Free Flight Dreams by Michael Craft Page A

for the low rumble of a blower fan churning in distant ductwork. The banners waft lazily overhead. At last the priest blinks and, almost imperceptibly, shifts his weight away from Manning. Their knees no longer touch.
    “Seems we got sidetracked,” says Manning with a quiet chuckle that further breaks the tension. “We were talking about Margaret O’Connor. I saw her at the estate on Monday, as you know, and afterward I spent some time with Arthur Mendel, the houseman. He mentioned that Margaret once caused an uproar with her ‘loose ways.’ I can’t imagine what he meant. Can you?”
    The priest stands, pressing his hands together, forming a little steeple. He touches his fingertips to his lips, paces a few steps away from Manning, then turns back to him. “I want to help you get to the bottom of things,” he says, “but this isn’t a subject for print. I wouldn’t want to be quoted.”
    “All right.” Manning caps his pen. “Background only. What happened?”
    “Margaret O’Connor had a brief affair with Ridgely Carter, her sister’s husband, right there at the estate.”
    “Jesus!” says Manning, instantly wishing he could retract the expletive. “Right under Helena’s nose?”
    “No. Helena frequently traveled to cat shows, so Margaret and Ridgely had ample time to themselves. I get the impression that poor Margaret was … well, desperate, and Ridgely sort of took pity on her. Somehow, Helena got wind of it after Ridgely died. Understandably, she was plenty pissed.”
    Surprised by the priest’s candor, Manning asks, “What did she do?”
    Father Carey sits next to Manning again. “She threatened Margaret—talked about throwing her out of the house, cutting her out of the will. Helena told me all these things, and I counseled her at length, urging her not to let anger, which was justified, fester into spite. Later, after she disappeared and her will was opened, it was gratifying to learn that Margaret would be generously cared for through a separate trust. Knowing Helena as well as I did, I should have known that her good nature would be predictably constant.”
    “On the other hand,” says Manning, “Margaret is full of surprises. When I spoke with her Monday, she said something that really threw me. She mentioned that when she and Helen were very young, there were twins growing up at home with them. It was the first I’d ever, heard of them.”
    Shaking his head in bemused disbelief, Father Carey says, “Margaret is a sweet thing. Her sister’s disappearance has been a source of profound stress, and—I hate to say it—sometimes I wonder if she’s entirely lucid. Helena and I had many long conversations about her childhood, and she never said anything about having brothers. She surely would have mentioned it.”
    She surely must have, Manning tells himself. He told the priest about “twins,” yet the priest has spoken of “brothers.” Manning uncaps his pen and scratches on his pad: Father Matthew Carey lies.
    Later that morning, a bird caws and fidgets on the cross atop a very different church, a traditional little Gothic church that stands in defiance of a white desert sun. Nothing stirs in the scrubby, treeless landscape below. The town that renamed itself Assumption has taken refuge against the heat.
    The bird, responding to some arbitrary synapses within its gravel-size brain, hops off the cross, swirls earthward round the spire, then glides over the roofs of several nearby houses. All the houses in Assumption are in various states of disrepair. Most are wooden, some are stucco or adobe, but only one—the rectory, the priest’s house—is made of brick. The bird lands on a weathered stone finial, a pineapple, that graces a brick pier to one side of the rectory’s front stairs. The opposite pier has stood unadorned for years, denuded of its pineapple by vandals or by the ravages of heat or simply by the passage of time—it’s been longer than any of the current townspeople