Swann’s War by Michael Oren

Author:Michael Oren
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Swann’s War
Publisher: Michael Oren
Published: 2022-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

Winter in Fourth Cliff. Scoters, eiders, and long-tailed ducks bobbled white on the slate-gray waves or scoured the docks for chum. Fishing vessels of various stripes — drifters and gillnetters, crabbers and lobster smacks — rocked at their mooring. The town looked virtually deserted, the storefronts as bare of goods as they were of patrons, the streets ice-flecked. Only Alva Fitch stayed outside and coatless, futilely scraping moss from the fishermen’s memorial. Only the church, rising on the bluff above the intersection, remained unbowed. Through the mist, its spire ascended like the hand of a child who knows all the answers. Or the arm of a drowning man sinking fast.

It was to the church that Mary Beth headed that morning, parking the coupe near the spot where she used to chat with Paolo. The prisoner and former officer and architect was nowhere to be seen, and not only because the sidewalks were too slushy to sweep. He was avoiding her, she suspected, still nursing his pride. That didn’t prevent her from stopping there on her patrol route, sometimes getting out to peek around. One of those times she found yet another note stuck to her windshield. This, too, was written in black, but in place of Francesco and Abigail’s names was Paolo’s and her own, separated by the same red heart.

When she returned home and climbed to the top of the lighthouse, she pinned the new note on her link chart, directly next to the old one. They had definitively been written by the same hand. Not only was the ink the same but, more tellingly, two of the letters. The o’s were closed with a curlicue and the a’s concluded with a tail. The hearts were identical.

Still, that was hardly astonishing. More so was the invitation she received in the mail. “Join us for Christmas Eve Eucharist,” it read, signed Viola Miller. The o was corkscrewed, the a entailed. After Miller was a holly-red heart.

With the latest note and the Christmas invitation, Mary Beth returned to town and climbed the whitewashed steps to the church. The tall wooden doors were white as well and decorated with twin wreaths. She removed her cap and entered.

Inside was silence, though not the dark, mystical silence of her childhood church, no incense and echoes and shadows of fluttering nuns. On the contrary, even the meager light the morning meted out was gathered by the tall, mullioned windows and magnified by their scalloped glass. The pews were waxed and the altar free of statuary, only a simple gold cross. Though she had drifted from the church she grew up in, finding it too stifling, Mary Beth missed it increasingly these days, and now more than ever. Where could she make confession in this church? From where would she draw the passion?

But where else would she find a woman like Viola Miller, fastidiously tidying as she always did Advent week, preparing for the Christmas prayers? Her sweater and scarf — both handknit, both dun — made her look larger than she was.

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