Page 47 of Play Nice

I woke up on Wednesday to a sick daughter in my bed.

“My stomach hurts,” Cici said, and proceeded to vomit all over my sheets.

She was too sick to go to school. I had to call out of work, my boss suspicious since I’d already taken a half day.

I stripped my bed and did a load of laundry, set up Cici on the couch with ginger ale and plain toast. She watched cartoons and colored. I was grateful that whatever she had didn’t seem to affect her sisters, who were their usual surly preteen selves.

Though all my daughters were daddy’s girls, Cici was still my baby. She liked to follow me around, sit in the tub while I did my hair and makeup in the morning, pick out my clothes with me. There was a chance I could get Cici to keep Father John’s visit a secret, but I realized it would likely involve bribery. Cici was clever enough to know when she held the cards.

“I’m having a visitor come by this afternoon,” I told her after I’d dropped the older girls at school.

“A boyfriend?” she asked, perking up.

“No,” I said. “His name is Father John. He’s a priest.”

She scrunched up her face like she’d just caught a whiff of something rotten. “Why’s a priest coming over?”

“He’s going to bless the house,” I said. “Make it nice for us to live here.”

She blew a raspberry. “I don’t know about that.”

“What don’t you know about?”

She turned back to her drawing—the sky at sunset. She didn’t give me an answer.

“Can I have more toast?” she asked.

“Feeling better?”

She shrugged.

“How would you like to go hang out in your sisters’ room?” I asked her. “We don’t have to tell them.”

She cracked a mischievous grin.

Father John arrived promptly at one o’clock. I’d made coffee, plugged in the electric kettle in case he wanted tea instead. I’d even bought shortbread cookies from a local bakery.

I opened the door, my palms sweating. “Hello, Father.”

He was dressed in all black, save for the white of his clerical collar. He removed his wide-brimmed hat and bowed his head. “Hello, Ms. Barnes. How are you today?”

“Very well, thank you, Father. Please, call me Alex. Come in.”

As he stepped over the threshold, he began to cough.

“Are you all right?” I asked, closing the door. “Some water?”

He nodded.

There was a noticeable shift in his demeanor as soon as he set foot in the house.

He followed me up the stairs, and I asked him to have a seat at the dining table. I went into the kitchen to get him a glass of water and the cookies. But when I came out, he was gone.

“Father?”

I set the water and cookies down on the table and repeated his name.

I heard him coughing. Horrible, violent, hacking coughs. I followed the sound toward the stairs, peering down to the landing. The front door was open. It slowly swung itself wide.