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a note next to the bread on the table. I WENT TO SERVE . Slapping his pants pocket to make sure he had his house key, he grabbed his jacket. The front door lock clicked softly behind him.
    Only a white milk truck moved down the street. Gino walked along the sidewalk darkened by the evening’s rain. The night had seen a real storm. He stepped over flattened leaves, twigs, branches thick as his arm. There’d been plenty of lightning and low, rolling thunder, the kind that lasted many seconds and rattled the windowpanes and terrified Gino’s younger brothers and sisters, but he hadn’t been afraid. The storm was right, wonderful. Gino knew it stormed because the girls had seen Jesus in the church.
    The miracle hadn’t been in the newspaper. Gino had wonderedwhy, then concluded that the people who printed the newspaper weren’t Catholics. At supper when he told his parents they’d misunderstood. No, he argued. No. You have to believe! “Eat,” his father had told him.
    They’d see, Gino thought. And he would be special because he knew and believed from the beginning. He walked past the school, breathing the cool air that tasted wet and fresh from the night’s storm, then cut through the empty parish courtyard and entered through the side doorway of the church.
    The dark hallway leading to the altar boys’ room stretched ahead of him. He dipped his fingers into the holy water fount and made the sign of the Cross. On the wooden floor by the fount were pages torn from a parish hymnbook. Gino picked them up, then saw the edge of another torn page crushed beneath the inner side door. What? He opened the inner door of the church.
    His breath tripped in his throat. Covering the marble floor were scores of shattered vigil lights. They looked like they’d been thrown there. The wrought-iron stand that had held them lay on its side. More hymnals had been flung to the floor. Gino looked at Mary’s side altar. The blue embroidered cloth hanging over it had been slashed. The gold candlesticks were knocked down, and each candle was broken. Flowers and more vigil lights lay smashed on the altar’s steps. The heavy tabernacle beneath the statue of the Virgin had been tipped from its base, as if shoved by a giant, and rested at a dizzy angle. Glass crunched beneath his feet as he stepped forward. He turned and ran.
    Gino ran up the dark hallway to the altar boys’ room. Pitch black. His fingers found the light switch. Nothing there had been damaged. No one else was there. He hurried down half the length of the dark passageway that ran behind the center altar and led to the sacristy and rectory, calling out, “Father! Father!” But when he heard no response he stopped in the darkness. He listened to his pounding heart. There was nothingto do but return to the servers’ room and dress for Mass. Numbly, he took his black cassock from the closet. He threw on his surplice. Then he buttoned the top button of his white shirt. His fingers were shaking. Gino looked at his hands, then genuflected and held them for a moment to his face.
    Then he took a long breath and walked again down the passageway, hearing the echo of his footsteps. Someone was there now—a priest, smoke curling from a cigarette.
    â€œFather!” Gino cried. “Father, the church!”
    â€œI know,” Father Manning said, cinching the cord around his alb.
    â€œBut, Father—”
    The priest walked toward him and put his hand on his shoulder. “You’ll forgive me. I don’t usually smoke here. I don’t want to give you a bad example. You don’t smoke, do you, Gino?”
    â€œNo, Father.” The hand still held his shoulder.
    â€œGood. I wish I shared your self-control.” The priest withdrew his arm.
    â€œBut the church—” Gino began.
    â€œWe’ll clean up the mess before too many people see it. Don’t be upset.”
    â€œBut I thought it