Page 32 of Aftertaste

Kostya blinked at her, surprised she’d come around. He’d thought long and hard about this part, about what had made the spirits—Anna, and his dad—return. About what might have summoned them.

“Well, uh. Okay. You have to think about her. To… to reach for her. With your thoughts. You have to want her to come back. To miss her so hard it casts out a line.”

Sister Louise rubbed her chest, right in the center. A tear slid down her face and vanished into her collar.

“I do.”

“Then we’ll wait. If she’s around, I’ll get a taste of what she wants to eat. Then I’ll cook it, and you’ll eat. And if I got it right, she’ll appear.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s it.”

Sister Louise picked up the water and brought it to her lips. Took a sip. Set it back down. Looked hard at Kostya, gauging something.

“I’m not supposed to be here,” she said then. “I told the other Sisters I had a headache. I’m supposed to be in my quarters, resting. If Father Mackenzie knew I was here, I’m sure he’d disapprove. He wouldn’t support”—she gestured to the space between them, the flatware he’d set in front of her, the Keanu Jesus—“the occult. To say nothing of my Superior; she’d have my head just for tearing that slip off your flyer.”

“So you’re—sorry, what are you saying?”

“I’m saying”—she lifted the glass of water again—“do you have anything stronger?”

OVER SCOTCH, WHICHshe drank like someone with a very different kind of habit, Sister Louise told Kostya about Sister Stacy. They met at the convent, both feeling the call in their twenties, Sister Louise after a stretch of horrible decisions that led her to seek the Lord and Sister Stacy after a string of good fortunes that renewed her faith in Him. They were fast friends, and though each entered into their sacred covenant with the deepest commitment to their Lord and Savior, they couldn’t help feeling, too, that part of what drew them to the Church at the very same time was a divine wish for their two souls to meet.

“We were peas in a pod. And with our order being a closed one, we clung to one another for support. Each time I thought I wasn’t goodenough for this life, Stacy reassured me. Each time I had doubts—and I had many—she’d pray with me. I was so grateful for her. She had the wisdom of ages.”

“How did she pass?” Kostya asked gently, and a dark look crossed Sister Louise, who drained her glass.

“That’s just it,” she said in a hushed voice. “I don’t truly know. She was in the prime of her life. The picture of health. She’d run around the grounds for exercise, and one day, during her run, she just dropped dead.”

“Jeez,” Kostya exhaled, and she crossed herself. “Sorry. Did they autopsy?”

Sister Louise shook her head. “Doing so would imply that someone on the grounds at the time had harmed her. Which… we’ve all taken vows. We are women and men of God. It’s inconceivable.”

“So then…?”

“Inconceivable,” she repeated. “Not impossible. The thought bothered me so much that I requested a transfer. But even from a distance, it wore at me. I prayed and prayed on it. I asked the Lord to help me make peace with her demise, to forgive whoever had done it, but He never granted me respite. Which is why I’m here.”

“To find out who killed her?”

Sister Louise nodded. “And to tell her how sorry I am, for not being there when it happened. She’d—she’d asked me to join her that morning. But I couldn’t; I’d promised to help receive visitors from another parish, so she went without me. I can’t tell you how much I regret that decision.” She gave a small sob. “How many times I’ve wondered what might have been if her life hadn’t been cut short. It’s been almost thirty years, but I never stopped thinking about her. Wondering how. And why.”

Kostya felt the sudden puff of air on the back of his neck, like somebody’s last gasp.

“I—I think I got her.”

He jumped up and barreled through Keanu Reeves and into the kitchen, Sister Louise’s bewildered face vanishing behind him.

Flavors were blossoming in his mouth. Not the thin broth or stale bread or moldy old cheese he’d expected of a nun, butheat.

Hot cayenne. Smoky paprika. Tabasco. Lots and lots of Tabasco. The perfect, crispy crackle of golden fried chicken skin falling away from juicy morsels of dark meat. The characteristic tang of sour cream and the funk of Gorgonzola, but it wasn’t… hm! Not a dip, but… soup? Hot and thick, creamy, rue-rich mouthfuls of baked potato chowder laced with lumps of blue cheese, and—yes! there it was, in the back of his throat—Guinness.

Kostya smiled to himself. Therewassome moldy old cheese in there, after all. And broth, he supposed. Plus a couple cardinal sins, like floating fryer-crisped goodness in anything that would make it go soft and soggy. Unorthodox and unexpected, the combination of heat and cream and crunch its own Holy Trinity.

He liked Sister Stacy already.

When he set the dish in front of Sister Louise, her eyes went wide.

SISTER LOUISE—NÉELouise Mary-Ellen Fitzpatrick—stared down at the bowl in front of her. She knew this dish. It was the only outside meal she and Sister Stacy had ever shared, an ill-advised concoction Stacy’s brother, Fred, had brought with him on a visit to the convent. They’d been too polite to refuse it, and had suffered mightily as a result, their bowels churning and cramping and threatening to vacate the whole night through. Unable to sleep, they’d stayed up talking, misery inspiring their love of one another’s company. But there was no way this chef could have known that.

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