Altarboy novel · Chapter 6 of 24

Chapter 6: Cold Snap

Father Cyril rapped on the window again with his flashlight.

"Is this a picnic?" he called through the glass.

Fintan put his forehead down on the steering wheel and said a word in a low voice that was not in any hymnal.

Kaz rolled down the window.

"Father, how did you get here?"

"I walked." The old man beamed. "I was looking for the laundromat. I've lost a sock."

"It's closed, Father."

"Then I'll sit in the truck."

They drove him home between them, Kaz holding the old man's cold hand in the middle of the bench seat.

Neither of them said a word about the kiss.

By dark, the church had gone freezing.

The boiler in the cellar gave one deep cough at seven o'clock, went silent, and would not start again.

Fintan came up the cellar stairs with grease to his elbows.

"Part's dead," he said. "I can't get a new one before Wednesday."

"How cold does it get?"

"Thirty-eight in the cot room. Father's rooms are on the electric, he'll be fine." Fintan wiped his hands. "You're not sleeping there."

"Where, then?"

Fintan said nothing for a second.

"The carriage house," he said. "There's a second bed."

"Is there?"

The big man looked at him, and a dull red crept up above his collar.

"There's a couch," he said.

"I know what you have."

"Kaz."

"I'm just saying, I can be cold or I can be warm. You decide."

Fintan took a long breath through his nose.

"Get your tin," he said.

The carriage house was one big room above an old garage.

It had a woodstove, a rug, and a bed against the far wall under a gray wool blanket.

There was a workbench under the window, a pegboard of chisels, and a shelf of paperbacks, all fantasy, all cracked at the spine.

Kaz stood in the middle of it, with the tin under one arm.

Behind him, Fintan fed the stove.

"Couch," Fintan said, without turning.

"It's four feet long."

"Then you'll fold."

"Fintan."

The big man stood up.

The stove lit his face from below, all hard planes and tired shadows.

"I'm thirteen years older than you," Fintan said. "I'm the one with the keys, and the one with the truck."

"So?"

"So I'm not going to be the man who took advantage of a kid with nowhere to go."

Kaz set the tin down on the workbench, very carefully.

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