smiled and bustled away. I studied the photos, dated between 1953 and 1979. It was hard to picture all these children — many of them my contemporaries — living in an orphanage while I was growing up a short distance away, rolling my eyes at the absurdities of my parents and never giving a thought to what my life wouldhave been without them. Some children smiled, some looked solemn, some forlorn. One boy was giving the photographer a particularly dark scowl. Eileen returned, short of breath, brandishing a rag and a jar filled with water.
    “This will do the job,” she promised. “Oh, will you look at that? Georgie, making such a face. He was lucky to be alive; he should have been smiling from one little pointy ear to the other.” She clucked over the photo as she wiped its frame.
    “Had he been ill?”
    “No, he nearly drowned one summer. Our annual trip to Queensland Beach. And it was nearly our last, thanks to him.”
    “There’s always one like that, isn’t there?” I remarked.
    “Oh yes. I remember that day so clearly. I was eight. It was early August. We all had our bathing suits on under our clothes, we had our towels and sun hats, and we piled onto the bus they hired for us. The sisters had prepared a picnic lunch, and the priests hefted these huge picnic baskets onto the bus. I don’t know what caused greater anticipation, the swimming or the food! There were thirteen or fourteen of us I think, and the two priests. Father Burke was one of them. He was here for a couple of years, back in the late sixties, to set up the original choir school. It wasn’t at St. Bernie’s then, but he used to come to the orphanage to help out sometimes. And dear old Father Chisholm. I remember he had on this funny tie. The priests have these summer-weight short-sleeved shirts, black of course, and he wore a tie with a picture of a mermaid on it. A mermaid with cat-eye sunglasses and a cocktail in her hand. Sweet man, Father Chisholm. He died a few years ago.
    “So we all headed out to Queensland. Oh, it was hot! Hard to imagine, looking out the window today. We paddled in the waves and made sandcastles, and drank orange pop. And peed in the water! The surf was quite heavy. Then, wouldn’t you know, we heard Georgie hollering from way out in the water. How he got out that far