Chapter 13: The Saint

Wilda turned the television off so hard the remote cracked.

"Forgive," she said. "He forgives. The man broke his own hand on your boyfriend and he forgives."

"He's not my boyfriend," I said.

Everybody at the long table looked at me.

"He's my breach," I said, and the lynx-kin girl choked on her tomato soup.

Leander didn't stop at the news.

On Monday he sat on the yellow couch of the morning show with his cast in his lap.

On Tuesday he spoke at a Hallam Foundation lunch for "families touched by bond illness."

On Wednesday he posted a photo of himself lighting a candle at St. Brendan's.

Bettany was in every picture, one step behind him, holding something.

A coat. A water bottle. A tray of lemonade.

The caption always said family friend.

"He's lighting candles in your church," Wilda said, scrolling at the bench. "Your actual church, Wings."

"It's not my church," Orrin said from his crate. "I just fix the roof."

"Saint Leander of the Broken Hand," said the bear-kin woman, and the whole table fell apart at three in the morning.

The comments under his posts called him a saint.

The comments under mine called me things Wilda read out loud in a fake posh voice until they stopped hurting.

And under both, from brides with no profile pictures, the same line kept turning up.

Mine won't touch me either.

On Sunday I climbed the hill for my carving lesson.

The yard was empty.

The carvers were standing at the front of the cathedral with their masks around their necks, staring at the steps.

Mass had just let out.

There was a podium on the top step, and TV cameras, and a crowd of parishioners in their Sunday coats.

The cathedral board chairman stood at the microphone, a stooped heron-kin man with a big paper check.

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