"Isn't this St. Anthony's church?" she said, making a face as she looked around at the destruction.
"It was. We're trying to make it so again."
Her gaze had come to rest on his yarmulke. "But you're a—"
"A rabbi, yes. Rabbi Zev Wolpin, at your service." He gestured around him at the church. "Such a long story, you wouldn't believe."
She smiled. A pretty smile. "I'll bet. I'm looking for my uncle. He was a priest here but he left. I need to find him."
Zev felt a lightness in his chest. "His name wouldn't happen to be Cahill, would it?"
Her smile broadened. "Yeah. Father Joe Cahill. You know where he might be?"
"I believe I do." He turned and called into the nave. "Father Joe! You have company!"
LACEY . . .
Lacey totally lost it when she recognized the tall, broad-shouldered man striding toward her through the rubble of the church. He needed a shave, he needed a haircut, and his faded jeans and flannel shirt were anything but priestly, but she knew those blue eyes and the smile that lit his face when he saw her.
"Uncle Joe!"
She found herself running forward and flinging herself at him, sobbing unashamedly and uncontrollably as she clung to him like a drowning sailor to a rock.
"Lacey, Lacey," he cooed, holding her tight against him. "It's all right. It's all right."
Finally she got hold of herself and eased her deathgrip on him. She wiped her eyes.
"Sorry about that. It's just..."
"I know," he said, taking her hands in his.
Lacey looked up at her uncle. Did he? Did he realize what she'd been through to get here? She'd thought she was tough, but the trip from Manhattan had taken her longer than she could have imagined, and put to shame every nightmare she'd ever had.
"How are your mom and dad?" he asked.
She saw the forlorn hope in his eyes—her mother was his older sister—but had to shake her head.
"I don't know. I tried to contact them when the shit hit the—I mean, when everything went to hell, but the lines were down and everything was chaos. I got to wondering if they'd even bothered trying to get in touch with me."
"I'm sure they did," Uncle Joe said. "Of course they did."
"How can you be so sure? They've refused to speak to me for years."
"But they love you."
"Funny way of showing it."
"They're not rejecting you, Lacey, just your lifestyle."
"One's pretty much wrapped up in the other, don't you think. At least you kept talking to me."
She'd been moved as a kid from Brooklyn to New Jersey when her father landed a job with a big pharmaceutical company in Florham Park, but New York had remained in her blood. When it came time for college her first and last choice had been NYU, for reasons beyond what it offered academically. Its location in Greenwich Village had been equally important.
Because somewhere along her years in high school Lacey Flannery had realized she wasn't like the other girls. She needed an accepting atmosphere, a place where anything goes, to stretch her boundaries and find out about herself, learn who she really was.
In her second year at NYU she moved into an off-campus apartment with a senior named Janey Birnbaum. At the time her folks thought they were just roommates. Three years ago, right after her graduation with a BA in English, she came out.
And that was when her folks stopped speaking to her. She'd tried to visit them, tried to explain, but they hadn't wanted to see or speak to her.
The one person in the family she'd found she could talk to was, of all people, her uncle the Catholic priest. Uncle Joe hadn't approved but he didn't turn her away. He'd tried to act as go-between but her folks stood firm: either get counseling and get cured—like she was mentally ill or something!—or stay away.
She had a feeling her father was behind the hard line, but she couldn't be sure. Now she might never know.
The rabbi said, "So may I ask, what is it, this lifestyle, that your parents reject but a priest doesn't?"
"I'm a dyke."
The rabbi blinked. Probably the first time anyone had ever put it to him that bluntly. She also noticed her uncle's grimace. Obviously he didn't like the word. Lacey hadn't liked it either at first, but Janey and her more radical friends encouraged her to use to it because they were taking it back.
That was all fine back then, but now . . . take it back from whom?
"Doesn't that mean a lesbian?" the rabbi said.
"Through and through."
"Oh. I see."
"Not just a garden-variety lesbian," Uncle Joe said. His wry smile looked forced. "A radical lesbian feminist, and an outspoken one at that."
"You forgot to mention atheist."
His smile faded a little. "I try to forget that part."
It had taken Lacey awhile to come out, but when she did she decided not to be out partway. She wasn't ashamed of who she was or how she felt and was ready to get in the face of anyone who tried to give her grief about it.
She'd started writing articles and reviews for the underground press—the radical, the gay, even the entertainment freebies—with the hope of eventually moving above ground. Her role model was Norah Vincent, who'd been writing a regular column for the Village Voice—back when there'd been a Village Voice. Lacey didn't always agree with her views but she envied her pulpit. She'd vowed that someday she'd have a column like that.
But that dream was gone now, along with so many others ...
"Anyway," she said, "I hadn't been able to contact Mom and Dad, so I decided to check up on them."
She'd been all alone then. Janey had gone out one day, scrounging for food, and never come back. After spending a week looking for her, Lacey had to face the unthinkable: Janey was either dead or had been turned into an undead. Crushed, grieving, and with New York becoming more dangerous every day, she'd decided to go home. She fought her way through the Holland Tunnel—the living collaborators hadn't closed it off yet—and made it to her folks' place in Union, New Jersey.
"When I got to their house, I found the front door smashed in and blood on the living-room rug." She felt herself puddling up, her throat tightening like a noose. "I don't think they made it."
She hoped they were alive or dead, anything but in between. They'd rejected her, they'd caused her untold pain—though she'd probably given as good as she got on that score—but they were still her parents and the thought of her mother and father prowling the night, sucking blood . . .