Monsignor Doherty first swept the broad sidewalk on the Locust Street side of St. Patrick's and then the more narrow sidewalk on the 20th Street side. The church's red doors faced 20th Street, but all he saw that day was black and white. You don't marry Protestants, especially not Anglicans. You don't even socialize with them. You talk about them in whispers and frowns and dismiss them for invading the homeland. You find ways to send money back home, whether through the collection plate or church socials, to help fund the resistance.
The wind blew up on this March Friday. She'd run away to marry him yesterday, St. Patrick's Day no less. What an insult to how he'd raised her, this favorite niece. The worst betrayal of them all, especially to Siobhan. She would collapse under the weight of the trauma, especially after the child came into the world. Annie Kate had told them bluntly. Balmoral had come for Agnes before noon and they'd gone off, gone for ever. Agnes was expected Balmoral's child and they would marry that afternoon -- in an Episcopal church, no less, and Annie Kate said, they needed to accept it, pray for the marriage, pray for the child.
Prayers came slowly to Monsignor Doherty. He kept busy by sweeping the sidewalk, by fixing the broken door hinge. Why did it have to swing that way in the wind and make that awful noise? He'd have to write a homily for tomorrow afternoon's mass. There had been today's morning mass to consider and there would be tomorrow morning's, but neither required him to stand in the pulpit and speak to the hearts of his parishioners. How could he walk up those three steps to his pulpit, look into his parishioners eyes, and tell them he'd failed? What would he say to reassure them that the world was, as he'd always believed, black and white?
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