I heard the doorbell ring in the rectory and stood on the wide steps behind St. Christopher’s, waiting for Father Martin to answer the door, thinking that I’d been foolish to come alone. Maybe he’d want another priest to hear his confession; wasn’t that what Catholics did?
The door flung open and he appeared, handsome and scowling, dressed this time in a dignified black suit.
He led the way to his office and waved me to a chair, but I stayed standing in case I needed to make a quick getaway. Remembering his impatience on my first visit, I said quickly, “I know you stole the photograph of Katrina, and I think you took the doll, too. It was the one with the teacup, the one in the photograph. Am I right?”
He was probably in his fifties, and I wondered for the first time if priests retired on a pension and what they did after they retired. After a few seconds of stony silence, he turned to open a drawer in the small table next to the beaten-up leather chair and scrabbled for a second before pulling out the matryoshka. He held it so tightly his knuckles were white. He waved me to the hard-backed chair again, and this time I sat down. He leaned over to open and close a drawer in the desk, then turned and abruptly shoved the stolen photo of Katrina at me. It was the one of her with the young man. I realized with a mild shock I was sitting across from the same man, with the addition of three decades and a clerical collar. He threw himself into the chair and held the doll in his hand for another moment, his expression bleak, then he pushed that into my hands, too. I put the photo and the doll on the table next to him.
“It was an impulse. I don’t know what I was thinking,” he said dismally. “I bought Katrina that matryoshka thirty years ago.” He looked down at his folded hands. “Have you ever read a priest’s obituary?”
“Not that I remember, why?”
“There are never any survivors; no wife, no children, no grandchildren, often no siblings left alive. Katrina and I had a history. I liked knowing that there would be someone to care; someone to come to my funeral. Instead I went to hers.”
He sounded remarkably like Jacob, the spy. I barely resisted promising him I’d attend his funeral.
“How did you know each other?”
The impulse to explain was stronger than his impatience. “We were girlfriend and boyfriend when we were just kids.” He scowled at me. “I resisted my vocation for a long time because I wanted to be with her.” He clenched his hands into fists, and I pressed against the back of my chair to put as much distance between us as I could.
“Katrina didn’t take it well when I entered the seminary, and by the time I was ordained she had moved away. We wrote occasionally, so I knew when she married, when she moved to this country, when she divorced. I’ve lived in America myself for years now, mostly in the Midwest. When I was told six months ago I’d be posted here I contacted her. I wasn’t sure she’d want to see me, but we were gradually able to repair our friendship. Of course she’d changed,” he faltered. “But then so have I.”
I thought of the laughing young couple in the photo album and then of the somber middle-aged people they’d become. “What kinds of things did you talk about? Did she tell you about her son?”
He paled. “No. She never mentioned that she had a son. How old was he, do you know?” I could see him rapidly doing some arithmetic.
“He could be anywhere from a teenager to a grown man. No one seems to know anything about him.”
“She didn’t include him in her estate plan? That doesn’t sound like Katrina.”
“You said she’d changed a lot. Gavin says she left everything to St. Olga’s, the orphanage she supported in Kiev.”
“Gavin? Do you mean Gavin Melnik?” He looked startled.
“Yes, Gavin is her cousin. He doesn’t inherit anything, but he’s her executor.”
“I had no idea. He never mentioned—well, why would he? He didn’t know that Katrina and I knew each other. When he started to volunteer here last month, I think I was away on retreat. Our clients like him. He seemed to have a special connection with Matthew.” He ran a hand through his hair. “I suppose I should break the news about Matthew’s accident to him.”
“You were right about the fingers belonging to a priest,” I said. “Did you know him, the priest who was killed? He was from South America. His name was Sergei Viktor Wolf.”
“He doesn’t sound very South American,” he said brusquely.
“No, but he lived in Kiev for a time. Like Katrina. Like you.”
“All roads lead to Rome, is that it?” he said wearily. “No, I didn’t know him. But I knew Katrina had a lover called Sergei, back in the day. She was beside herself with rage when he entered the priesthood. She was angry with God, and I feared for her soul.” I always find talk of souls a little disconcerting, but he did it without any self-consciousness. “Years later, she told me she’d given the two men she loved to the Church, that she was giving them nothing else. But she wanted to do something for children without parents. I thought she was referring to herself, but now you tell me she had a child—”
“Is that where the idea for St. Olga’s came from?”
“She was proud of St. Olga’s as an alternative to the huge state orphanage she’d experienced. More like a home, really. She refused to allow the local diocese any oversight, but she said she had a sort of bagman running interference, and he was able to finesse things so that they provided a small group of sisters to run the home. She said it was being run by a small group of Olivetans.” He huffed in what was almost a laugh. “She didn’t know anything about them, and said they sounded like an Italian soccer team. I told her they’re a teaching order, and some of them are nurses, part of the Benedictines, so they’re ideal for working with children. A bit unworldly, but kind-hearted women and very hard-working.”
“So if I have a question about the orphanage, I should ask Gavin.” My heart sank a little. I wasn’t sure he could be objective.
He shrugged. “Katrina just referred to her cousin; I didn’t realize she meant Gavin. I know she trusted him and, truthfully, she didn’t have any time to do anything except work. I don’t think she ever took a weekend off.” He frowned. “She’d heard from a priest in Kiev about some kind of problem, and since Gavin was already over there, she was getting him to sort it out.”
“Do you remember the name of the priest who wrote to her?”
“I probably still have the e-mail; is it important?”
“I think it is.”
He opened a laptop on the desk and spent a couple of minutes scrolling through. “Here it is. It was a Father Ponomarenko.”
“Did Katrina say what the problem was?”
“Just that the priest must be fairly junior, because he wasn’t aware of St. Olga’s. She responded to him eventually, but he didn’t get back to her.”
I nodded and tried to think of another way around to what I needed to know. In the meantime, he was looking impatient, so I asked the first thing that came into my head. “I’m not Catholic myself,” I said. “And I’ve always felt those long black outfits with the—you know, wimples”—I felt proud for remembering—“were sort of severe, scary for kids.”
He frowned. “Most orders wear modern dress now, and anyway, the Olivetan Sisters wear white habits; always have.”
“What do you mean? Gavin showed photos of the nuns at Katrina’s memorial, and they were wearing black.”
He frowned. “I must have left by then. But anyway, Olivetans wear white habits. If the women in the photos were in black, they weren’t Olivetans, and they weren’t at St. Olga’s.”
As he closed the door behind me and I walked down the front steps, I felt I’d learned more than I expected.
I left the photo and the doll with Father Martin. What he did with them was up to him.