Free Last Things by Ralph McInerny Page A

care.”
    â€œHe has prostate cancer?”
    â€œThis was his heart. They don’t think they should operate.”
    She had the feeling she was inserting her father into a carefully calibrated category for Walter’s benefit. That was unfair.
    â€œTake the day, Jessica. I will cover for you.”
    A good part of her relation to Walter was avoiding becoming beholden to him. He was too good for his own good, too good for her. She had the sense that he was the kind of man she should love, but all she could muster was a profound admiration.
    â€œThank you.”
    â€œI would do anything for you.”
    â€œI know.”
    She could tell him anything. She had told him about Raymond as well as about the academic squabble Andrew was involved in at the college because of a bumptious colleague named Cassirer. “Apparently he has hired a lawyer.”
    â€œAre professors insured against that sort of thing?”
    â€œYou would think it the most peaceful life in the world, wouldn’t you?”
    â€œI’m surprised you weren’t attracted to teaching.”
    And compete a second time with Andrew? No thanks.
    She hung up, full of the tranquillity talking with Walter always gave her. She began to plink away on the keys of her computer. She thought of Raymond, coming home at last, to be with his dying father. What a drama that would be. Fulvio had never forgiven his son for what he had done. He could not begin to understand how a man could be so unfaithful to his vows.
    â€œI will go to Mass when Raymond is the celebrant.”
    That was his position. He was punishing himself in the hope of shaming Raymond into repentance. Did Raymond even know
that their father had stopped going to Mass, that their mother wept and pleaded but always got the same answer? He would go to Mass again when Raymond was back at the altar.
    â€œIt would kill your father if you wrote about the family,” Aunt Eleanor had said.
    That might not be necessary. What had struck Jessica was the intensity of Eleanor’s concern. Did she really care that much for the family she had married into? Uncle Joe had died and Eleanor had married Alfred Wygant, much to her father’s disgust.
    â€œWhat does he have but money?”
    Uncle Joe had been the black sheep of the family, dependent on her father. When he died there had been an insurance policy worth five thousand dollars.
    â€œI’ll take care of Eleanor,” Fulvio had said, the prosperous brother asserting his authority. But she had married Alfred Wygant. When Alfred died, Eleanor had considerably more than five thousand dollars.
    A call came from Leonard Bosch, literary editor of the Tribune , Chicago, not Fox River. “Sorry about your father.”
    â€œHe’s somewhat better.”
    â€œGood. Is this a bad time to talk about my suggestion?”
    â€œYes.”
    Leonard wanted her to do a column for the Sunday book section or if not that to agree to be a regular reviewer. “You are a local asset, Jessica. You have to accept that. And I have an obligation to be sure our readers know it.”
    â€œAndrew would be the one to write a column.”
    Silence. And then, “What I like about the Bernardos is that they stick together.”
    Was that true? Raymond had gotten Andrew the job at St. Edmund’s not long before he left. It seemed a compensatory gesture. No, that wasn’t fair. Andrew knew so many things she didn’t;
he loved literature. Too much. His writing was impasto, spread with a knife, overwritten, aimed at God knew what reader. Whom did one write for, after all? What reader did she herself imagine when she sat at her computer and followed the fortunes of imaginary people? Only they did not seem imaginary. Not real, more than real. She wrote for them, her characters. That seemed the answer to her question. Andrew wrote for critics.
    She typed a title on the screen: Last Things . And stared at it. What were The Four