Recovery had been slow, laborious. There'd been the two-week coma and three surgeries (which Renato didn't recall, of course), and then six weeks of intense rehabilitation. His body had forgotten how to walk, how to hold a spoon, how to use the toilet. Fortunately, his mind had been fully intact—the bullet hadn't affected his brain, since it'd gone through his chest, passed the vital organs, and lodged near his spinal cord—and his will to recuperate had been all the stronger for his spiritual conviction. Yes, Renato was sure he'd never have persisted through the hours of excruciating physical therapy had he not had prayer. Most of his life, the man had turned to the Lord and His saints when in need of strength; his parents had given that gift to him, taught him from an early age to put his trust and concerns in God's hands. Even as a child, whenever he'd argued with boys or worried over some frightening story, little Renato had taken to his knees, pressed up against his bed, and fervently offered his confusion and suffering up to that great benevolent yet merciless being in the Heavens above. And God had seemed to answer his prayers.

Or most of them.

He'd prayed feverishly, frantically, for hours on end for some means of comprehending what had happened to David LeBlanc's family. He'd prayed when the children had disappeared, prayed when Stella LeBlanc's body had been found half-eaten by swamplife, prayed when David had been left alone in the world. He'd prayed when he'd awoken from his coma to hear that the man was still alive yet incapacitated, and he'd prayed upon hearing the utterly tragic news of David's sisters and brother-in-law. And yet, in spite of all his prayer, God's seemingly cruel plan for the LeBlanc family remained inscrutable.

Not a day passed without that encounter in the confessional shuddering through Renato's thoughts. He was sure that even behind the closed curtains of his comatose mind, he'd dreamt of that stranger and his divulged darkness. Even before the LeBlanc children had vanished without a trace, Father Becerra had (against his better judgment) striven to discover the identity of his penitent. He'd worried that some tragedy would occur, and though there was no evidence linking those children to the event that haunted him, the timing and coincidence were uncanny.

Penitents confessed all manner of sins in the confessional; Renato had heard everything from bizarre fetishes and compulsions to the banal and routine. But he'd never been unsettled by one seeking the sacrament, and while he'd been schooled in the methods of working with those in need of reconciliation all the way up to the most vile of sinners, Father Becerra had never quite thought he might end up with the clues to a terrible mystery.

No matter. It was over, now. All over. Even as Renato Becerra sat in the rectory living room awaiting his occupational therapist, he knew that David LeBlanc, while technically alive, was nothing more than a sack of bone and organ. Better to have died, thought Renato, chiding himself immediately afterward for the thought's un-holiness. And yet, why had God left David alive? What was the point in saving a man who'd been physically and mentally overwrought enough to put a bullet in his brain? Where was the mercy in it? And why put the pieces to a puzzle in Renato's hands only to force him to watch the picture crumble before it could be put together? Father had no answers, and the questions were beginning to eat at him.

Surely, he loved God with his whole heart. He prayed night and day for wisdom and understanding or, those failing, at least acceptance of his lack of insight.

But God remained silent and inactive, and Father Becerra struggled to maintain faith in spite of himself.

The front door of the rectory opened and shut. Footsteps, the shuffle of fabric, and then Father Kenyon appeared in the living room door frame. Gerard Kenyon had been called in as a temporary replacement for Renato while he recovered. Gerard was a missionary priest from Haiti, had one of those constantly smiling faces, cheeks round and shining, and though he'd been instrumental in carrying St. Basilio's parish through the last month and a half, Renato found it difficult to like the man, even while he appreciated the time and privacy to recuperate.

"How are you feeling, my friend?"

Renato glanced up at Father Kenyon. He knew he should be charitable toward the man, but damned if his stubstitute wasn't always obliviously good-natured, grinning like one of those fat-faced Renaissance cherubs. "God continues to ease my pain," he answered perfunctorily.

"That is good, Renato. Very good." Father Kenyon moved to a console table and put down the Bible he'd been carrying. Then he opened a drawer and removed a plastic bottle from it. "The holy water font at the door has run out. I'll fill this in the church."

Father Becerra nodded, not making eye contact but instead gazing rather absently at the Bible.

"Ah, you will be up and back in your place soon enough, my friend," laughed Father Kenyon, misinterpreting the other's silence. "You should come by for evening Mass, tonight; it would do your parishioners good to see you healing. Perhaps their joy will bring you strength."

"Perhaps." Renato forced a flat smile, met Father Kenyon's eye. Satisfied, the missionary priest headed back out, leaving the disabled alone once more.

Renato was impatient for Father Kenyon to be gone from Surette; the man's perpetual optimism annoyed him, and he detested the constant epithet, "my friend." He knew it was sinful to begrugdge the presence of a fellow priestly brother and his kindness, and yet a hardness had settled within him, not so much from his physical incapacity as from something he could not name, some absurd intuition that Fr. Kenyon knew more than he did and secretly laughed at him.

The Bible on the table seemed to shimmer in the corner of Father's eye. He turned to it, reached for the holy book. There were certain passages he read when particularly dispirited; he thought of reading them now, but just as he began to turn pages, a crash and crunch of glass from the interior of the rectory drew his immediate attention. Wedging the Bible beneath his armpit, he reached for his walker and painstakingly lifted himself from his chair, wincing at the barbs that shot through his back. Like an octogenarian, he hobbled with the assistive device, making his way out of the living room, into the hallway, and toward the kitchen. Scrambling, rustling noises from its direction convinced him he was no longer alone.

"Who's there?" he called, his words trembling in his chest, hoping to startle whoever or whatever had shattered that window. Only when Renato neared the kitchen doorway did he question what he was doing; he should've stayed put, waited—nothing in that kitchen was worth risking further bodily harm—and yet he pushed forward regardless. Flirting with death and suffering had for better or worse gifted him some new quality, either courage or temerity, but when he rounded that open door frame and peered into the dimly day-lit dine-in kitchen, Father Becerra lost the ability to think beyond the immediate.

As he'd conjectured, a window had shattered. It was the window in the upper half of a door that opened onto a small courtyard separating the rectory from the church. Glass shards lay glinting on the linoleum floor. But it was no human that had broken into the building, no rowdy teen or thief bent on robbery. Indeed it was something far more inconceivable: a huge wolf, fur sleek and black, jaw hanging open and panting, and it fixed its narrow coppery eyes on Renato. The creature's back, which came up past the rim of the dinette table, bristled in the vacuum of sound and time that enveloped man and beast. Father Becerra felt as if the moments strained through a sieve, and in that utterly impossible paralysis, he found ample time to study the hefty paws and yellowing claws, the red ribbon of tongue, the muscle shifting beneath the pelt. His fate belonged to the wild animal—Father couldn't possibly out-hobble the thing, and as the seconds began to catch up to reality and the pulsing heartbeat in his own ears began to dim, Renato made a strange and fleeting peace with what he deemed to be his end.

He loosened his arms, and the Bible, which he'd forgotten, slipped from his grip and plummeted to the floor, landing with a perturbing thunk.

The noise and smell and movement of the world resumed, and all at once Father Becerra was overwhelmed with a putrid stench, hot and thick and wet, unlike anything he'd ever known. His entire body numbed in renewed fear, and that was when the wolf made its move, crouching and lunging at the priest.

Renato fell back against the wall, slid to the floor. Searing pain knocked the breath from his body. He managed to hold out the walker as a deterrent, ready to jab it toward the beast, and yet the wolf seemed not to have been aiming for him but for the Bible, which lay open on the floor between the pair of them. Father Becerra watched in consternation as the animal snuffled at the holy book, rubbed its nose against the tissue-thin pages, crinkling and turning them. An image of St. Francis taming the bloodthirsty wolf of Gubbio crossed Renato's thoughts. He was no St. Francis—he hadn't the gift of communication with God's creatures—and yet something about this huge untamed animal suggested it could be appeased, if not entirely docile.

At a loss, Renato found himself unsure whether the choppy breaths he heard were his own or the wolf's; he made no move, as much because he was incapable as because he was afraid. But after a tense thirty or so seconds, the animal lifted its head and met the priest's look, holding everything in suspension until the sounds of a door opening and voices came from the front of the rectory, at which point it switched its focus to the hallway, pricked up its ears in attention, and backed away.

"My friend?" called Father Kenyon's voice, suddenly, his tone concerned.

Renato hesitated to return words, didn't want to put the wolf any more on edge, but he, too, turned to the doorway, the sudden anxiety of interruption in his thoughts. Should Father Kenyon enter the kitchen and catch the wolf unawares, the animal's fight or flight instinct would kick in, and who knew what might happen, then.

"In the kitchen!" he called, the effort it took exhausting his lungs. "Stay away!"

Predictably, Father Kenyon didn't listen or perhaps didn't quite hear, for his footsteps and voice entered the hall and drew near. Renato braced himself for the awful potential of violence, closed his eyes and tried once more to shout a warning, but all at once, hands were on his shoulders, squeezing gently, and the Haitian priest's softly accented voice was questioning him.

"Th-the wolf!" Renato cried, looking past the worried features of his shiny-cheeked peer, but to his unease, he saw no animal.

"Wolf?" Father Kenyon squinched his features. "Did you say wolf, my friend?"

"Yes—I . . ." Father Becerra shook with emotion. "It was here . . . it didn't come at you, in the hall?" Surely the animal had run. Surely!

"A wolf?" Father Kenyon's repetition was not encouraging. "My friend, there is no wolf. You see? No animal at all. But you must get up from the floor. Are you all right? How did you fall?"

Getting painfully to his feet, unable to refuse the aid of Father Kenyon, Renato attempted to piece his scattered thoughts together. "But the window, Gerard," he mumbled, pointing at the visible shards on the floor. "The wolf broke in through the window!"

"Oh no, no. So that's what's got you upset? I've found the culprits, my friend. They're here to apologize to you. To us."

Standing once again, his walker re-adjusted in his hands, Renato realized that two boys had followed Father Kenyon into the kitchen. They were somewhere between the ages of three and six, quite disheveled, rather sheepish with their down-turned mouths and heads scrunched into their sheepish shoulders. One (who appeared to be a little older than the other), held his hands behind his back, and the other's shaggy blond head of hair was so wild he resembled a mangy lion cub.

"Now," Father Kenyon chided, "what have you got to say for yourselves?"

The taller boy sniffed, looked askance. He muttered something under his breath.

"What was that, then?" Father Kenyon pressed. "Come now, child. The Lord is merciful, but we must confess our wrongs."

"I'm sorry," the tall one grumbled a bit louder this time.

Everyone glanced at the smaller boy, who squeaked, "Sorry!"

Though appreciative of the boys' apologies, Renato was perplexed. "But what have they done?"

Father Kenyon swung a hand up toward the back door. "The window! These young men were throwing rocks at the door, my friend. You see the stone there, on the floor? They've broken the glass."

"N-no," Father Becerra shook his head. "No, the wolf—"

"I saw them with my own eyes, Renato. Do you know them? Do you know their family?"

Yes, Father Becerra knew them. The two little boys of a couple that never attended Mass except on occasion, when the mother showed up with the two. Renato sucked in his lower lip. "Now Aaron, Micheal—you know you bear the names of two of the greatest men to have ever lived?" He gave the boys his sternest look, in spite of his own stewing thoughts. "Aaron was the brother of Moses, Biblically. And Micheal—the Archangel himself! He fought against the very devil and won!" He shifted his position, his entire lower back shuddering in weakness from his fall. "How is it that the two of you are throwing stones at my door? Should I call your father?"

Both boys immediately shook their heads, their eyes widening.

"Then promise me you'll get into no more trouble today, all right?"

They nodded vigorously, and properly mortified, shuffled out of the rectory with Father Kenyon prodding them from behind.

Left on his own, Renato pondered what'd happened. He'd been sure as anything that there'd been a massive, menacing wolf in his kitchen, and yet there were no traces of the creature, now. What had happened? He moved his walker forward, ready to head back to the living room and into his comfortable chair, when the tennis-balled foot of the contraption bumped the Bible still lying open on the floor.

The wolf had turned its pages, Renato recalled. As strange as it seemed, he'd watched it happen! Leaning toward the holy book, the priest reached to pick it up when he caught sight of the passage to which the tome had been opened: Isaiah:53.

"He was despised and rejected by mankind," Father Becerra muttered aloud, squinting at the small text with his tired eyes. "A man of suffering, and familiar with pain . . . yet we considered him punished by God, stricken by him, and afflicted . . ."

Renato's sucked in a breath. It was familiar, this passage. He'd heard it before.