One Hundred Seven

His face blanched to an unsightly shade of white, giving her a fleeting concern for his health, but he recovered quickly.  A hearty cough returned the color to his cheeks, and he shifted his position restlessly in the chair.

Allegra, on the other hand, sat stock still, half-expecting him to contradict her.  Astoundingly he didn’t bother denying the allegation, merely closing his eyes for a breath before asking quietly, “How did you find out?”

She might be convinced to share the journal information later, but for now Allegra was the one asking the questions.    “You knew all along, didn’t you?  From the time you stepped foot in the door here.  Is that why you came?”

His hand ran over his beard, first pushing the whiskers upward, then smoothing them back down as he deliberated his reply.

“No, it wasn’t the reason I came, but the moment we met, I knew who you must be,” he eventually confessed with a wistful smile.  “How could I not?  You’re the spitting image of your mother.”

“Then why didn’t you say anything?  Did you just want to go on pretending that I didn’t exist?” 

Forget the tiny little detail that she hadn’t been aware of her adoption at the time.  HE had no way of knowing that, and should’ve done what was right.  Instead, he’d driven her from the Church.  He’d better block off his calendar for the day, because they had a lot of things to work through before she was budging from this chair.

The Bishop – her father – removed his glasses and passed a weary hand across the bridge of his nose.  “I can see that you’re going to have a lot of questions. Why don’t you let me start from the beginning?  After I’ve finished you can ask whatever you like.”

With only a moment’s hesitation, Allegra nodded her consent.  No matter what his beginning was, it would surely fill in some of the blanks.

“I met Frannie at Our Lady of Grace Convent in upstate New York in 1970.  One of my first acts as a priest there was to assist in officiating her vows.”

At least he wasn’t a complete liar, since his information was backed up by the journal.

“There was something remarkable about her that you couldn’t quite pin down, but it drew you in like a magnet.  Or it did me, anyway.  I never had any intention of being interested in a woman.  I had committed myself to the priesthood and was content with my decision to do so.”

“What made you do it?”  Now she could at least get that murder idea out of her head. 

If he would cooperate, that is.  With a remorseful shake of his head, he said, “It was too many years ago to start dredging up the memories.  Suffice it to say that I was greatly convicted.”

Convicted?  That is entirely too coincidental.

“I’m sorry, but I can’t let it go at that.  What horrible thing happened that caused you to so drastically change paths?”

The Bishop’s brows knit in confusion.  “I didn’t say anything happened, or that I changed paths.   How are you coming up with these ideas?”

That’s what she got for pushing too hard.

“Frannie kept a little journal.  Sister Mary Clementine brought it to me last night, thinking I was her.”

“Oh my.”  His eyes widened with surprise.  Whether he was surprised about the journal or the Sister’s reaction, she couldn’t tell.  “That’s how you found out then.”

Allegra’s nod confirmed his belief.

“I can understand how someone in Sister Mary Clementine’s condition would make that mistake,” he murmured.

“Forgive me if I’m not more interested in the Sister and my resemblance to my mother at the moment.  Can we please go back to my question?  Because in all honesty, I’ve got you painted as a killer in my mind, and I’d like to dispel the thought.”

Once again the color drained from his face and she could feel hers following suit.

Oh God, he IS a killer.

“Okay, I’ll just be leaving now.”  She stood and circled around the back of the chair she’d been sitting in, keeping a close eye on him for any sudden movement.  Finding out information about her parents was pointless if one of them killed her.

“Sit down Allegra.  It’s not what you think.”

Her fingers wrapped firmly over the chair’s back, making both it and the desk obstacles between them.   At his age, she didn’t think he could clear them both before she made it to the door.  “Well, that remains to be seen now, doesn’t it?”

“I didn’t kill anyone,” he sighed, leaning heavily on the arm of his chair.  “Not in the traditional sense anyway.”

Her grip relaxed enough to allow the blood to seep back into her fingertips, but her desire to keep a fair distance from him didn’t diminish.  She maintained her stance behind the chair.

“Allegra,” he admonished softly.  “Sit.”

“No, I don’t think so.  Thank you anyway,” she said firmly, then directed his attention back to the question at hand.  “What happened?”

Disappointment flattened his voice.  “Your mother was the last person to hear this story.  I never told anyone else my shameful secret, but I suppose if anyone has a right to hear it, you would be the one.”

He leaned forward in his seat, making Allegra push her feet against the floor and scoot her own seat back a bit further.  The clouds of some thought darkened his eyes, but he didn’t give any other indication that he’d noticed.

“I was a bit of a troublemaker as a boy, always finding myself in a scrape of some sort.  It was typical teenage attitude and disrespect for pretty much everything.   My parents threatened to send me to military school if I didn’t straighten up, but I laughed in their faces and continued to live life as if there were no tomorrow or consequences to my actions.

“The summer I was seventeen, my brother Salvador started trailing after me like a puppy dog.  He was two years younger and thought everything I did was the greatest thing he’d ever seen.  Of course, I thrived on the attention and pushed myself a little harder, just to show off.”

His eyes were focused on some point beyond her right shoulder, and she glanced to see what had captured his attention.  There was nothing but the room’s furnishings and the door behind her – not even a picture on the wall.  Whatever scene played out, it was visible only to him. 

“One of my friends got hold of an old Colt .45 pistol.  I never bothered to ask how, or why, but he brought it over one afternoon when my parents weren’t home.  We did some target shooting next to the old metal storage building that was out back of the house.  We lived a little way outside of town, so the neighbors were used to  Sal was completely fascinated by the gun and watching those tin cans fly.  Kept begging for a turn, but I wouldn’t let him touch it.”

“My friend and I wanted to go to the movies, but there wasn’t time to take the gun back to his house if we were going to make it on time.  I said ‘no problem’, and hid it in a box inside the shed.  He would get it that evening.”

Pain darkened his face and his voice grew quieter.   “Sal simply couldn’t resist the temptation.  He snuck back out to there after we left and was messing around with the gun.  I thought I had taken all the bullets out.  It turns out there was still one left in the chamber.  When he pulled the trigger, it bounced off the metal shed and hit him in the neck, nicking his jugular.  He’d been dead a good two hours by the time we found him.”

“Oh my goodness,” she breathed, sharing in his pain for an instant.  How horrific it would be to find a loved one passed away, let alone…

“I was devastated.  My brother was gone, and I was responsible, no matter how indirectly.  My parents never said they blamed me, but I could see my mother wondering where she’d gone wrong.”  He cleared his throat and visibly reinserted himself into the present.  “During the funeral service, I vowed to be a different person from that point on.  To set an example worthy of following.”

Allegra could see how much telling the story had affected the older man, even taking a physical toll in the set of his shoulders and posture.  Regardless of her sympathy for him, she couldn’t keep from saying, “Instead you were responsible for the loss of another life.”

Sagging a bit further into his chair, he sighed.  “Somehow I knew this would come up again.”

“You made me doubt everything I’d ever believed in.  It’s not like I just got OVER that.”  No longer in fear of him, she shifted back around the chair to sit.

He slipped the silver rimmed glasses back on his face and looked down his nose.  “You realize I don’t have to justify myself to you.”

“No, you don’t,” she conceded.  “But we all have to justify ourselves in the end.”

Lightning struck in his storm cloud eyes, and his fist pounded to the desk with a ‘thump’.  “Don’t you think I know that?  Don’t you think that their souls are on my mind EVERY day?”

“Then why didn’t you admit you were wrong?” she persisted, leaning forward with her own brand of lightning flashing.

“That subject is not open for discussion,” he declared, storm clouds clashing with the summer sky as he boldly met her gaze.  “Ask your other questions, if you have them.  If not, you’ll excuse me.”

The stubborn set of his jaw looked awfully familiar.  She may have seen it in the mirror on an occasion or two.  She may be wearing it that very moment, but the desire to be right fought with her curiosity, and curiosity won.  Being right didn’t have an expiration date.

“You met Frannie in 1970,” she prompted, retracting her claws.  “She fell in love with you, you left on another assignment.  She didn’t tell you about me until the last minute.  Why didn’t you come?  Didn’t you love her?”

“I did.”

This man was just beyond the point of being exasperating.  He knew what she was asking, so why was he being so difficult?  “Did what?  Come or love her?”

“Both.”  His eyes had never wavered. 

“Could I get a little more than that?”

“I came as soon as I got the letter, but travel wasn’t as efficient in 1971 as it is today, particularly in the winter from Michigan to upstate New York.  It was February 20^th when I finally arrived.  Frannie was already gone.”

“And you didn’t ask about the baby?  YOUR baby?”  She found that difficult to believe.  How do you accept the death of the woman you loved and your child so easily?  Unless you didn’t really want them to start with.

“Who was I supposed to ask?” he demanded.  “The nuns and priests that she’d been hiding her pregnancy from?  Because the doctors certainly wouldn’t tell me anything other than she died from a ruptured appendix.  I had no choice but to assume the baby died along with her.  The moment I saw you, I called up the vital statistics office and found out you had indeed been born.”

“And yet you still didn’t say anything to me.”

“Allegra, I’m a Bishop.  It would ruin me if anyone found out I had a child.”

“So you ran me off.”

He sighed and wiped his hand down his face.  “I did what I thought was best for that little girl.  She was miserable here.  I hoped that a change of environment would do her good.”

“But I TOLD you how miserable she was in the group home!”

“Yes, you did.”  The pitch of his voice rose to match hers.  “Repeatedly!  Do you think I could just go back on my decision because a Sister badgered me to death?  How would that look?  Especially if anyone found out about our situation.  Things worked out for the best.”

“Did they?”  Allegra stood and leaned with her palms flat on his desk, her face directly in his.  “Tessa died.  I got raped and ended up pregnant.  Is that for the best?”

The words sucked every bit of the fight from him and he pushed the chair back from his desk.  “I’m just a man,” he told her sadly.  “I make mistakes like anyone else.  But no one could possibly be any sorrier than I am.  I live with regret every day – over you, Frannie, Sal and Tessa.  You can’t possibly make me feel any more remorse than I already do.”

Seeing that his physical demeanor bore the truth of his words, she straightened, removing her hands from the desk.  “You’re right.  I don’t have to live with this, you do.  Somehow I don’t think we’ll be spending the holidays together, Daddy dearest.  But then again, you wouldn’t want word of your bastard love child spreading through the Church community anyway.”

He winced at her bluntness.  “Allegra, I’m not a bad man.  Don’t blame me for my ignorance of your existence.  Things may have been different if I’d known.”

“Maybe,” she allowed.  “But I guess we’ll never know.  Thank you for your time, Bishop.”

She had spun only halfway around when his voice stopped her.

“Wait.”  His hands fumbled to pull open the lap drawer on the desk, scrambling around for something inside.  “I want you to have my personal phone number – in case you need anything.  I don’t expect you to use it, but you should have it just in case.”  He pulled out a pen and notepad, leaving the drawer open while he scribbled the information down.

Her attention was drawn by the sun glinting through the window and bouncing off of something in the front of the drawer.  Something shiny.

Oh my God.

“Where did you get that?”  Her voice came out a squeak, and she pointed to the platinum cross winking up at her with its eight diamonds from the desk drawer.

The Bishop looked down in confusion, trying to see what had her so flustered.  When his eyes lit upon the cross, he stammered, “A… a parishioner brought that to me.  Said they found it in the sanctuary.  I’ve had in in here for safekeeping.  Why?  Do you recognize it?”

Felix has found me.  I have to get out of here.

She began backing toward the door.  “It’s mine,” she mumbled.  “The man who raped me took it.  I – I’m sorry.  I have to go.”

Allegra whirled and wrested the door open with a vicious jerk, striding blindly from the office and nearly colliding with Sister Celeste down the hall.

“Allegra,” she stopped her.  “There’s a man in the parlor demanding to see you.”

It’s him. 

Back in his office, the Bishop had put the last of the puzzle pieces in place.  His chin dropped to his chest and he crossed himself, bemoaning, “Oh God, what have I done?  I never meant for anything like this to happen.”

He hadn’t intended that any harm to come to her. 

He’d met Felix several months ago while conducting a visitation program at a minimum security prison.  The younger man had been serving time for internet hacking and was an exemplary inmate, who looked forward to the Bishop’s visits each week.  During several such visits, Felix expressed a concern about how he would find work once his sentence had been served. 

Coincidentally enough, his term ended about the same time Allegra had left the Church.  Having just found her, the Bishop hadn’t wanted to sever contact just yet and thought of Felix.  He knew some people, who knew some people and got him hired into the crew for her cousin’s band.

Felix was just supposed to watch Allegra and let him know how she was doing.  Make sure she was okay in a world she’d never lived in before. 

Not this.

Yet one more thing to be responsible for.  One more person suffering because of him.  Had his entire life been lived in vain?  Was there any good to come of it at all? 

The questions rattled around his head as the pain seared his heart.  As he’d told Allegra, he wasn’t a bad man.  He actually had a very soft heart, which may be where the problem lie. 

Well not this time.  Atonement must be made, he decided with authority. 

Unfortunately, he was not in a position to administer such atonement.  But he bet he knew someone who could.

Foraging again in his desk drawer, he found the contact information he was seeking, thankful for the foresight he’d had in obtaining it.  Not wanting to risk being associated with the likes of Felix, he tapped *67 on the phone to ensure his privacy, and referred to back to the sheet of paper.  He peered at the number through his bifocals, dialing each digit as he read it.  The last number was tapped, and with bated breath he waited for his party to answer.

“Mr. Bongiovi?  You don’t know me, but I have some information that you may be interested in…”