"You tell that girl Dot says merry Christmas," she said.
"I will."
"And you don't let go of her, sweater boy," said Dot. "You hear me? You let go of that box first. I saw you. You let go of her first, I'll find out."
*
The Christmas party for the children of St. Barbara's parish was held every year on the Sunday before Christmas in the church basement, which smelled permanently of coffee, floor wax, and the ghosts of ten thousand fish fries. There were folding tables covered in red paper. There was a record player with a stack of Christmas albums. There were trays of cookies from the Altar and Rosary Society, and a large wooden chair with a red velvet cushion set up on a platform in front of the furnace room door, waiting for Santa.
Santa was supposed to be Uncle Carmine. Santa had been Uncle Carmine every year since Sal Castellano died; before that, it had been Sal. But at eleven o'clock on Sunday morning, Uncle Carmine called the rectory from his recliner to announce that his gout had flared up, that his left big toe was the size of a plum, and that he could not, as God was his witness, get a boot on over it.
Father Vincent Castellano, who was thirty-one and tall and had his father's nose and his father's laugh and none of his father's patience for Uncle Carmine, put down the phone and looked across the rectory kitchen at his sister, who had come to help set up, and at the tax attorney she had brought with her.
"How tall are you?" he said to Graham.