Embracing Darkness Read Online Free PDF Page B

kite-flying, which little Phineas Poole hated because once they were in the park Mrs. Edith Fisher would always happen to be there. She was a very good friend of Dr. Poole’s wife, Mary Margaret Brennan-Poole.
    His father would always say, “I’ll be right back, Phin. You get that ol’ kite rarin’ to go, and I’ll be back before it reaches the tails of those seagulls.” Yet his father never came right back. Instead, he would disappear and leave Phineas to his kite.
    The boy never cared much for kite-flying; he only liked the idea of spending time with his father. One time Phineas made the mistake of turning his head around to look for his father, once the kite had reached beyond the seagulls, but his father was nowhere to be seen.
    The boy learned to accept that inevitability while accompanying his father to Wallis Sands State Park on the tiny stretch of New Hampshire coastline for the fourth time that summer of 1900. This is the way it’s going to be every Sunday afternoon, he thought.
    Once Phineas asked his father on the way to the park, “Daddy, is Mrs. Fisher going to bring Louisa to the park so I have someone to fly my kite with?”
    Dr. Robert Poole was in no way a violent man, but Phineas still recoiled a little when his father turned abruptly to answer his question. “Now, Phinny, you know I’ve told you before. Whatever you and I do in the park stays in the park. Always . Mom doesn’t need to know anything. My friendship with Mrs. Fisher… well, we’re just good friends, just as she and your mother are good friends. Friendship is never wrong. Mom never needs to know what we do in the park, okay? It’s our special private time.”
    Phineas loved his father in spite of how he’d been feeling neglected during their “special private time.” Perhaps it was the relationship he had with his father in other respects that made him feel closer to Robert Poole rather than Mary Margaret Brennan-Poole.
    “It’s our secret,” said Robert Poole.
    “Just like what we do in the shed is our secret,” Phineas added.
    Dr. Poole stopped abruptly. “What we do in the shed is our business. Yours and mine!” he said angrily.
    Phineas withdrew a bit, and tears welled up in his eyes. His father knelt down until the two were eye to eye.
    “As I’ve told you before,” Dr. Poole continued. “Mommy can’t know about that either.”
    “GRUBER’S TOILET SOAP! THE SOAP OF CHOICE FOR HOUSEWIVES ALL ACROSS NEW ENGLAND! AVAILABLE NOW AT YOUR LOCAL GENERAL STORE!”
    Phineas remembered the picture at the bottom of the advertisement. It was a picture of Pope Leo XIII in the same exact pose as the portrait in the hallway of St. Andrew’s rectory. A hand painted on the picture, meant to be that of the Pontiff, extended menacingly out of his robes. In a rather exaggerated bubble connected to his mouth were the words, “CLEANLINESS IS NEXT TO GODLINESS!”
    Father Poole managed a more genuine laugh this time, finding this coincidence to be more amusing than the joke he had made earlier about Rome coming to redecorate the drab interior of St. Andrew’s rectory. As his laugh faded, the priest looked around the room once more, desperately trying to find something else with which to entertain himself.
    A priest presiding over Sunday Mass who stutters when he speaks , he thought. No wonder the church attendance here is small.
    The priest’s glance then shifted from the pistachio-green walls to the floor by his bed and then to the nightstand with one leg supported by a book. When he looked more closely, he noticed that the book was in fact a Bible. As he lifted the weight of the table off it, Phineas picked up the volume and opened it to the title page, where he found this inscription: “To Father Albert Carroll. Good luck in your new parish. May this Holy Book offer you support when you need it. Love always, Mother. February 3, 1895.”
    Father Poole read the inscription a second time and then wondered whether he ought to