Free The 8th Circle by Sarah Cain

him and hurled it across the room. It smashed against the fireplace, showering chips of glass to the floor.
    Who wept for the lost? Weeping wasn’t enough. Someone needed to give a damn. Danny didn’t care who these people were. He’d expose them. He’d lied when he told Novell he had nothing left. There was the black Irish anger he’d inherited from his father. That was enough for now.

14
    C arrie Norton parked her Volvo in front of the mailbox and reached in to collect her grandmother’s mail. She didn’t know why Gram didn’t just stop the mail when she went to Florida, but she insisted the postal service would let news of her vacation slip out, and then hordes of robbers would descend on the house.
    The box was nearly full. Carrie stacked the pile of cards and catalogues on the passenger seat and then ran across the road to empty the second mailbox. It was technically for their tenant in the little white house overlooking the fields, but Gram hadn’t had a real tenant in a year. She was planning to leave the land to the County Green Spaces Preserve—her way of thumbing her nose at the developers—but she hadn’t gotten around to finishing the paperwork. Occasionally Carrie would find a stray piece of Gram’s mail or a flyer tucked inside, but today she saw a whole package, and it was addressed to Danny Ryan.
    Wasn’t that peculiar? It hadn’t been mailed. It was just stuck in there. Something was written very faintly in the left corner. Michael something. The last name was smudged with a brown stain.
    Carrie ran her fingers over the package. She knew Reverend Gray called Danny Ryan an advocate of sin and Satan, but Carriethought Danny was just confused because he hadn’t found the healing love of Jesus. That didn’t make him a bad man. He needed to come into the light.
    He always was so kind to Gram, who was shameless about getting him to fix little things around her house. It was a disgrace the way Gram would ask him to change her floodlights just so she could watch him climb up the ladder.
    “Good butt,” Gram would say.
    Carrie’s face grew a little warm, and she glanced at herself in the rearview mirror. Her hair looked good. She reached into her purse for lipstick and applied a fresh coat. She knew she was indulging in vanity, but she couldn’t help herself. She wished she had a tray of cookies or maybe a pamphlet from church.
    Carrie pulled into Danny Ryan’s driveway and parked by the back door. The stone farmhouse was beautiful, the kind of home that should be filled with children. She just loved that big, old weeping cherry tree in the front yard and the pink, red, and salmon roses that climbed against the fieldstone wall near the pool. Of course, it was dormant now, but by spring, the garden would be like paradise itself. Carrie took a deep breath, knocked at the back door, and waited.
    No answer.
    She could leave the package on the porch for him, but there was probably some more of his mail mixed in with Gram’s. It always happened, especially at this time of year. Maybe she’d just take it with her and bring it back with cookies. The poor man was alone, and it was Christmas.
    The Lord had tested Danny Ryan with a great tribulation last year. Carrie understood that finding this package was a sign that she had been chosen to help him find a way to heal. In any case, it would give her a good reason to return when she was sure he was home.

15
    D anny hated church. As a kid, he would play train with his rosary on the edge of the pew until his mother would take it away from him and still his hands. After his mother died, his grandmother would drag him to daily mass and hit him on the side of the head with her boney knuckle when he’d fidget. God didn’t like disrespectful little boys, she’d say. Danny would look up at the sad-eyed Jesus hanging on the big wooden cross and figure he’d probably rather play train as well.
    Now Danny parked outside of Immaculate Heart of Mary Church in