Poor Father Dominic. I highly doubt he has hysterically weeping women throwing their arms around him all that often. You can totally tell. He didn’t know how to react at all. I mean, he patted me on the shoulder and said, “Shhh, everything will be all right,” and stuff, but you could tell he was really uncomfortable. I guess he was afraid Andy was going to walk by and think I was crying because of something Father Dominic had said.

Which was ridiculous, of course. As if anything anybody said could make me cry.

After a few minutes of Father Dom saying, “Shhh, everything will be all right,” and being all stiff, I couldn’t help laughing.

Seriously. I mean, it was funny. In a sad, pathetic kind of way.

“Father Dominic,” I said, pulling away and looking up at him through my streaming eyes. “Are you joking? Everything is not going to be all right. Okay? Nothing is ever going to be all right ever again.”

Father Dominic might not have been a very good hugger, but he was all there in the hanky department. He fished his out and started dab-bing my face with it. I’d seen him do this before with the little kids at school, the kindergartners who were crying over dropped ice-cream cones or whatever. He really had the whole dabbing thing down.

“Now, Susannah,” he said as he dabbed. “That isn’t true. You know that isn’t true.”

“Father,” I said. “I know it is true. Jesse is gone, and it is totally my fault.”

“How is it your fault?” Father Dominic looked down at me disapprovingly. “Susannah, it isn’t your fault at all.”

“Yes, it is. You said so yourself. I should have called you the minute I realized the truth about Jack. But I didn’t. I thought I could handle him myself. I thought it was no big deal. And now look what happened. Jesse’s gone. Forever.”

“It is a tragedy,” Father Dominic said. “I cannot think of a greater injustice. Jesse was a very good friend to you…to both of us. But the fact is, Susannah”—He’d managed to clean up almost all my tears, and now he put his handkerchief away—“he spent a good many years wandering in a sort of half-life. Now his struggles are over, and he can perhaps begin to enjoy his just rewards.”

I narrowed my eyes at him. What was he talking about?

He must have read the skepticism in my face, since he said, “Well, think about it, Susannah. For one hundred and fifty years, Jesse was trapped in a sort of netherworld between his past life and his next. Though you can lament the manner in which it happened, he has, at last, made the leap to his final destination—”

I jerked away from Father D. In fact, I jerked away from the window seat. I stood up, strode away a few paces, and then whirled around, astounded by what I’d just heard.

“What are you talking about?” I demanded. “Jesse was here for a reason. I don’t know what it was, and I’m not sure he did either. But whatever it was, he was supposed to stay here, in this ‘netherworld,’ until he’d worked it out. Now he’ll never be able to. Now he’ll never know why he was here for all that time.”

“I understand that, Susannah,” Father Dominic said in a voice I found infuriatingly calm. “And as I said before, it is unfortunate—a tragedy. But regardless, Jesse has moved on, and we should at least be glad he’s found eternal peace—”

“Oh my God!” I was shouting again, but I didn’t care. I was enraged. “Eternal peace? How do you know that’s what he’s found? You can’t know that.”

“No,” Father Dominic said. I could tell he was choosing his words with care now. Like I was a bomb that might go off if he used the wrong one.

“You’re right,” Father D. said quietly. “I can’t know that. But that is the difference between you and me, Susannah. You see, I have faith.”

I was across the room in three quick strides. I didn’t know what I was going to do. I certainly wasn’t going to hit him. I mean, the trigger to my anger mechanism might be oversensitive, but I’m not about to go around punching priests. Well, at least not Father Dom. He is my homeboy, as we used to say back in Brooklyn.

Still, I think I was going to shake him. I was going to put my hands on his shoulders and attempt to shake some sense in him, since reasoning did not appear to be working. I mean, seriously, faith. Faith! As if faith ever worked better than a good ass-kicking.

But before I could lay a hand on him, I heard someone behind me clear his throat. I looked around, and there was Andy, in his tool belt and jeans and a T-shirt that said WELCOME TO DUCK BILL FLATS, standing in my open doorway and looking concerned.

“Suze,” he said. “Father Dominic. Is everything all right in here? I thought I heard some shouting.”

Father Dominic stood up.

“Yes,” he said, looking grave. “Well, Susannah is—and very rightly, too—concerned about the, er, unfortunate discovery in your backyard yesterday. She has asked me, Andrew, to perform a house blessing and I, of course, said I would. I’ve left my Bible in the car, however…. ”

Andy perked right up. “You want me to go get it for you, Father?” he asked.

“Oh, that would be wonderful, Andrew,” FatherD. said. “Just wonderful. It should be on the front seat. If you could bring that to me, I’ll get to work straightaway.”

“No problem, Father,” Andy said, and he went away, looking all happy. Which is easy to be if you, like Andy, haven’t the slightest clue what’s going on in your own house. I mean, Andy doesn’t believe. He doesn’t know there’s a plane of existence other than this one. He doesn’t know people from that other plane are trying to kill me.

Or that I was once in love with the guy whose bones he dug up yesterday.

“Father D.,” I said, the minute I heard Andy’s feet hit the stairs.

“Susannah,” he said tiredly. He was trying to head me off at the pass, I could tell. “I understand how difficult this is for you. Jesse was very special. I know he meant a great deal to you—”

I couldn’t believe this. “Father D.—”

“—but the fact is, Susannah, Jesse is in a better place now.” Father Dominic, as he spoke, walked across my room, stooped down by the door, and pulled out a black bag he’d apparently set down in the hallway. He lifted the bag, set it down again on my unmade bed, and opened it. Then he started taking things out of it.