Free Charisma by Orania Papazoglou Page B

back—proving at least that he was not deaf. The space he’d left at the door was filled with the body of a thickset woman with gray hair and patched black plastic glasses. Her face was set into a mask of distrust she seemed to have to work at to maintain. It held for Susan, but it slipped a little when she first saw Andy. Then it dissolved altogether. A smile like melting butter spread across her face.
    “Andy Murphy ” she said. “Good Lord. Mark, what’s the matter with you. You know Andy Murphy. He was here the last time you were here.”
    “I know Andy Murphy,” the boy said. Still, he hung on to his place at the door. It was only when the woman nudged him that he moved back,
    “I think Mark must be a little tired,” the woman said. She propped back the door and shooed them in. “Lord only knows, we’re all tired around here these days. After what happened to Sister Theresa, we can’t sleep nights. Sister Theresa. Listen to me.” She turned back to the boy. “Go get Father Tom, Mark. Or go get someone to get Father Tom. He’s going to want to see Andy.”
    “Right,” Mark said.
    “Right is right,” the woman said. “If you don’t want to go upstairs yourself, you can get Kirsten to go. She’s in the library.”
    “Right,” Mark said again. Susan thought he was going to move right away. His body seemed to shift into flight mode, to become fluid. Instead, he stood his ground, giving her a long look and Andy a longer one. It was only when the situation became completely uncomfortable that he made his escape.
    The woman with the gray hair stared after him, watching him disappear under a staircase at the back of the hall. They were standing in a small foyer, long and narrow, with the front door at one end and a collection of other doors—metal, by the look of them—at the other. The front door was metal, too, and bordered by thick metal panels painted to imitate mosaics. The only light came from an old-fashioned frosted fixture on the ceiling above their heads. It was, however, a very bright light. It lit up the foyer like an interrogation room.
    The woman started locking the front-door locks, shooting in one dead bolt after another, mechanically. “It was because of Theresa Mark came back,” she said. “The word’s out all over the street. Business has been terrible. They know what it’s like when things like this happen. They know the police are going to be in and out of the house for weeks. So they don’t come, of course, but Mark—”
    Andy cut in. “Francesca, this is my sister Susan. I don’t think you’ve ever met.”
    Francesca stopped in the middle of throwing the last bolt and flushed. It was a bright, painful, adolescent flush, and Susan suddenly felt sorry for her. She had known women like this in the convent, women who had never quite gotten over the awkward confusion of puberty, who still didn’t know what to do or what to say or where to put their hands and feet. Francesca covered it by securing that last bolt and wiping the palms of her hands on the skirt of her gray flannel dress.
    “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’ve just been babbling along, and I haven’t even said hello.”
    “That’s all right,” Susan said.
    “It really has been very hectic around here.” She stopped wiping her palms and looked directly at them, more relaxed now. The hump had been gotten over. She was on familiar ground. She gave Andy another big smile. “And I was so surprised to see your brother,” she said. “The last I remember, he was threatening never to darken our doors again.”
    “Well,” Andy said. “That was a long time ago.”
    “A long time we haven’t seen you in. Did you come because of Theresa? Pat Mallory’s here, you know, up with Father Tom. He’s taking an interest.”
    “He would,” Andy said.
    “Who’s Pat Mallory?” Susan said.
    Francesca sighed. “He’s the chief of Homicide for the New Haven Police Department. And he means well. We all know he does.