Free Good to a Fault by Marina Endicott

Roman Catholics as some other denominations, although we do not require clergy to be celibate, and there are doctrinal…” Quiet. He needed a quick answer for that question, one that would serve over and over, but he never could think of one.
    “Are you a Catholic?” he asked.
    “Not me,” she said. “I’m nothing.”
    She had a sharpness behind her staring eyes. An ironic understanding of her position, he thought.
    “ Are you—Nobody—too? ”
    “That’s in a poem.” Her pointed teeth slid over her bottom lip as her mouth dragged into something approaching a smile.
    “Good ear. I’m sorry. I have a bad habit,” he said, bobbing his head like a turtle—he could feel himself doing it. He stopped, and rubbed his ear. “Verse. Too good a memory of that one kind. Not good enough of every other kind.”
    “It’s the frog one. We had it in school.”
    “Right, the admiring bog.” He advanced into the room. “I’m Paul Tippett, Mrs. Gage,” he said.
    “Lorraine,” she said.
    He sat in the blue chair at her bedside. “Clara Purdy wanted me to reassure you that your children will be safe with her.”
    “And will they be?”
    “Yes.”
    “Okay then.”
    They sat in silence for a minute.
    Lorraine said, “Not that I have any choice, anyway.”
    He did not think she was self-pitying. That was one of the consolations of hospital visits, the good behaviour of the sick. Weak, to need consoling. It’s proximity, proxy death that appalls. His sister’s face came into his mind so vividly that tears sprang up to the gate of his eyes. Two years after her death, now, he was able to hold them back.
    “I don’t know her well,” Paul said, taking himself back to duty. “She is shy, I think. But I know her reputation in the community, and her family is respected.”
    “She’s kind of frozen up,” Lorraine said, nodding. “It’s a big deal, her taking them, though. I’d be hooped without her.”
    “Well, people seem to like her very much. She’s younger than the way she lives, ‘one foot in her mother’s grave,’ as my warden says. She’s kind, she has energy and intelligence.”
    Lorraine lay still.
    “Maybe you’ll help her,” Paul said, and felt Lorraine’s withdrawal from the conversation. To suggest her cancer had a mawkish, mysterious-purposes side to it—yammering fool. Priest : the most contemptuous thing his wife could say.
    He was silent.
    From side to side on the bed, Lorraine turned her head. Looking past the walls to find some answer. Like her head was all she could move.
    “May I pray with you?” he asked.
    Her eyes fixed on him, her head stalled towards him. “No.”
    He waited.
    “Yes,” she said. “Pray for my kids.”
    He crossed himself. “Father, I commend your daughter Lorraine and her children to your care. Be with her. Give her courage and stamina and have her children in mind always, as she does. Keep them safe and well in the house of your servant Clara Purdy.”
    Lorraine was unable to recognize this dream her life had become. She thought, if I am God’s daughter, are my kids God’s grandchildren? She could not stop thinking those words, stupid as they were.
    “We ask it in Jesus’s name,” Paul said. “Amen.”
    Lorraine’s breath was coming higher in her chest, right under her collarbone, and her whole body felt flooded with heat. Racing, desperate blood, or fury, or some effect of the drugs: she couldn’t tell.
    “Thanks,” she said. “I’ll go to sleep, now.” Lying.
    Paul touched her arm before he left. His hand was warm as toast.

7. Dolly
    G race and Moreland came in from Davina to inspect the children. Clara’s older cousin, her father’s sister’s daughter, Grace looked in on her from time to time, checking up on her. Davina was only an hour’s drive, close enough to come for errands, if they felt like it. They arrived first thing in the morning, while Clara was clearing up breakfast.
    “What are you going to do with three of them?”