Empire Falls

he wanted to jot down a couple small improvements before the ten-thirty Mass—always a more critical audience, since they were actually awake. It was imperative that he make his notes before Father Tom wandered in and created his usual chaos. “I’m afraid I haven’t time for guessing games, Mrs. W.,” he said, then rooted around in her drawers until he located a pad of paper and a pencil. “If there’s something missing, I suggest you talk to Father Tom. He’s been hoarding things in his room since he heard the diocese might shut down our humble operation.”
    Slinging himself into the booth, he paused, the tip of the pencil above the paper, sensing that if he did not write down his first thought immediately, it would be lost forever. In this he was correct. “What did you just say?” he asked, looking up, unsure he’d heard his housekeeper right.
    “I said that what’s missing is Father Tom.”
    Father Mark swallowed uncomfortably. “Well, he can’t have gone far,” he offered, his intended certainty sounding rather wishful. “You’re sure he’s not around somewhere?”
    Mrs. Walsh was certain, and told him so.
    “Still, let’s make sure,” Father Mark suggested, rising from the booth.
    “Make you sure, you mean,” she grumbled, but together they searched the house all over again. When they finished, Father Mark returned and searched the church too, aware how fond the old man was of hiding in the confessional.
    The mission a failure, Father Mark and Mrs. Walsh stood on the back porch surveying the church grounds, the priest looking gut-shot, his housekeeper smug, their search having revealed nothing but the truth of her theory, which held that the old father had not gone missing this morning between Father Mark’s departure for Mass and Mrs. Walsh’s arrival, but rather sometime last night. Which meant Father Mark was to blame.
    On those rare occasions when he had to leave the rectory in the evening, Father Mark always hired a sitter to watch TV with Tom and make sure he got to bed okay. Mostly he assigned an altar boy to this duty because, after Father Tom had appeared bottomless in Mrs. Walsh’s kitchen, Father Mark hadn’t wanted to risk a female sitter. The boy who’d done last night’s shift had left a note saying the old priest had retired early, at eight-thirty. The boy himself had remained at the rectory until ten, then closed up as instructed and gone home, with the understanding that Father Mark would be home shortly—though, as it happened, the younger priest hadn’t returned until nearly midnight. Nor had he looked in on Father Tom, as he now realized he should have. Tom was a notoriously light sleeper, and Father Mark hadn’t wanted to disturb his slumber. At least that was the lie he’d told himself at the time and now repeated to Mrs. Walsh. What Father Mark had actually feared was not that the old man would be asleep, but that he would be awake and full of curiosity.
    So it was possible, as much as Father Mark hated to admit it, that he’d already been gone for fifteen hours! Particularly worrisome was that no one had called to report seeing Father Tom at large. He’d wandered off before, but he was a well-known figure in Empire Falls and, often as not, he was gathered up and returned to St. Cat’s even before he was discovered to be missing. That fact, combined with his guilt, preyed on Father Mark’s mind, and as they stood there on the back porch, it occurred to him to ask, “Tom can swim, can’t he?” The possibility that the old priest might’ve ended up in the river sent a vivid chill straight through him. If he’d gone into the river below the falls, he might travel all the way to Fairhaven, where the dam would stop him. In the previous century, suicides along the Knox sometimes made it all the way to the ocean.
    Mrs. Walsh had no idea whether Father Tom could swim, any more than she knew why on earth she was expected to know such a thing. “I’m just glad you had the car,” she said. “You know how he used to love to drive that Crown Victoria.”
    Father Mark looked at her.
    Mrs. Walsh looked back at him. “You did have the car?”
    “Shit,” he said, for he hadn’t taken the car last night. His companion had driven.
    “Bingo,” said Mrs. Walsh.
    They both regarded the closed door of the detached garage, the one place on the parish grounds they had not checked. Father Mark heard his name called and saw an altar boy waving to him as he