“Because our old house is where Jesse got M-U-R-D-E-R-E-D, remember?”

The girls immediately began murmuring the letters of the word I’d just spelled, but fortunately got nowhere as it was too advanced for the kindergarten set. Plus reading at the academy was being taught by sight or “whole language” rather than phonetically, which meant most students were reading well below their grade level (an opinion I’d been told by Father Dom to please keep to myself).

“Well, where are you two going to live, then, after you get married?” David demanded testily. “Some gated community, like Brad and Debbie? Oh, yeah, I can really see that working out. Hey, maybe Jesse could start playing golf with all the other doctors, while you shop with their wives.”

I really did not want to continue this conversation, not only because we’d reached the school parking lot, but because all of a sudden I could hear my mother’s voice in my head, suggesting that Jesse and I move to Los Angeles. It would be so much easier for me to visit my future grandbabies if they were right here in town . . .

“Look, David,” I said. “I appreciate the help with Shahbaz, and also your advice, but honestly, the best thing you can do right now is stay exactly where you are and not mention a word of this to anyone. Especially Jesse. Okay?”

“Um, okay.” He didn’t sound convincing. “Tell everyone hi from me, and that I love them. I’ll see you soon.”

“David. Are you listening to me? Please don’t—”

But he’d hung up.

“Aunt Suze,” Mopsy asked from the backseat. “What’s a mediator?”

veinte

The first thing I did when I got to my desk was to throw Paul’s flowers into the trash, vase and all. The second thing I did was look up Becca Walters’s class schedule. She had geometry first period. Excellent.

Now all I had to do was hope she showed up to school.

“That’s a waste,” Sister Ernestine remarked as she bustled past my trash can on the way into her office.

I glanced at the flowers. The nun had a point. Every petal was still snow white and perfect.

“The smell’s giving me a headache,” I said, though of course my headache had predated the flowers and this didn’t explain why they were in the garbage, one foot from my desk.

“If you didn’t want them, you could have given them to poor Father Dominic at the hospital.”

“I think we can do better for Father D than used flowers.”

“They’re still perfectly good. Maybe you could put them in the basilica for the worshippers to enjoy.”

I closed my eyes and said a quick prayer for strength to the nondenominational god of single girls and mediators.

“You’re so right, Sister.” I leaned over and picked the vase out of the trash can. Fortunately the glass was still intact, so it wasn’t leaking. “Are you going to lead Morning Assembly today in Father Dominic’s absence?”

“I am.” The nun was straightening her wimple in the same mirror Father Dom had straightened his clerical jacket the day before. “I’ve been named acting principal by the archdiocese until Father Dominic recovers enough to return to work, which will hopefully be soon.”

It wouldn’t be soon. It would be weeks, possibly months. I’d never get hired as a paid staff member unless I adjusted either my attitude, or how much I was needed around the Mission Academy.

Which is why I artfully arranged Paul’s flowers on the windowsill in Sister Ernestine’s office while she was giving the Morning Assembly message—which included a request for the entire student body to bow their heads in a moment of prayer for Father Dominic’s speedy recovery.

As soon as Assembly was over, I pulled Flopsy, Mopsy, and Cotton-tail out of their line back to class.

“Family emergency,” I told Sister Monica, who responded by looking relieved.

“What’s the matter, Aunt Suze?” Flopsy asked as I hurried them along the open-air corridor, past all the other classroom doors, until we got to where Becca’s geometry class was being held. “What’s the emergency?”

“The kind where I need you guys to go out into the courtyard and play quietly with your friend Lucy for a bit while I talk to her friend Becca. If you do that, without bothering us, I’ll buy you whatever you want for lunch.”

The girls exchanged excited glances. They couldn’t express their joy the way they wanted to, because shouting in the breezeway was forbidden, but their body language—they looked as if they were about to scream and do backflips—said it all. Chicken fingers and fries were infinitely preferable to the healthy lunch—turkey wraps and carrot sticks—their poor, long-suffering mother had made them.

There’s no getting around it: I might have helped a lot of people get into heaven, but I’m seriously starting to doubt my chances of ever getting there myself.

“Can we,” Mopsy whispered to me intensely, “play in the fountain?”

The ancient decorative fountain in the center of the mission’s courtyard, near which the students were expressly forbidden from going, was my stepnieces’ favorite place in all of creation. I’d like to have said this was due to their exquisite aesthetic taste, but I feared a different explanation.

“You may play near it,” I said. “Not in it.”

When all three girls began to pout, I gritted my teeth. “Listen, we are not going through this again. The people who put coins in that fountain made wishes as they threw them. If you fish them out and steal them, it’s like stealing people’s wishes, and that’s as wrong as stealing their money—which is against the law, by the way, as we have discussed repeatedly in the past.”

The three of them had been dragged into the office so many times for stealing coins from the fountain that they were known around the teacher’s lounge as the Three-K Banditos.

Mopsy opened her mouth to protest, but I cut her off, asking, “What did Jiminy Cricket say about wishes?”

Cotton-tail promptly replied, “They come true when you wish upon a star.”

“There’s nothing in that song about fountains.” Mopsy always had an angle.

Realizing that I was never going to get them to play nicely unless I sweetened the bribe—fries were losing their currency—I said, “Look, just this one time you can fish for coins from the fountain, but only if you promise to put them back when you’re done.” Their faces fell, and I added, through gritted teeth, “Fine. I’ll reimburse you after school from my own wallet, you little swindlers.”