Inquisition.
Two priests were present in the attorney’s office. Although only of
average height, Father Jiminez was as imposing as any man a foot taller,
with jet-black hair and eyes even darker, in a black clerical suit with
a Roman collar. He stood with his back to the windows. The gently
swaying palm trees and blue skies of Newport Beach behind him did not
lighten the atmosphere in the mahogany-paneled, antique-filled office
where they were gathered, and in silhouette Jiminez was an ominous
figure. Father Duran, still in his twenties and perhaps twenty-five
years younger than Father Jiminez, was thin, with ascetic features and a
pallid complexion.
The young priest appeared to be enthralled by a collection of Meiji
Period Satsuma vases, incensers, and bowls in a large display case at
the far end of the office, but Hatch could not escape the feeling that
Duran was faking interest in the Japanese porcelains and was actually
furtively observing him and Lindsey where they sat side by side on a
Louis XVI sofa.
Two nuns were present, as well, and they seemed, to Hatch, more
threatening than the priests. They were of an order that favored the
voluminous, old-fashioned habits not seen so often these days. They
wore starched wimples, their faces framed in ovals of white linen that
made them look especially severe. Sister Immaculata, who was in charge
of St. Thomas’s Home for Children, looked like a great black bird of
prey perched on the armchair to the right of the sofa, and Hatch would
not have been surprised if she had suddenly let out a screechy cry,
leapt into flight with a great flap of her robes, swooped around the
room, and dive-bombed him with the intention of pecking off his nose.
Her executive assistant was a somewhat younger, intense nun who paced
ceaselessly and had a stare more penetrating than a steel-cutting laser
beam. Hatch had temporarily forgotten her name and thought of her as
The Nun with No Name, because she reminded him of Clint Eastwood playing
The Man with No Name in those old spaghetti Westerns.
He was being unfair, more than unfair, a little irrational due to a
world-class case of nerves. Everyone in the attorney’s office was there
to help him and Lindsey. Father Jiminez, the rector of St.
Thomas’s Church, who raised much of the annual budget of the orphanage
headed by Sister Immaculata, was really no more ominous than the priest
in Going My Way, a Latino Bing Crosby, and Father Duran seemed
sweet-tempered and shy. In reality, Sister Immaculata looked no more
like a bird of prey than she did a stripper, and The Nun with No Name
had a genuine and almost constant smile that more than compensated for
whatever negative emotions one might choose to read into her piercing
stare.
The priests and nuns tried to keep a light conversation going; Hatch and
Lindsey were, in fact, the ones who were too tense to be as sociable as
the situation required So much was at stake. That was what made Hatch
jumpy, which was unusual, because he was ordinarily the most mellow man
to be found outside of the third hour of a beer-drinking contest. He
wanted the meeting to go well because his and Lindsey’s happiness, their
future, the success of their new life depended on itWell, that was not
true, either. That was overstating the case again.
He couldn’t help it.
Since he had been resuscitated more than seven weeks ago, he and Lindsey
had undergone an emotional sea change together. The long, smothering
tide of despair, which had rolled over them upon Jimmy’s death, abruptly
abated. They realized they were still together only by virtue of a
medical miracle. Not to be thankful for that reprieve, not to fully
enjoy the borrowed time they had been given, would have made them
ungrateful to both God and their physicians. More than that-it would
have been stupid. They had been right to mourn Jimmy, but somewhere
along the way, they had allowed grief to degenerate into self-pity and
chronic depression, which had not been right at all.
they were more stubborn than he had thought. The important thing was