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containing Phil Keegan’s cigar ends as well.
    â€œHe smokes?”
    â€œYou know what I mean. Ask Edna.” This last was an inspiration. If there was anything Marie and Edna agreed on, it was Martin Sisk. “When he isn’t talking about his late wife he is flirting with the widows.” It was thus that Edna captured Martin Sisk in a sentence.
    Martin spoke to the pastor, and Father Dowling went on saying Mass without a server. When it was clear the danger had passed, Marie asked what had happened.
    â€œI found out he has arthritis.”
    â€œ Does he?” Marie had arthritis herself, but in Martin’s case it seemed a punishment.
    â€œHe said Dr. Dolan might want to serve Mass, too.”
    â€œThat would have been different.”
    â€œMaybe I should agree.”
    It was a tempting thought, but not if alpha meant omega, too. The Dolans had been members of the parish and been married in the church, but affluence had taken them to the suburbs along with so many others. That and the Franciscans, or so Marie liked to think. Of course, the Dolans’ connection with St. Hilary’s antedated her own time as rectory housekeeper. Now, retirement and nostalgia had drawn them to the senior center.
    â€œLet sleeping dogs lie,” Marie advised.
    â€œAnd camels?”

5
    Marie looked around the door of the study and announced that Dr. Dolan wanted to see him, unable to conceal her delight.
    â€œSo you make house calls?” Father Dowling said when Marie ushered the doctor in.
    â€œNot likely. I was an anesthesiologist.”
    Baldness had become a kind of fashion, but not every boy who shaved his head had the noble shape of Henry Dolan’s, high domed, seemingly tanned. Father Dowling was tall, but Dolan was taller.
    â€œYou still smoke?” Dolan said.
    â€œYou make it sound temporary. Please sit down.” Behind him, Marie pulled the door closed.
    â€œEveryone smoked when I was young.”
    â€œNine out of ten doctors.”
    â€œYou remember that.”
    This initial exchange had not been a guarded sermon. Dolan brought a large hand downward over his face, stopped it, and looked at Father Dowling over his fingers.
    â€œMy family has a problem, Father.”
    The best response to that was receptive silence.
    Dolan took a breath. “I had best start at the beginning.”
    He did, and went on to the end. At first his words had a rehearsed air, but soon he was speaking from the heart. His granddaughter was adopted, something that had never seemed to bother her before, but now she wanted to know who her real parents were. He repeated the phrase.
    â€œYou can imagine what that phrase does to my daughter and son-in-law.”
    â€œWhat explains the sudden interest?”
    â€œShe has become serious about a young man.”
    â€œAh.”
    â€œI have to tell you that I understand why she would want to know. Of course I sympathize with my daughter, but it isn’t a criticism of her and her husband. I’m sure it isn’t intended to be. Martha is a wonderful young woman. I couldn’t possibly love her more than I do.”
    â€œI suppose it would be easy for her to find out nowadays.”
    â€œNot in her case. There wasn’t any agency involved. It was all quite legal, of course.” He paused. “Do you know Amos Cadbury?”
    â€œAmos and I have become friends.”
    â€œHe took care of everything.”
    â€œThen I know it was all legal.”
    â€œLegal but informal.”
    Other people’s problems are sometimes difficult to see as problems. Why should the Lynches feel devastated because their adopted daughter, now a young woman, wanted to know her true origins? If she was about to marry, their relationship would change in any case. No doubt the young woman’s curiosity seemed an implied criticism, as if she regarded the Lynches as impostors.
    â€œMy wife is almost as upset as my daughter.”
    It seemed