Charisma by Orania Papazoglou Page B

They haven’t been so far. And Tom Burne has certainly tried. Hard.”
    “Obviously not hard enough.”
    “As hard as anyone could. Look, I’m sorry. All right? I keep forgetting how long you’ve been away and what kind of an environment you’ve been in. I didn’t mean to upset you.”
    “I don’t care if you upset me.” Actually, she wasn’t upset anymore. The fog was gone, and so was her nausea. In their place was a hard little clicking computer, making calculations.
    She looked into the clear brown water of her tea. It was getting cold. She ought to drink it. She just wished she could remember pouring it.
    “This Damien House,” she said, “is it here in New Haven?”
    “Off Congress Avenue on Amora Street.”
    “Do you know if Father Burne is a diocesan priest or from an order?”
    “No.” Dan was amused. “Does that matter?”
    “It might.”
    “I’ll find out for you if you want to know.” He got out of his chair and stretched. “Just do me a favor, if you don’t mind. Don’t go wandering down to Amora without a police escort. One of Burne’s people was murdered in the kitchen down there less than a week ago. That didn’t make much splash either. Maybe the press doesn’t like the feel of Father Tom Burne.”
    “Where are you going?”
    “To the office. It may be seven o’clock in the morning, but I do want to be out of the district attorney’s office one of these days. That takes work.” He straightened his suit jacket and tucked his shirt a little more neatly under his belt. “Do me a bigger favor,” he said. “There are a pile of invitations cluttering up the mantel in the living room, all of them for you. Answer a couple of them in the affirmative.”
    “It’s a lot earlier than seven o’clock in the morning.”
    He made a face at her. “There’s a dinner party at the Hanrahans’ next Friday night at eight. Go out to Lord and Taylor or one of those places and buy yourself a dress. Katie Hanrahan thinks you’ve spent the last seventeen years growing mustaches and a butt.”
    “Have I?”
    “You look like Mother, Susan. You always did.”
    He turned around and walked out through the kitchen’s swinging door, letting it swing back after him, like a wave.
    Susan finished her tea, poured herself another cup, then went searching around in the breast pocket of Andy’s shirt for her cigarettes. She lit one and coughed. She wasn’t sure why she was smoking again. Cigarettes tasted terrible and they made her chest ache. Maybe it was some kind of reaction to leaving the convent.
    After a while, her cigarette grew a long column of ash and she had to get up. The ashtray was tucked away in the cupboard with the teacups and the bowls.
2
    Andy didn’t wake until quarter to ten. When he came down, she was waiting for him, not in the kitchen but in the foyer. He had to pass through that after he came down the stairs. She had exchanged his flannel shirt for a plain green sweater. It had been hard to find. Most of the sweaters in the drawers of the cedar chests upstairs were either her own from her days at boarding school—and therefore too small—or her mother’s. Her mother’s looked much too rich. She might be going crazy, but she wasn’t going stupid yet.
    Andy stopped at the bottom of the stairs when he saw her and raised his eyebrows. He was good at it, and Susan laughed. He had always been her favorite brother. Unlike Dan, he was short and stocky and powerful, a throwback to ancestors who had come over on the boat and never expected to have any money. And he was fun. Dan was always so serious all the time, so driven. He would go to the Hanrahans’ dinner party, but that was probably because Dec Hanrahan was a power in the Democratic State Committee. He would buy her a beautiful dress, but only so that she could look good for a purpose. Andy was a float.
    Andy crossed the foyer to her, an oversize leprechaun under the shower of rainbows sent out by the prisms on the