The Wolves of Midwinter

11

REUBEN SLEPT TILL AFTERNOON, when a phone call from Grace awakened him. He had best come down now, she said, to sign the marriage documents and get the ceremony done tomorrow morning. He agreed with her.

He stopped on his way out only to look for Felix, but Felix was nowhere around, and Lisa thought he had perhaps gone down to Nideck to supervise plans for the Christmas festival.

“We are all so busy,” said Lisa, her eyes glowing, but she insisted Reuben have some lunch. She and Heddy and Jean Pierre had the long dining room table covered in sterling-silver chafing dishes, bowls, and platters. Pantry doors stood open, and a stack of flatware chests stood on the floor by the table. “Now listen to me, you must eat,” she said, quickly heading for the kitchen.

He told her no, he’d dine with his family in San Francisco. “But it’s fun to see all these preparations.”

And it was. He realized that the big party was only seven days away.

The oak forest outside was swarming with workmen, who were covering the thick gray branches of the oaks with tiny Christmas lights. And tents were already being erected on the terrace in front of the house. Galton and his carpenter cousins were coming and going. The magnificent marble statues for the crèche had been carted to the end of the terrace and stood in a wet confused grouping, waiting to be appropriately housed, and there was a flock of workmen building something, in spite of the light rain, that just might have been a Christmas stable.

He hated to leave but felt he had little choice in the matter. As for the journey ahead, well, he wouldn’t be stopping for Laura, but she would meet the wedding party at City Hall tomorrow.

As it turned out, things went worse than he’d ever expected.

Caught in a downpour before he reached the Golden Gate Bridge, he took more than two hours to reach the Russian Hill house, and the storm showed no signs of letting up. It was the kind of rain that drenches one just running from the car to the front door, and he arrived disheveled and having to change immediately.

But that was the least of his problems.

The signing of the papers with Simon Oliver went smoothly, but Celeste was in a paroxysm of rage, which showed itself in unending resentful sarcastic comments as she signed over the baby to Reuben. Reuben inwardly gasped when he saw the amounts of money that were being transferred, but of course he said nothing.

He didn’t know what it meant to carry a child and he never would, and he couldn’t grasp what it meant to give one up. He was happy for Celeste that she’d walk away with enough cash to keep her secure for the rest of her life if she planned things right.

But after the lawyers had gone away, and the dinner had been endured in silence, then Celeste exploded in a tirade of rushing words, accusing Reuben of being one of the most worthless and uninteresting human beings ever born on the planet.

This wasn’t easy at all for Grace or Phil to hear, but they remained at the table, Grace gesturing covertly to Reuben for patience. As for Jim, his expression was compassionate, but oddly fixed, as though this were a willful attitude rather than a reflective one. He was as always neatly dressed in his black clerical suit and shirtfront with his Roman collar, and every bit the movie star priest in Reuben’s opinion, with his neat dark brown wavy hair and his extremely agreeable and engaging eyes. He was a handsome man, Jim, but nobody ever talked about it, not when they could talk about Reuben’s looks instead.

Reuben said little or nothing for the first twenty minutes as Celeste castigated him as lazy, a pretty boy, a time waster, a ne’er-do-well, a glorified bum, the vapid airhead boy who dated the cheerleaders of the world, and an ambitionless brat to whom everything came so easy he had not the slightest moral fiber. Born beautiful and rich, he’d wasted his life.

After a while, Reuben looked away. Had her face not been red and knotted with anger and tears, he might have become angry himself. As it was he felt pity and a certain contempt for her.

He’d never been lazy in his life, and he knew this. And he’d never been the “vapid airhead boy who dated the cheerleaders of the world” but he had no intention of saying so. He began to feel a cool detachment, even a little sadness. Celeste had never known him at all, and maybe he’d never known her, and thank God this was a temporary marriage. What if they’d attempted to marry in earnest?

And each time she mentioned his “looks,” he came to realize something ever more deeply. She despised him personally; she despised him physically. This woman with whom he’d been intimate countless times couldn’t stand him physically. And this caused the tiny hairs to rise on his neck when he thought about it, and how ghastly a real marriage with Celeste might have been.

“And so the world just gives you a baby, the way the world’s given you everything else,” she said finally, apparently wrapping up, her fury spent, her lips quivering. “I’ll hate you to my dying day,” she added.

She was about to go on when he turned and looked at her. He no longer felt pity. He felt hurt and he eyed her without a word. She went silent looking into his eyes, and then for the first time, for the first time in months, she seemed slightly afraid. Indeed she looked afraid of him the way she had when he’d first experienced the influence of the Chrism, and when he’d begun to change in so many subtle ways before the wolf transformation. He hadn’t understood then, and, of course, she’d never understood it. But she’d been afraid.

It seemed the others had sensed some deepening of the collective misery, and Grace started to speak, but Phil urged her to be quiet.

Suddenly, in a low tortured voice, Celeste said, “I’ve had to work all my life. I had to work hard when I was a kid. My father and mother left a small estate. I worked for everything.” She sighed, obviously exhausted. “Maybe it’s not your fault that you don’t know what that means.”

“That’s right,” said Reuben, the low sharp tone of his voice surprising him, but not stopping him. He was trembling but he struggled to hide it. “Maybe none of this is my fault. Maybe nothing in our relationship has ever been my fault except that I didn’t acknowledge your blatant contempt for me sooner. But it takes courage to be unkind, doesn’t it?”

The others were clearly stunned.

“Doesn’t it?” he repeated. His pulse throbbed in his temple.

Celeste looked down for a moment and then up at him again. She seemed very small and vulnerable in her chair, face white and drawn, her pretty hair mussed. Her eyes softened. “Well, you do have a voice, after all,” she said bitterly. “If you’d found it a little sooner, maybe none of this would have happened.”

“Oh, lies and rubbish!” Reuben said. His face was hot. “Self-serving rubbish. If there’s nothing further you want to say, I have things to do.”

“Aren’t you even going to say you’re sorry?” she asked with exaggerated sincerity. She was on the edge of tears again. She was whitening before his eyes and shaking.

“Sorry for what? That you forgot to take a pill? Or that the pills didn’t work? Sorry that a new life is coming into this world, and that I want that life and you don’t? What is there to be sorry for?”

Jim gestured for him to slow down.

He looked steadily at Jim for a moment and then at Celeste. “I’m grateful to you that you’re willing to have this baby,” he said. “I’m grateful to you that you’re willing to give it to me. Very grateful. But I’m sorry for absolutely nothing.”

Nobody spoke, including Celeste.

“As for all the lies and foolishness you’ve spewed for the last hour, I’ve endured it as I’ve always endured your unkindness and your nastiness—to keep the peace. And if you don’t mind, I’d like a little of that peace right now. I’m finished here.”

“Reuben,” said Phil softly. “Take it easy, son. She’s just a kid the same as you are.”

“Thanks, but I don’t need your pity!” Celeste said to Phil, eyes flaming as she glared at him. “And I’m most certainly not a ‘kid.’ ”

There was a collective gasp at the vehemence of it.

“If you’d ever taught your son one practical thing in this world about being an adult,” Celeste went on, “things might be different now. People can’t afford your tiresome poetry.”

Reuben was furious. He didn’t trust himself to speak further. But Phil didn’t even flinch.

Grace rose abruptly and awkwardly from the table, and came around to Celeste and helped her out of the chair, though this was hardly physically necessary. “You’re tired, really tired,” Grace said in a soft solicitous voice. “In a way the exhaustion is one of the worst things.”

It quietly amazed him, the way Celeste accepted this kindness without a word of gratitude, as if it were her just due.

Grace led her out of the room and up the stairs. Reuben wanted desperately to speak to his father, but Phil was now looking away, his face abstracted and thoughtful. He appeared to have removed himself completely from this time and place. How many times had Reuben seen that same expression on Phil’s face?

The group sat in silence until Grace reappeared. She looked at Reuben for a long moment and then she said, “I didn’t know you could get that angry. Wow. That was scary.”

She laughed uneasily and Phil responded with a little half laugh and even Jim forced a smile. Grace placed her hand on Phil’s and they exchanged a silent intimate glance.

“Was it scary?” asked Reuben. He was still quaking with anger. His soul was shaken. “Look, I’m no hotshot doctor like you, Mother, and I’m no hotshot lawyer like her. And I’m not a hotshot missionary priest in the slums like you, Jim. But I’m nothing like the man she’s described here. And not a single one of you uttered a word in my defense. Not a single one of you. Well, I have my dreams and my aspirations and my goals, and they might not be yours but they are mine. And I’ve worked at them all my life as well. And I’m not the person she made me out to be. And you might have defended Dad here against her, even if you had no stomach to defend me. He didn’t deserve her poison either.”

“No, of course not,” said Jim quickly. “Of course not. But Reuben, she can still abort this child—if she changes her mind. Don’t you understand that?” He lowered his voice. “That’s the only reason we sat here listening as we did. Nobody wants to risk her wrath against this baby.”

“Oh, the hell with her,” Reuben said dropping his voice against his anger. “She won’t abort it, not with the money that’s changed hands here. She’s not insane. She’s just mean-spirited and cowardly like all bullies. But she’s not insane. And I won’t put up with her abuse anymore.” He rose to his feet. “Dad, I’m sorry about what she said to you. It was ugly and dishonest like everything that came out of her mouth.”

“Put it out of your mind, Reuben,” said Phil in a steady voice. “I’ve always felt very sorry for her.”

This clearly surprised Jim and Grace as well, though Grace was obviously wrestling with a multitude of emotions. She was still holding tight to Phil’s hand.

No one spoke, and then Phil went on. “I grew up the way she did, son, working for everything I got,” he said. “It will be a long time before she can figure out what she really wants in this world. For the child, Reuben, for the child, be patient with her. Remember this child is liberating you from Celeste, and Celeste from you. That’s not a bad thing at all, is it?”

“I’m sorry, Dad, you’re right,” said Reuben. And he was ashamed; he was completely ashamed.

Reuben left the gathering.

Jim came after him, following him silently up the stairs, and went right past Reuben into Reuben’s bedroom.

The little gas fire was burning under the mantel and Jim took his old favorite upholstered wing chair beside the hearth.

Reuben stood at the door for a moment, and then he sighed, shut the door behind him, and went to his old leather chair opposite Jim’s.

“Let me say something first,” Reuben started. “I know what I’ve done to you. I know the burden I’ve put on you, telling you ghastly things, unspeakable things, in Confession and binding you to secrecy. Jim, if I had it to do over again, I wouldn’t do it. But when I came to you, I needed you.”

“And now you don’t,” said Jim dully, his lips quivering. “Because you have all your many werewolf friends at Nideck Point, correct? And Margon, the distinguished priest of the godless, right? And you’re going to bring up your son in that house with them. How are you going to do that?”

“Let’s worry about that when the child is born,” said Reuben. He thought for a moment. “You don’t despise Margon and the others. I know you don’t. You can’t. I think you’ve tried and it hasn’t worked.”

“No, I don’t despise them,” Jim conceded. “Not at all. That’s the mystery of it. I don’t despise them. I don’t much see how anyone could, not based on what I know of them, and based on how well they treat you.”

“I’m relieved to hear that,” Reuben said. “More relieved than I can say. And I know what I’ve done to you with these secrets. Believe me, I know.”

“You care about what I think?” Jim asked. But it wasn’t sarcastic or bitter. He looked at Reuben as if he earnestly wanted to know.

“Always,” said Reuben. “You know I do. Jim, you were my first hero. You’ll always be my hero.”

“I’m no hero,” said Jim. “I’m a priest. And I’m your brother. You trusted me. You trust me now. I’m desperately trying to figure out what I can do to help you! And let me tell you right now, I am not now or ever was the saint you think I am. I’m not the nice person that you are, Reuben. And maybe we should set the record straight on that now. That might be a good thing for both of us. I’ve done terrible things in my life, things you know nothing about.”

“I find that very hard to believe,” said Reuben.

But Jim’s voice was raw and there was a look in his eyes Reuben had never seen before.

“Well, you need to believe it,” Jim said, “and you need to simmer down with regard to Celeste. That’s my first lesson here, my first concern. And I want you to listen. She could still abort this baby at any time. Oh, I know, you don’t think she will and so forth and so on, but Reuben, just toe the line, will you, till this child is born.” Jim broke off, as if he didn’t know quite what he would say next. When Reuben tried to speak, Jim started up again.

“I want to tell you some things about me, some things that might help you understand about all this. I’m asking you to listen to me now. I need to tell you. Okay?”

This was so unexpected, Reuben didn’t know quite what to say. When had Jim ever needed him? “Of course, Jim,” he answered. “Tell me anything. How could I turn you down on such a thing?”

“Okay, then listen,” said Jim. “I fathered a child once and I killed it. I did that with another man’s wife. I did that with a beautiful young woman who trusted me. And I’ll have that blood on my hands all my life. No, don’t say anything but just listen. Maybe you will come to confide in me again and trust me, if you know just what kind of person I am and that you’ve always been a good deal better than me.”

“I’m listening, but that just isn’t—.”

“You were about eleven when I quit med school,” said Jim, “but you never really knew what went down. I hated it, studying to be a doctor, positively hated it. But that’s another whole story, how I let myself be drawn into something just because of Mom and Uncle Tim, because of some idea we were a family of doctors, because of Grandfather Spangler and how he doted on them and on me.”

“I figured you didn’t want to do it. How else—?”

“That’s not the important part,” said Jim. “I was drinking myself to death at Berkeley. I was really pushing it. And I was having an affair with the wife of one of my professors, a beautiful Englishwoman. Oh, the husband didn’t give a damn. Quite the contrary; he set it up. I realized that right off. He was twenty years older than her and wheelchair-bound since a motorcycle accident in England two years after they married. No kids, just him in his wheelchair, giving brilliant lectures at Berkeley, and Lorraine like some kind of angel caring for him as if he was her father. And he invites me to come study with him, at his house in south Berkeley, one of those beautiful old Berkeley homes with the dark paneling and the hardwood floors and the big old stone fireplaces, and the trees outside every window, and Professor Maitland turning in at eight o’clock and telling me to use the library as late as I wanted, spend the night in the guest room, you know, and ‘Here’s your own key.’ ”

Reuben nodded. “Cushy situation.”

“Oh, yes, and Lorraine, so sweet, you have no idea. Sweet, that’s the word I always come back to when I talk about Lorraine. So sweet. Gentle, thoughtful, with that silvery British accent, and the refrigerator filled with beer, an unending supply of beer, and the single malt Scotch on the sideboard, and in the guest bedroom, and I took advantage of the whole thing. I practically moved in. And about six months after this all started, I actually fell in love with her, if a twenty-four/seven drunk is capable of falling in love. I finally admitted how much I loved her. I was drinking myself into a stupor every night in that house, and pretty soon she was taking as much care of me as she did of the professor. She started handling all the messy stuff in my life.”

Reuben nodded. This was all so new to him, so unimagined.

“She was exceptional, she really was,” said Jim. “And I never knew if she fully understood the way Professor Maitland had set it all up. I knew, but she didn’t know. At the same time, she was resolved we’d never hurt him if we kept this strictly secret, and never showed a particle of special affection for one another when he was around. But she tried to help me. She wasn’t just sitting around filling my glass. She kept telling me, ‘Jamie, your problem is booze. You’ve got to stop.’ She actually dragged me to two AA meetings before I threw a tantrum. Time and again, she finished up my papers for me, worked out my little projects for me, got the books I needed from the University library, that kind of thing. But she kept saying, ‘You’ve got to get help.’ I was failing my classes and she knew it. Sometimes I played along, made a couple of promises, made love to her and then got drunk. Finally she gave up. She just accepted me the way I was, just like she accepted the professor.”

“Were Mom and Dad suspicious about the drinking?”

“Oh, highly. I was ducking them. Lorraine helped me to duck them. Lorraine made excuses for me when they came over the bridge to see me and I was dead drunk in the guest room at her place. But I’ll get to Mom and Dad in a minute. Lorraine got pregnant. It wasn’t supposed to happen but it did. And that’s when the crisis happened. I just about went nuts. I told her she had to get an abortion and I left her house in a rage.”

“I see,” Reuben said.

“No, you don’t. She came over to my apartment. She told me she’d never get an abortion, that she wanted this baby more than anything in the world. And that she’d leave Professor Maitland in a minute if I said the word. When Professor Maitland heard about the baby, he’d understand. He’d give her a divorce, no problem. She had a small income. She was ready to pack her bags and come to me. I was horrified, I mean in a state of shock.”

“But you loved her.”

“Yes, Reuben, I loved her, but I didn’t want the responsibility of anybody or anything. That’s why the affair with her had been so attractive. She was married! When she tried to lay anything on me, I could up and go back to my place and not answer the phone!”

“I understand.”

“And here, it had turned into a nightmare. She was begging me to marry her, become a husband, a father. This was the very last thing I wanted. Look, I was so into booze at that point all I could really think about was laying in a stash of beer and whiskey, locking the door, and chilling out. I tried to explain all this to her, that I was damaged, bad for her, that she couldn’t want me, that she had to get rid of the baby and now. But she wasn’t buying it. And the more she talked the drunker I got. At one point she tried to take the glass out of my hand. That tipped me right over. We got into a fight, I mean a veritable brawl. It started with me throwing things, slamming doors, breaking things. I was falling down drunk, saying the meanest things to her but she wouldn’t accept it. She kept telling me, ‘That’s the booze talking, Jamie. You don’t mean these things.’ I hit her, Reuben. I started slapping her, then beating her. I remember her face was covered in blood. I hit her over and over again, until she was down on the floor and I was kicking her, telling her she’d never understood me, she was a selfish bitch, a selfish slut. I said things to her that nobody should say to another human being. She curled up in a ball, trying to protect herself—.”

“And that was the booze, Jim,” said Reuben in a soft voice. “You would never have done it if it hadn’t been for the booze.”

“I don’t know about that, Reuben,” he said. “I was a pretty selfish guy. I am still basically a selfish guy. I thought the world revolved around me in those days. You were just eleven or twelve then. You had no idea what I was really like.”

“She lost the child?”

Jim nodded. He swallowed. He was staring into the gas fire beneath the mantel. “I passed out at some point. Blacked out. And when I woke up, she was gone. There was blood all over, blood on the carpet, blood on the floor boards, blood on the furniture, the walls. It was horrible. You cannot imagine how much blood there was. I went and followed a trail of blood right down the steps, and through the garden and to the street. Her car was gone.”

Jim stopped. He closed his eyes. There was the soft beat of rain on the panes. Otherwise the room was silent. The house was silent. Then he started talking again.

“I went on the longest worst bender I’d ever been on. I just shut the door and drank. I knew I’d killed that baby, but I was terrified that I might have killed her too. Any minute, I thought the police are going to be here. Any minute Professor Maitland is going to call. Any minute … I could easily have killed her beating her like that. The way I kicked her? It’s a wonder I didn’t. And for days I just lay in that apartment and drank. I’d always stockpiled enough booze to do this, and I don’t know how long it was before the booze started running out. I wasn’t eating. I wasn’t bathing, nothing. Just drinking, drinking and crawling around that place on my hands and knees at times, looking for bottles to see if there was anything left in them. Well, you can figure what happened.”

“Mom and Dad.”

“Right. There came a banging on the door and it was Mom and Dad. It had been ten days, it turned out, ten days, and it was my landlord who’d called them. I was overdue with the rent. And he was worried. He was a nice guy. Well, the bastard probably saved my life.”

“Thank God for that,” said Reuben. He tried to picture all this, but he couldn’t. All he saw was his brother, looking collected and strong in his Roman collar and clerics, sitting in the chair opposite, pouring out a story he could scarcely believe.

“I told them everything,” Jim said. “I just broke down and told them the whole thing. I was drunk, you understand, so it was easy—to slobber, to cry, to confess all I’d done. Confessing things when you’re blind drunk is a cinch. I felt so sorry for myself! I’d wrecked my life. I’d hurt Lorraine. I was flunking out of school. I told Mom and Dad all of it, I just let it loose. And when Mom heard how I’d beaten Lorraine, how I’d kicked her, kicked the life out of that child, well, you can imagine the look on her face. When she saw the bloodstains all over that carpet, on the floor, on the walls … And then Mom and Dad just put me in the shower, cleaned me up, and drove me straight south to the Betty Ford Center in Rancho Mirage, California, and I was there for ninety days.”

“Jim, I’m so sorry.”

“Reuben, I was lucky. Lorraine could have put me behind bars for what I did to her. As it turned out, she and Professor Maitland had gone back to England before Mom and Dad ever came knocking on my door. Mom found out all that. The professor’s mother in Cheltenham had suffered a severe stroke. Lorraine had made all the arrangements with the university. So she was all right, it seemed. Mom was able to verify that. And the house in south Berkeley was up for sale. Whether Lorraine had checked into a hospital herself after I beat her, well, we never could find out.”

“I hear you, Jim, I know what you’re telling me. I understand.”

“Reuben, I am nobody’s hero, nobody’s saint. If it wasn’t for Mom and Dad, if they hadn’t taken me to Betty Ford, if they hadn’t stuck with me through that, I don’t know where I’d be now. I don’t know if I’d be alive. But look, listen to what I’m telling you. Play along with Celeste for the sake of the baby. That’s lesson number one. Let her have that baby, Reuben, because you do not know how you might regret it to your dying day if she gets rid of it because of something that you say! Reuben, there are times when it is so painful for me to even see children, to see little kids with their parents, I … I tell you, I don’t know if I could work in a regular Catholic parish, Reuben, with a school and kids. I just don’t. There’s a reason I’m deep in the Tenderloin. There’s a reason my mission is working with addicts. There’s a reason, all right.”

“I understand. Look, I’m going to go talk to her now, apologize.”

“Do it, please,” said Jim. “And who knows, Reuben? Maybe somehow this child can keep you connected to us, to me, to Mom and Dad, to your flesh and blood family, to things that matter for all of us in life.”

Reuben went at once to knock on Celeste’s door. The house was quiet. But he could see the light was on in her room.

She was in her nightgown but immediately invited him in. She was frosty, but polite. He stood there and made his apologies to her as sincerely as he could.

“Oh, I understand,” she said with a faint sneer. “Don’t worry about it. This will all be over for us soon enough.”

“I want you to be happy, Celeste,” he said.

“I know that, Reuben, and I know you’ll be a good father to this baby. Even if Grace and Phil weren’t here to do the dirty work. I never had any real doubt about that. Sometimes the most childish and immature men make the best fathers.”

“Thank you, Celeste,” he said, forcing an icy smile. He kissed her on the cheek.

No need to repeat that parting shot to Jim when he went back to his room.

Jim was by the fire still and obviously deep in his thoughts. Reuben settled into his chair as before.

“Tell me,” Reuben said, “is this the real reason that you became a priest?”

For a long moment Jim didn’t respond. Then he looked up as if he were slightly dazed. In a low voice, he said, “I became a priest because I wanted to, Reuben.”

“I know that, Jim, but did you feel you had to make amends for the rest of your life?”

“You don’t understand,” said Jim. He sounded weary, dispirited. “I took my time deciding what to do. I traveled. I spent months in a Catholic mission in the Amazon. I spent a year studying philosophy in Rome.”

“I remember that,” Reuben said. “We’d get these great packages from Italy. And I couldn’t figure out why you weren’t coming home.”

“I had a lot of choices, Reuben. Maybe for the first time in my life, I had real choices. And the archbishop asked me the very same question, actually, when I asked to enter the priesthood. We discussed the whole affair. I told him everything. We talked about atonement, and what it means to become a priest—to live as a priest year in and year out for the rest of one’s life. He insisted on another year of sobriety in the world before he’d accept my application to the seminary. Usually he demanded five years of sober living, but admittedly, my period of drinking had been relatively short. And then there was Grandfather Spangler’s donation and Mom’s ongoing support. I worked every day at St. Francis at Gubbio as a volunteer during that year. By the time I entered the seminary, I’d been sober three years, and I was on strict probation. One drink and I would be out. I went through all that because I wanted to, Reuben. I became a priest because that’s what I wanted to do with my life.”

“What about faith?” Reuben asked. He was remembering what Margon had said, that Jim was a priest who didn’t believe in God.

“Oh, it’s about faith,” said Jim. His voice was low now and more confidential. “Of course, it’s about faith—faith that this is God’s world and we’re God’s children. How could it not be about faith? I think if one truly loves God with all one’s heart, then one has to love everybody else. It’s not a choice. And you don’t love them because it scores you points with God. You love them because you are trying to see them and embrace them as God sees and embraces them. You are loving them because they are alive.”

Reuben was unable to speak. He just shook his head.

“Think about it,” Jim said in a whisper. “Looking at each person and thinking, ‘God made this being; God put a soul into this being!’ ” He sat back in the chair and sighed. “I try. I stumble. I get up. I try again.”

“Amen,” said Reuben in a reverent whisper.

“I wanted to work with addicts, with drunks, with people whose weaknesses I understood. Above all, I wanted to do something that mattered, and I was convinced that as a priest I could do that. I could make some difference in people’s lives. Maybe I could even save a life now and then—save a life, imagine—to make some kind of amends for the life I’d destroyed. You could say that AA and the Twelve Steps saved me along with Mom and Dad. And yes, they led to my decision. But I had choices. And faith is part of it. I came out of the whole nightmare having faith. And a kind of crazy gratitude that I did not have to be a doctor! I can’t tell you how much I really did not want to be a doctor! Medicine doesn’t need any more coldhearted selfish bastards. Thank God, I got out of that.”

“I can’t quite understand it,” said Reuben. “But I’ve never had much faith in God myself.”

“I know,” said Jim, looking into the little gas fire. “I knew that about you when you were a little kid. But I’ve always had faith in God. The creation speaks to me of God. I see God in the sky and in the falling leaves. That’s always the way it was for me.”

“I think I know what you mean,” Reuben said in a low voice. He wanted Jim to go on.

“I see God in the little kindnesses people do for one another. I see God in the eyes of the worst down-and-out derelicts I deal with.…” Jim broke off suddenly, shaking his head. “Faith isn’t a decision, is it? It’s something you admit to having, or something you admit that you don’t have.”

“I think you’re right about that.”

“That’s why I never preach to people about the supposed sin of not believing,” said Jim. “You’ll never hear me condemning a nonbeliever as a sinner. That makes no sense to me at all.”

Reuben smiled. “And maybe that’s why you sometimes give people the wrong impression. They think you don’t believe when in fact you do.”

“Yes, that does happen now and then,” said Jim, with a soft smile. “But it doesn’t matter. How people believe in God is a vast subject, isn’t it?”

A silence fell between them. There was so much Reuben wanted to ask.

“Did you ever see or hear from Lorraine?” he asked.

“Yes,” he said. “I wrote an amends letter about a year after I left Betty Ford. I wrote more than one. But they came back to me from the forwarding address she’d left in Berkeley. Then I got Simon Oliver to confirm that she was in fact in Cheltenham and at that address. I couldn’t blame her for returning my letters. I wrote to her again, laying it all out in more candid terms. I told her how sorry I was, how in my eyes I was guilty of murder for what I’d done to the baby, how I feared I had irreparably hurt her so that she could never have a child. I got a brief but very compassionate note: she was all right; she was fine; not to worry. I had done her no lasting harm; I should go on with my life.

“Then before I went into the seminary, I wrote to her again, asking after her welfare and telling her of my decision to become a priest. I told her that time had only deepened my sense of the wrong that I’d done to her. I told her how the Twelve Steps and my faith had changed my life. I put too damned much of my own plans and dreams and ego in that letter. It was selfish of me really, now that I look back on it. But it was an amends letter, too, of course. And she wrote back an extraordinary letter. Just extraordinary.”

“How so?”

“She told me, if you can believe it, that I had given her the only real happiness she’d known in recent years. She went on to say something about how miserable she’d been before I’d come into her life, how hopeless she had been until the day Professor Maitland brought me home. She said something about her life having been changed for the better completely by knowing me. And that she did not want me ever to worry that I had done her a particle of harm. She said she thought I would be a marvelous priest. Finding such a meaningful vocation in this world was indeed a ‘wondrous’ thing. I remember she used that word, ‘wondrous.’ She and the professor were doing ‘splendidly,’ she said. She wished me every blessing.”

“That must have impressed the archbishop,” said Reuben.

“Well, actually, it did.”

Jim gave a short dismissive laugh. “That was Lorraine,” he said. “Forever kind, forever considerate, forever generous. Lorraine was always so sweet.” He closed his eyes for a moment and then went on. “About two years ago—I don’t remember the date actually—I read a brief obit for the professor in the New York Times. I hope Lorraine has remarried. I pray that she has.”

“Sounds like you did everything you could,” said Reuben.

“I’m haunted by her and that child,” Jim said. “When I think of all the things I might have done for that child. Whether I wanted it or not, think what I might have done for it. Sometimes I just can’t be around children. I don’t want to be any place where there are children. I thank God I’m at St. Francis in the Tenderloin and that I don’t have to minister to families with children. It eats at me, what I could have provided for that child.”

Reuben nodded. “But you’re going to love this little nephew of yours who’s coming down the pike.”

“Oh, absolutely,” Jim said, “with all my heart. Yes. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to say those things about children. It’s just …”

“Believe me, I understand,” said Reuben. “Maybe I shouldn’t have put it that way.”

Jim looked off into the fire again for a long moment, as if he hadn’t heard.

“But all my life I’ll be haunted by Lorraine and that child,” he said. “And what might have been for that child. I don’t expect to ever not be haunted. I deserve to be haunted.”

Reuben didn’t answer. He wasn’t sure at all that Jim was right about all these many things. Jim’s life seemed shaped by guilt, by remorse, by pain. There were so many questions he wanted to ask, but he couldn’t figure how to ask them. He felt closer to Jim, immeasurably closer, and at a loss as to what to say. He was also very aware that he himself thrived in a realm in which he took human life without a particle of regret. He knew this. He saw all this. And it provoked no real crippling emotion.

“And several times in the last couple of years,” Jim continued, “I’ve seen Lorraine. I think I have at any rate. I’ve seen Lorraine in church. It’s never more than a glimpse, and it’s always during Mass when I cannot possibly leave the altar. I see her, way to the back, and then of course by the time I give the last blessing, she’s gone.”

“You don’t think you’re imagining it?”

“Well, I would except for her hats.”

“The hats?”

“Lorraine loved hats. She loved vintage clothes and vintage hats. I don’t know whether it’s a British thing, or what, but Lorraine was always a very stylish person, and she positively loved hats. At any University function in the day, she’d have on some big brimmed hat, usually with flowers. And in the evening, she wore those black cocktail hats with veils, you know, that women used to wear years ago. Actually you probably don’t know. She collected vintage clothes and vintage hats.”

“And the woman you see at church is wearing a hat.”

“Always and it’s a real Lorraine Maitland hat. I mean, you know, a Bette Davis or Barbara Stanwyck hat. And then there’s her hair, her long blond hair, straight hair, and her face, and the shape of her head and shoulders. You’d recognize me at a distance. I’d recognize you at a distance. And I’m sure it’s Lorraine. Maybe she’s living here now. Or maybe it’s all something I’m imagining.”

He paused, looking into the flames of the gas fire, and then he went on.

“I’m not in love with Lorraine now. I think I was once, booze or no booze. Yes, I was in love with her. But not now. And really I have no right to track her down if she is living here, no right to meddle in her life, to bring all those bad memories back to her. But selfishly, I’d love to know that she’s happy, remarried, and maybe with children. If I could only know that for certain. She so wanted that baby! She wanted that baby more than she wanted me.”

“I wish I knew what to say to you,” Reuben said. “It breaks my heart to think of you going through this. And believe you me, I will go out to get Celeste pineapple at midnight if that is what it takes.”

Jim laughed. “I think it’s going to go well with her, if you just don’t challenge her. Let her believe all the bad things she has to believe.”

“I hear you.”

“It’s taking more courage for Celeste to give up this baby than she’s admitting. So let her dump her anger on you.”

“I’m with the program,” said Reuben putting up his hands.

Jim was looking at the fire again, at the blue and orange flames licking the air.

“When was the last time you think you saw Lorraine?”

“Not that long ago,” Jim said. “Maybe six months? And one of these days I’m going to catch up with her outside of church. And that will be when she decides it’s time. And if she tells me that I hurt her so bad she couldn’t have children anymore, well that will be exactly what I deserve to hear.”

“Jim, if she’d been hurt that bad, she might volunteer it on her own. She could take you down even now for what happened, couldn’t she?”

“Yes,” said Jim. He nodded and looked at Reuben. “She certainly could. I was straight with my superiors about all of it, always, as I told you. But they were straight with me about it too. They knew that what I’d done had happened in a drunken brawl. I was a debilitated alcoholic. They didn’t see it as premeditated murder. A man who murders cannot be a priest. But any scandal at any time could take me down. One letter to the archbishop, one threat of going public, that would do it. Lorraine could indeed take me down, and Jim’s great personal mission in the slums of San Francisco would blink out like that.”

“Well, she probably knows that,” said Reuben. “Maybe she just wants to talk to you and she’s building up the nerve.”

Jim was pondering. “It’s possible,” he said.

“Or, you feel so guilty about it all that you think any pretty woman you see who’s wearing a hat is Lorraine.”

Jim smiled and nodded. “That could be true,” he conceded. “If it is Lorraine, she’ll probably try to protect me from the full truth about what I did to her. That was the tone of her letters. She is sweet, just so very sweet. She was the kindest person I ever met. I can only imagine what it was like for her when she left me that last day. How did she stand it? Going home sick, hemorrhaging, losing a baby and having to tell Maitland about that.” He shook his head. “You don’t know how protective she was with Maitland. No wonder he took her right out of there, and went back to England. Stroke. I don’t believe his mother had a stroke. Boy, did I ever let him down. He brought me in to be a comfort to his wife, and I beat her within an inch of her life.”

Reuben was at an utter loss.

“Well, listen, here’s the second lesson,” said Jim. “I’m no saint. I never was. I have a mean streak in me and always did, of which you know nothing. I work with addicts at my church because I am an addict. And I understand them and the things they’ve done. So stop thinking you have to protect me from the things that are happening to you now. You can come to me and tell me what’s going on with you! And I can handle it, Reuben. I swear that to you.”

Reuben felt he was gazing at Jim across a huge divide.

“But there isn’t much you can do to help,” said Reuben. “I’m not running away from what I am now.”

“Have you thought about running away from it?” Jim asked.

“No. I don’t want to,” said Reuben.

“Have you thought about trying to reverse it?”

“No.”

“You’ve never asked your august mentors whether or not it can be reversed?”

“No,” Reuben admitted. “They would have told us, Stuart and me both, if it could be reversed.”

“Would they?”

“Jim, it’s … that’s not possible. That’s not discussable. You’re not grasping the power of the Chrism. You’ve seen a Man Wolf with your own eyes, but you’ve never seen one of us experience the change. This isn’t something that can be reversed in me. No.”

Give up eternal life? Give up being immune to disease, to aging, to …?

“But please,” said Reuben. “Please know that I’m doing the best I can to use the Wolf Gift in the best way possible.”

“The Wolf Gift,” said Jim with a faint smile. “What a lovely little phrase that is.” It was not sarcastic. He seemed to be dreaming for a moment, his eyes moving over the shadowy room, and fixing on the rainy windowpanes perhaps. Reuben could not quite tell.

“Remember, Jim,” said Reuben. “Felix and Margon are doing all in their power to guide me and guide Stuart. This isn’t a lawless realm, Jim. We’re not without our own laws and rules, our own conscience! Remember, we can sense evil. We can smell it. We can pick up the scent of innocence and suffering. And if I’m ever to get to the bottom of what we are, what our powers are, what they mean, well, it will be through others like Margon and Felix. The world isn’t going to help me with all this. It can’t. You know it can’t. You can’t. It’s impossible.”

Jim appeared to consider this for a long moment and then he nodded. “I understand why you feel that way,” he murmured. And then he seemed to slip off into his thoughts. “God knows, I haven’t been a help so far.”

“Now you know that’s not true. But you know what my life is like at Nideck Point.”

“Oh, yes, it’s grand. It’s marvelous. It’s like nothing I ever imagined, that house, and those friends of yours. You’ve been embraced by some kind of monstrous aristocracy, haven’t you? It’s like a royal court, isn’t it? You’re all Princes of the Blood. And how can ‘normal life’ compete with that?”

“Jim, remember the movie Tombstone? Remember what Doc Holliday says to Wyatt Earp when Doc is dying. You and I saw that movie together, remember? Doc says to Wyatt: ‘There’s no such thing as normal life, Wyatt. There’s just life.’ ”

Jim laughed softly under his breath. He closed his eyes for a brief moment and then again looked at the fire.

“Jim, whatever I am, I’m alive. Truly and completely alive. I’m part of life.”

Jim gazed at him with another one of those faint winsome smiles of his.

Slowly, Reuben told him the story of what had happened with Susie Blakely. He didn’t present it in a boasting or exuberant fashion. Leaving out all mention of Marchent’s ghost, he explained that he’d gone out hunting, needing to hunt, breaking the rules set up by the Royal Felix and Margon, and how he’d rescued Susie and taken her to Pastor George’s little church. Susie was now home with her parents.

“That’s the kind of thing we do, Jim,” he said. “That’s who the Morphenkinder are. That’s our life.”

“I know,” Jim responded. “I get it. I’ve always gotten it. I read about that little girl. You think I’m sorry you saved her life? Hell, you saved a busload of kidnapped kids. I know these things, Reuben. You forget where I work, where I live. I’m no suburban parish priest counseling married couples on common decency. I know what evil is. I know it when I see it. And in my own way I can smell it too. And I can smell innocence and helplessness, and desperate need. But I know the challenge of confronting evil without playing God!” He broke off, frowning slightly, pondering, and then he added, “I want to love like God, but I have no right to take life like God. That right belongs to Him alone.”

“Look, I told you when I first came to Confession, you’re free to call me about this anytime, you’re free to bring up the subject. When you need to talk—.”

“Do we have to make this about my needs? I’m thinking of you, I think of you slipping further and further from ordinary life. And now you want to take this child of yours up there to Nideck Point. Even the miracle of this child is not bringing you back to us, Reuben. Perhaps it can’t.”

“Jim, it’s where I live. And this is the only human child I’ll ever have.”

Jim winced. “What do you mean?”

Reuben explained. Any children he fathered now would be with another Morphenkind and they too would be Morphenkinder, almost without exception.

“So Laura cannot conceive with you,” Jim said.

“Well, she will be able to soon. She’s becoming one of us. Look, Jim, I’m sorry. I’m sorry I brought all this to you, because there isn’t anything you can do to help me, except keep my secrets, and keep on being my brother.”

“Laura made this decision? On her own?”

“Of course she did. Jim, look at what the Chrism offers. We don’t age. We’re invulnerable to disease or degeneration. We can be killed, yes, but most injuries don’t affect us at all. Barring accidents and mishaps, we can live forever. You can’t guess the age of Margon, or Sergei, or any of the others. You know what I’m talking about. You know Felix. You’ve spent hours talking to these men. Did you think Laura would turn down everlasting life? Who has the strength to do that?”

Silence. The obvious question was, would Jim turn it down if it was offered to him, but Reuben was not going to go there.

His brother seemed dazed, crestfallen.

“Look, I want some time with my little boy,” said Reuben. “A few years, anyway. And maybe after that he’ll go to school in San Francisco and live with Mom and Dad, or maybe he’ll go to some school in England or Switzerland. You and I never wanted that, but we could have had it. And my little boy can have it. I’ll protect him from what I am. Parents always try to protect their kids from … something, from many things.”

“I understand what you’re saying,” Jim murmured. “How could I not understand? I figure my son, he’d be what, twelve years old now, don’t know …”

Jim looked tired, and old, but he didn’t look defeated. His Roman collar and black clerics seemed a form of armor as they always had. Reuben tried to put himself in Jim’s place. But it just didn’t work. And the story about Lorraine and the baby only made him ache for Jim’s well-being all the more.

How different this was from that night when in lupine form Reuben had entered the Confessional at St. Francis Church so desperately needing Jim in his pain and confusion. Now he only wanted to protect Jim from all this and he didn’t know how to do it. He wanted to tell him about Marchent’s ghost, but he couldn’t do that. He couldn’t add to the burden he’d already placed on Jim.

When Jim rose to leave, Reuben didn’t stop him. He was startled when Jim came towards him and kissed him on the forehead. Jim murmured something softly, something about love, and then he left the room, closing the door behind him.

Reuben sat there quietly for a long time. He was fighting the need to cry. He wished he was at Nideck Point. And a crowd of worries descended on him: What if Celeste did abort the child? And how in the hell was Phil going to live under this roof with Celeste here, Celeste who couldn’t conceal her perfect disdain for him? Hell, this was his father’s house, wasn’t it? Reuben had to support his father. He had to call, to visit, to spend time with Phil. If only the guesthouse at Nideck Point was finished! As soon as it was, he would call his father and urge him to come up for an indefinite stay. He had to find some way to show Phil how much he loved him and always had.

Finally he lay down and fell asleep, exhausted by the twists and turns of the races he was running in his mind, and only now did the submerged images of Nideck Point rise; only now did he hear Felix’s reassuring voice, and reflect in that half world before sleep and dream that his time in this house was really over, and the future held bright and beautiful things. And maybe it would be that way for Celeste, too. Maybe she’d be happy.

The wedding was scheduled for eleven in the judge’s chambers. Laura was waiting under the rotunda at City Hall when they came in. She at once kissed Celeste and told her that she looked good. Celeste warmed to her and told her she was glad to see her again, all this a bit breezy and predictable and ridiculous, Reuben thought.

They went immediately to the judge’s chambers, and within five minutes it was finished. The whole affair was cheerless, and rather grim as far as Reuben was concerned, and Celeste ignored him as if he didn’t exist even when she said, “I do.” Jim stood in the corner of the room with his arms folded and his eyes down.

They were almost to the front doors of the building when Celeste announced that she had something to say, and asked that they all step to one side.

“I’m sorry for all I said yesterday,” she said. Her voice was flat and unfeeling. “You were right. None of this is your fault, Reuben. It’s my fault. And I’m sorry. And I’m sorry about what I said to Phil. I never should have gone off on Phil like that.”

Reuben smiled and nodded gratefully, and once again, as he’d done last night, he kissed her on the cheek.

Laura was visibly confused and a little anxious, glancing from one of them to the other. But Grace and Phil were remarkably calm, as if they’d had some warning that this was coming.

“We all understand,” said Grace. “You’re carrying a child and your nerves are on edge. And everyone knows this. Reuben knows this.”

“Anything I can do to make this easier, I’ll do it,” said Reuben. “You want me in the delivery room? I’ll be there.”

“Oh, don’t be so damned obsequious,” Celeste responded sharply. “I’m not capable of aborting a baby just because it’s inconvenient. Nobody has to pay me to have a baby. If I could abort a baby, the baby would be gone by now.”

Jim came forward at once and put his right arm around Celeste. He clasped Grace’s hand with his left hand. “St. Augustine wrote something once, something I think about often,” he said. “ ‘God triumphs on the ruins of our plans.’ And maybe that is what is happening here. We make blunders, we make mistakes, and somehow new doors open, new possibilities arise, opportunities of which we’ve never dreamed. Let’s trust that that is what is happening here for each of us.”

Celeste kissed Jim quickly, and then embraced him and laid her head against his chest.

“We’re with you every step of the way, darling,” Jim said. He stood there like an oak. “All of us.”

It was a masterly performance, done with conviction, thought Reuben. It was plainly obvious to him that Jim loathed Celeste. But then again, maybe Jim was simply loving her, really loving her as he tried to love everybody. What do I know, Reuben thought.

Without another word, the little gathering broke up, Grace and Phil ushering Celeste away, Jim to go off back to St. Francis Church, and Reuben to take Laura to lunch.

When they sat down in the dim interior of the Italian restaurant, they finally spoke, and Reuben told Laura briefly and in a spiritless voice about what had happened last night and how he’d hurt Celeste. “I shouldn’t have done it,” he said, suddenly crestfallen. “But I just, I had to say something. I tell you I think being hated is painful, but being deeply disliked is even more painful, and that’s what I feel coming from her. Intense dislike. And it’s like a flame. And I’ve always felt it when I was with her, and it’s made my soul wither. I know this now because I dislike her. And God help me, maybe I always did and I’m as guilty of dishonesty as she is.”

What he wanted to talk about was Marchent. He needed to talk about Marchent. He wanted to be back in the world of Nideck Point, but he was caught here, out of his element, in his old world, and was eager to escape all of it.

“Reuben, Celeste never loved you,” said Laura. “She went out with you for two reasons—your family and your money. She loved both and she couldn’t admit it.”

Reuben didn’t answer. The truth was he couldn’t believe Celeste capable of such a thing.

“I understood it as soon as I spent time with her,” said Laura. “She was intimidated by you, by your education, your travel, your way with words, your polish. She wanted all those things for herself, and she was burning with guilt, burning. It came out in her sarcasm, her constant digs—the way she kept on even when you were no longer engaged, the way she just couldn’t let it go. She never loved you. And now, don’t you see, she’s pregnant and she hates it but she’s living in your parents’ beautiful home, and she’s taking money for the child, lots of money, I suspect, and she’s ashamed and she can hardly stand it.”

That did make sense. In fact, that quite suddenly made perfect sense, and it seemed a light had flared in his mind by which he could read his strange past with Celeste clearly for the first time.

“It’s probably like a nightmare for her,” said Laura. “Reuben, money confuses people. It does. That’s a fact of life. It confuses people. Your family has plenty. They don’t act like they do. Your mom works all the time, like a driven self-made woman, your father is an idealist and a poet who wears clothes he bought twenty years ago, and Jim comes off the same way, otherworldly, spiritual, driving himself to minister to others so that he’s perpetually exhausted. Your dad’s always struggling with his old work, or taking notes in a book as if he had to give a lecture in the morning. Your mother rarely gets a good night’s sleep. And you come across a bit that way too, working night and day on your essays for Billie at the paper, pounding away on the computer till you practically fall asleep over it. But you do have money, and really no idea what it’s like to be without it.”

“You’re right,” he said.

“Look, she didn’t plan it. She just didn’t know what she was doing. But why did you ever listen to her, that’s what I’ve always wondered?”

That rang a bell with him. Marchent had said something so very similar to him but now the words escaped him—something about the mystery being that he listened to those who criticized him and cut him down. And his family certainly did a lot of that and had done a lot of that before Celeste ever joined the chorus. Maybe they’d unwittingly invited Celeste to join the chorus. Maybe that had been her ticket in, though he and Celeste had never realized it. Once she’d taken up the relentless scrutiny of Sunshine Boy, Baby Boy, Little Boy—well, it was established that she spoke the common language. Maybe he’d felt comfortable with her for speaking that common language.

“In the beginning, I liked her a lot,” he said in a small voice. “I had fun with her. I thought she was pretty. I liked that she was a smart. I like smart women. I liked being around her and then things started to go wrong. I should have spoken up. I should have told her how uncomfortable I was.”

“And you would have in time,” said Laura. “It would have ended in some completely natural and inevitable way, if you had never gone to Nideck Point. It had ended in a natural way. Except now there’s the baby.”

He didn’t answer.

The restaurant was becoming crowded, but they sat in a little zone of privacy at their corner table, the lights dim, and the heavy draperies and framed pictures around them absorbing the noise.

“Is it so difficult for someone to love me?” he asked.

“You know it’s not,” she said smiling. “You’re easy to love, so easy that just about everybody who meets you loves you. Felix adores you. Thibault loves you. They all love you. Even Stuart loves you! And Stuart’s a kid who’s supposed to be in love with himself at his age. You’re a nice guy, Reuben. You’re a nice and gentle guy. And I’ll tell you something else. You have a kind of humility, Reuben. And some people just don’t understand humility. You have a way of opening yourself to what interests you, opening yourself to other people, like Felix, for instance, in order to learn from them. You can sit at the table at Nideck Point and listen calmly to all the elders of the Morphenkinder tribe with amazing humility. Stuart can’t do it. Stuart has to flex his muscles, challenge, tease, provoke. But you just keep on learning. Unfortunately some people think that’s weakness.”

“That’s too generous an assessment, Laura,” he said. He smiled. “But I like the way you see things.”

Laura sighed. “Reuben, Celeste is not really part of you now. She can’t be.” Laura frowned, her mouth twisting a little as though she found this particularly painful to say, and then she went on in a low voice. “She’ll live and die like other human beings. Her road will always be hard. She’ll soon discover how little money will change it for her. You can afford to forgive her all this, can’t you?”

He stared into Laura’s soft blue eyes.

“Please?” she said. “She’ll never know for one moment the kind of life that’s opening now for both of us.”

He knew what these words meant grammatically, intelligently, but he didn’t know what they meant emotionally. But he did know what he had to do.

He picked up his phone, and he texted Celeste. He wrote in full and complete words, “I’m sorry. Truly I am. I want you to be happy. When this is all over, I want you to be happy.”

What a cowardly thing to do, to tap it into his iPhone when he couldn’t say it to her in person.

But in a moment, she’d answered. The words appeared: “You’ll always be my Sunshine Boy.”

He stared at the iPhone stonily and then he deleted the message.

They left San Francisco by three thirty, easily beating the evening traffic.

But it was slow go in the rain, and Reuben didn’t reach Nideck point till after ten.

Once again, the cheerful Christmas lights of the house immediately comforted him. Every window on the three-story façade was now neatly etched with the lights, and the terrace was in good order. The tents were folded and to one side at the ocean end. And a large, well-built stable had taken shape around the Holy Family. The statues themselves had been hastily arranged under it, and though there was no hay or greenery yet, the beauty of the statues was impressive. They appeared stoical and gracious as they stood there under the shadowy wooden roof, faces glinting with the lights from the house, the cold darkness hovering around them. Reuben had some hint of how wonderful the Christmas party was going to be.

His biggest shock came, however, when he looked to the right of the house, as he faced it, and saw the myriad twinkling lights that had transformed the oak forest.

“Winterfest!” he whispered.

If it hadn’t been so wet and cold, he would have gone walking there. He couldn’t wait to do that, walk there. He wandered around the right side of the house, his feet crunching in the gravel of the drive, and saw that wood-chip mulch had been spread out thickly under the trees, and the festooned lights and the softly illuminated mulch paths went on seemingly forever.

Actually he had no idea how far the oak forest continued to the east. He and Laura had many times walked in it but never to the farthest eastern boundary. And the scope of this undertaking, this lighting of the forest in honor of the darkest days of the year, left him kind of breathless.

He felt a sharp pain when he thought of the gulf that now separated him from those he loved, but then he thought, They’ll come to the Christmas gala, and they’ll be here with us for the banquet and the singing. Even Jim will come. He promised. And Mort and Celeste would come, he’d make sure of it. So why feel this pain, why allow it? Why not think of what they would share while they could? He thought of the baby again, and he doubled back to the front and hurried along till he reached the stable. It was dark there and the marble Christ Child was barely visible. But he made out the plump cheeks and the smile on its face, and the tiny fingers of its extended hands.

The wind from the ocean chilled him. A thick mist suddenly stung him, rushing so fiercely against his eyes that they teared up. He thought of all the things he had to do for his son, all the things he’d have to assure, and one thing seemed absolutely certain, that he would never let the secret of the Chrism enter the life of his son, that he would shield his son from it even if it meant taking him away from Nideck Point when the time came. But the future was a little too vast and crowded for him to envision it suddenly.

He was cold and sleepy, and he didn’t know whether Marchent was waiting for him.

Could Marchent feel cold? Was it conceivable that cold was all she felt, a bleak and terrible emotional cold that was far worse than the cold he was now feeling?

A fierce exhilaration came over him.

He went back to the Porsche, and took his Burberry out of the trunk. It was a fully lined Burberry and he’d never bothered to have it hemmed. He hated the cold and liked that it was long. He buttoned it up and down, pulled up the collar, and went walking.

He walked into the vast airy shadows of the oak woods gazing up at the miracle of the lights overhead and around him. On and on he walked, aware but unconcerned that the mist was thickening and that his face and hands were now damp. He shoved his hands into his pockets.

On and on the lighted boughs seemed to go, and everywhere the mulch was thick and safe for walking. When he glanced back the house was distant. The lighted windows were scarcely visible, an unshapen flickering beyond the trees.

He turned back and continued east. He had not come to the end of it, this exquisitely illuminated forest. But the thick mist was now shrouding the branches ahead of him and behind him.

Best to go back.

Very suddenly the lights went out.

He stood stock-still. He was in complete darkness. Of course he realized what had happened. The Christmas lights had been connected with all the outside lights of the property, the floods in front and at the back. And at eleven thirty the outside lights always went off, and so had the Christmas lights of this wonderland.

He turned abruptly and started back, immediately running smack into the trunk of a tree as his foot caught on a root. He could see nothing around him.

Far away the burnished light of the library and dining room windows did still reveal his destination, but this was faint, and at any moment someone might snap off those lights, never dreaming that he was out here.

He tried to pick up the pace, but he suddenly pitched forward and fell hard on the palms of his hands on the mulch.

This was a ridiculous predicament. Even with his improved sight he could see nothing.

He climbed to his feet and made his way carefully, feet inching along the ground. There was plenty of space for walking, he only had to keep to it. But once again he fell, and when he tried to get his bearings, he realized that he could no longer see any light in any direction.

What was he to do?

Of course he could bring on the change, he was certain of it, strip off these clothes and change, and then he’d see his way clearly to the house, of course he would. As a Morphenkind he’d have no problem even in this awful darkness.

But what if Lisa or Heddy were up? What if one of them were going around turning off the lights? Why, Jean Pierre would be in the kitchen as he always was.

It would be ridiculous for him to risk being seen, and the thought of enduring the change for reasons so mundane, and then quickly hiding again in his human skin and dressing hastily in the freezing cold outside the back door, seemed absurd.

No, he would walk carefully.

He started off again, his hands out before him, and immediately his toe caught again on a root and he went forward. But this time, something stopped him from falling. Something had touched him, touched his right arm and even caught hold of his right arm and he was able to steady himself and step over the roots and clear of them.

Had it been a bramble bush or some wild sapling sprung from the roots? He didn’t know. He stood very still. Something was moving near him. Perhaps a deer had come into these woods, but he could catch no scent of a deer. And gradually he realized there was movement all around him. Without the slightest crackling sound of leaf or branch, there was movement virtually surrounding him.

Once again, he felt a touch on his arm, and then what felt like a hand, a firm hand, against his back. This thing, whatever it was, was urging him forward.

“Marchent!” he whispered. He stood still, refusing to move. “Marchent, is it you?” There came no answer from the stillness. The rural dark was so impenetrable that he couldn’t see his own hands when he lifted them, but whatever this was, this thing, this person, whatever, it held fast to him and again urged him forward.

The change came over him with such swiftness he didn’t have time to make a decision. He was bursting out of his clothes before he could even unbutton them or open them. He pushed off his raincoat and let it drop. He heard the leather of his shoes ripping and popping, and as he rose to his full Morphenkind height, he saw through the darkness, saw the distinct shapes of the trees, their clustered leaves, even the tiny glass lights threaded all through them.

The thing that had been holding him had backed away from him, but turning, he saw the figure now, the pale figure of a man, barely discernible in the moving mist, and as he slowly looked about he saw other figures. Men, women, even smaller figures that must have been children; but whatever they were, they were receding, moving without a sound, and finally he couldn’t see them anymore.

He made for the house, easily sprinting through the trees, with the torn remnants of his clothes over his shoulder.

Beneath the dark and empty kitchen windows, he tried to will the change away, struggling violently with it, but it wasn’t listening to him. He closed his eyes, willing himself with all his soul to change, but the wolf coat wouldn’t leave him. He leaned back against the stones and he stared into the oak woods. He could see those figures again. Very slowly he made out the nearest figure, a man, it seemed, who was looking at him. The man was slender, with large eyes and very long dark hair, and a faint smile on his lips. His clothes looked simple, light, some sort of very old-fashioned shirt with balloon sleeves; but the figure was already paling.

“All right, you don’t mean me any harm, do you?” he said.

A soft rustling sound came from the forest but not from the undergrowth or the overhead boughs. It was these creatures laughing. He caught the very pale outline of a profile, of long hair. And once again they were moving away from him.

He heaved a deep breath.

There was a loud snapping noise. Someone somewhere had struck a match. Pray it wasn’t Lisa or the other servants!

Light leapt out from behind the north end of the house, and seemed to penetrate the mist as though it were made of tiny golden particles. And there they were again, the men, the women, and those small figures, and then they vanished altogether.

He struggled with the change, gritting his teeth. The light grew brighter and then flared to his left. It was Lisa. Dear God, no. She held the kerosene lantern high.

“Come inside, Master Reuben,” she said, not in the least fazed that she was staring at him in his wolf shape, but merely reaching out for him. “Come!” she said.

He felt the most curious emotion as he looked at her. It was like shame, or the nearest thing to shame he’d ever known, that she was seeing him naked and monstrous and that she knew him by name, knew who he was, knew all about him and could see him this way, without his consent, without his desire for her to see him. He was painfully aware of his size, and the way his face must have appeared, covered in hair, his mouth a lipless snout.

“Go away, please,” he said. “I’ll come when I’m ready.”

“Very well,” she said. “But you needn’t fear them. They are gone now anyway.” She set the lantern on the ground, and left him. Infuriating.

It must have been some fifteen minutes before he made the change, cold and shivering as the thick wolf coat left him. Hastily, he put on his torn shirt and what was left of his pants. His shoes and raincoat were somewhere back in the forest.

He hurried inside, and was intent on running up the stairs to his room, when he saw Margon sitting in the dark kitchen, at the table, alone, with his head resting on his hands. His hair was tied back to the nape of his neck, and his shoulders were hunched.

Reuben stood there wanting to speak to Margon, desperate to speak to him, to tell him about what he’d seen in the oaks, but Margon quite deliberately turned away. It wasn’t a hostile gesture, merely a subtle turning, his head bowed, as if he were saying, Please do not see me, please do not talk to me now.

Reuben sighed and shook his head.

Upstairs, he found the fire lighted in his room, and his bed turned down. His pajamas had been laid out for him. There was a small china pitcher of hot chocolate on the table with a china cup.

Lisa emerged from the bathroom with the air of one who was busy with a multitude of errands. She laid his white terrycloth robe out on the bed.

“Would you like for me to run you a bath, young master?”

“I take showers,” Reuben said, “but thank you.”

“Very well, master,” she responded. “Would you care for some late supper?”

“No, ma’am,” he replied. He was livid that she was there. Dressed in torn and filthy garments, he waited, biting his tongue.

She walked past him and around him and towards the door.

“Who were those creatures in the forest?” he asked. “Were they the Forest Gentry? Is that who they were?”

She stopped. She looked unusually elegant in her dress of black wool, her hands appearing very white against the cuffs of the black sleeves. She appeared to reflect for a moment and then,

“But surely you should put these questions, young sir, to the master, but not to the master tonight.” She held up one emphatic finger like a nun. “The master is out of sorts tonight, and it is no time to ask him about the Forest Gentry.”

“So that’s who I saw,” said Reuben. “And who the hell are they, exactly, this Forest Gentry?”

She looked down, visibly reflecting before she spoke, and then raised her eyebrows as she looked at him. “And who do you think they are, young master?” she asked.

“Not the forest spirits!” he said.

She gave a grave nod, and lowered her eyes again. She sighed. For the first time, he noticed the large cameo at her neck and that the ivory of the raised figures on the cameo matched her thin hands, which she clasped in front of her as though standing at attention. Something about her chilled his blood. It always had.

“That is a lovely way to describe them,” she conceded, “as the spirits of the forest, for it’s in the forest that they are most happy and always have been.”

“And why is Margon so angry that they’ve come? What do they do that he’s so angry?”

She sighed again and, dropping her voice to a whisper, she said, “He does not like them, that is why he is cross. But … they always come at Midwinter. I am not surprised they are here so early. They love the mists and the rain. They love the water. So they are here. They come at Midwinter when the Morphenkinder are here.”

“You’ve been in this house before?” he asked her.

She waited before answering and then said with a faint icy smile, “A long time ago.”

He swallowed. She was freezing his blood, all right. But he wasn’t afraid of her, and he sensed she didn’t mean for him to be afraid. But there was something proud and obdurate in her manner.

“Ah,” he said. “I see.”

“Do you?” she asked, but her voice and face were faintly sad. “I don’t think that you do,” she said. “Surely, young master, you do not think the Morphenkinder are the only Ageless Ones under heaven? Surely you know there are many other species of Ageless Ones bound to this earth who have a secret destiny.”

A silence fell between them, but she didn’t move to go. She looked at him as if from the depth of her own thoughts, patient, waiting.

“I don’t know what you are,” he said. He was struggling to sound confident and polite. “I really don’t know what they are. But you needn’t wait on me hand and foot. I don’t require it, and I’m not used to it.”

“But it is my purpose, master,” she responded. “It has always been my place. My people care for your people and for other Ageless Ones like you. That is the way it has been for centuries. You are our protectors and we are your servants and that is how we make our way in this world and always have. But come, you are tired. Your clothes are in tatters.”

She turned to the hot chocolate, and filled his cup from the pitcher. “You must drink this. You must come and be close to the fire.”

He took the cup from her, and he did drink the thick chocolate in one gulp.

“That’s good,” he said. Strangely, he was less rattled now by her than he’d been in the past, and more curious. And he was infinitely relieved that she knew what he was and what they all were. The burden of keeping the secret from her and the others was gone, but he couldn’t help but wonder why Margon hadn’t relieved him of this burden before now.

“There’s nothing for you to fear, master,” she said. “Not from me and my kind ever, for we have always served you, and not from the Forest Gentry because they are harmless.”

“The fairy people, that’s what they are?” he said. “The elves of the woods?”

“Oh, that I would not call them,” she said, her German accent sharpening slightly. “Those words, they do not like, I can tell you. And you will never see them appear in pointed caps and pointed shoes,” she went on with a little laugh. “Nor are they diminutive beings with tiny beating wings. No, I would forget such words as ‘the fairy people.’ Here, please, let me help you take off these clothes.”

“Well, I can understand that,” said Reuben. “And actually it’s a bit of a consolation. Would you mind telling me if there are dwarves and trolls out there?”

She didn’t respond.

He was just miserable enough in his torn and wet shirt and pants to let her assist, forgetting until it was too late that he had no underwear on, of course. But she had the terrycloth robe over his shoulders instantly, quickly wrapping it around him as he slipped his arms into it, and tying the sash for him as if he were a little boy.

She was almost as tall as he was. And her resolute gestures again struck him as odd, no matter what she was.

“Now, when the master is not out of sorts, he will perhaps explain everything to you,” she said, her tone softening even further. She dropped her voice, laughing under her breath. “If on Christmas Eve they did not appear, he would be disappointed,” she said. “It would be a terrible thing in fact if they did not appear at that time. But he does not like it at all that they are here now, and that they’ve been invited. When they’re invited, they become bold. And that irritates him considerably.”

“Invited by Felix, you mean,” Reuben asked. “That’s what’s been going on. Felix howling—.”

“Yes, invited by Master Felix, and it is his prerogative to tell you why, not mine.”

She gathered the soiled and torn clothes and made of them a little bundle, obviously for throwing away. “But until such time as the august masters choose to explain about them to you and your young companion, Stuart, let me assure you that the Forest Gentry cannot possibly bring you the slightest harm. And you must not let them force your … your blood to rise, as it were, as it seemed it did tonight.”

“I understand,” he said. “They caught me completely by surprise. And I found them unnerving.”

“Well, if you do want to unnerve them in return, which I do not advise, by the way, under any circumstances, just refer to them as the ‘fairy people’ or ‘elves’ or ‘dwarves’ or ‘trolls’ and that will do it. Real harm they cannot do, but they can become quite an incredible nuisance!”

With a loud sharp laugh, she turned to go, but then,

“Your raincoat,” she said. “You left it in the forest. I’ll see to it that it is brushed and cleaned. Sleep now.”

She went right out the door, shutting it behind her, leaving him with all the questions on the tip of his tongue.