Hot Ice

trespassing.”
    “Everyone is welcome to God’s house.” He took in their bedraggled appearance. “You’re traveling?”
    “Yes, Father.” Doug stood up beside her but said nothing. Whitney knew it was up to her to spin the tale, but she found she couldn’t tell a direct lie to a man in a white collar. “We’ve come a long way, looking for the graves of family who immigrated here during the French Revolution.”
    “Many did. Are they your ancestors?”
    She looked into the priest’s calm, pale eyes. She thought of the Merina who worshiped the dead. “No. But it’s important we find them.”
    “To find what is gone?” His muscles, weary with age, trembled with the simple movement of linking his hands. “Many look, few find. You’ve come a long way?”
    His mind, she thought as she struggled with impatience, was as old as his body. “Yes, Father, a long way. We think the family we’re looking for may be buried here.”
    He thought, then accepted. “Perhaps I can help you. You have the names?”
    “The Lebrun family. Gerald Lebrun.”
    “Lebrun.” The priest’s withered face closed in as he thought. “There are no Lebrun in my parish.”
    “What’s he talking about?” Doug muttered in her ear but Whitney merely shook her head.
    “They immigrated here from France two hundred years ago. They died here.”
    “We must all face death in order to have everlasting life.”
    Whitney gritted her teeth and tried again. “Yes, Father, but we have an interest in the Lebruns. A historical interest,” she decided, thinking it wasn’t actually a lie.
    “You’ve come a long way. You need refreshment. Madame Dubrock will fix tea.” He put his hand on Whitney’s arm as if to lead her down the path. She started to refuse, then felt his arm tremble.
    “That would be lovely, Father.” She braced herself against his weight.
    “What’s going on?”
    “We’re having tea,” Whitney told Doug and smiled at the priest. “Try to remember where you are.”
    “Jesus.”
    “Exactly.” She helped the aging priest up the narrow path to the tiny rectory. Before she could reach for the door it was opened by a woman in a cotton housedress whose face sagged with wrinkles. The smell of age was like old paper, thin and dusty.
    “Father.” Madame Dubrock took his other arm and helped him inside. “Did you have a pleasant walk?”
    “I brought travelers. They must have tea.”
    “Of course, of course.” The old woman led the priest down a dim little hall and into a cramped parlor. A black-bound Bible with yellowed pages was opened to the Book of David. Candles burned low were set on each table and on an old upright piano that looked as though it had been dropped more than once. There was a statue of the Virgin, chipped and faded and somehow lovely in its place by the window. Madame Dubrock murmured and fussed with the priest as she settled him in a chair.
    Doug looked at the crucifix on the wall, pitted with age, stained with the blood of redemption. He dragged a hand through his hair. He always felt a bit uneasy in church, and this was worse. “Whitney, we haven’t got time for this.”
    “Ssh! Madame Dubrock,” she began.
    “Please sit, I will bring tea.”
    Compassion and impatience warred as Whitney looked back at the priest. “Father—”
    “You’re young.” He sighed and worried his rosary. “I have said Mass in the Church of Our Lord for more years than you have lived. But so few come.”
    Again, Whitney was drawn to the pale eyes, the pale voice. “Numbers don’t matter, do they, Father?” She sat in the chair beside him. “One is enough.”
    He smiled, closed his eyes, and dozed.
    “Poor old man,” she murmured.
    “And I’d like to live just as long,” Doug put in. “Sugar, while we’re waiting to have tea, Remo’s making his merry way into town. He’s probably a little annoyed that we stole his jeep.”
    “What was I supposed to do? Tell him to back off, we have a hired gun at our backs?” He saw the look in her eyes when she flared at him, the look that meant her heart was attached.
    “Okay, okay.” Twinges of pity had been working on him as well and he didn’t care for it. “We did our good deed and now he’s having a nap. Let’s do what we came for.”
    She crossed her arms over her chest and felt like a ghoul. “Listen, maybe there are records, ledgers we could look through rather than…” She broke off and glanced toward the cemetery. “You know.”
    He