After he shooed away Bruce Wayne, Monsignor Ryan motioned his niece into the office and shut the door. The young woman sat in the seat across from him and he read the tiredness in her eyes.
"Well, first things first," the priest's voice was hushed. "Are you feeling all right?"
Cassandra made a flattening motion with her right hand. Despite the years they'd known one another, Father Ryan had never heard her speak. The motion was her way of saying, "Stable." Though a pained shudder ran through her right shoulder as she signed it.
"Did you take a hit there?"
She considered making the motion again, but then unzipped her winter coat and peeled the T-shirt down her shoulder to reveal an angry, purple bruise.
Father Ryan cringed. "That's too much. I know you've done this sort of thing before, but this is just senseless. We should be letting the police handle this, we should—"
Cassandra pushed her chair forward, laid a hand on top of one of the priest's, and shook her head. The two looked hard at one another before Father Ryan let out a long breath. As if to release the tension, Snowball rose, stretched on top of some of his paperwork, and licked Cassandra's hand. She smiled and scratched behind his ears.
"Are you hungry?" Father Ryan rose and went for his coat. "Anything you'd prefer?"
Snow was just starting to fall when the two left the cathedral for a small Italian restaurant with red-checkered tablecloths across the street. The servers had grown accustomed to the two of them, and as they were seated the waitress said, "And I'll make sure we get plenty of bread out for the table."
Father Ryan's smile was sheepish, but Cassandra showed her a grin. They'd first come to the restaurant six years before when they'd first met, and Cassandra ate seven rolls with butter before dinner even began. Although her stomach hurt later that night, she never lost her appetite for them. The monsignor and his niece didn't speak much over their meal, and when they were finished and stepped back into the winter air he asked, "Do you need a ride home?"
Cassandra gave him a hug but shook her head. As the priest made his way back for the church, she turned to the corner, hands deep into her pockets for warmth, and waited. With their meeting complete, she was off to catch a bus back to the suburbs. Back to Hannah's house. And, most significant to her, back to her bed.
Even if she could drive a car, Cassandra would probably prefer the buses. Someone else could handle the movement and no one gave her much more than a passing glance. Which was especially nice on a day like that one, because her sore muscles called for a lot of arm lifts and leg stretches, at least with what room she had. She'd seen an occasional enemy during her shifts late into the night at the cathedral, but that giant in the mask was something new.
She knew where to get on and where to get off, which bus number she needed to wait for, and what time to arrive. And yet she only understood those concepts as abstracts. Cassandra could journey in and out of Gotham City without issue and with excellent sense of direction, but being asked to point which way was north or south always stumped her. She understood the ride on the bus took thirty-five minutes, which was also about the same length of time most of Father Ryan's deliveries from restaurants took when they ordered in, and if it was running fast or slow, she was aware of that too. But despite her best efforts, the idea of how that correlated to the hands on a clock still eluded her. It didn't seem the world was made for her, but she adapted as best she could, and at least she had a few people who understood.
Cassandra stepped off the bus on Puckett Place and gave her best smile and wave to the driver. Most of the bussers didn't pay attention when she did, but if they noticed, they always smiled and waved back. Hands tucked into her winter coat, she walked the last two blocks home.
Hannah Lorenzo and her husband John lived in the suburbs. John was a mail carrier, Hannah worked as an at-home caregiver, subsidized by the government. The two always found money enough to get by, but knew little in the way of luxuries. Which was what made Cassandra tilt her head at the bright red sports car parked adjacent to Hannah's aged, burgundy van.
Three boys and one girl all younger than Cassandra by at least half a decade sat sprawled between the couch and the floor in the living room. Two of the boys, Larry, and Peter, a pair of curly haired twins differentiated only by Peter's glasses, sat with their eyes fixed to the television set. The youngest member of the family, Marco, another sat at the corner of the loveseat with a book about dinosaurs. And the girl, Rosie, worked meticulously at filling in a coloring book. Somewhere in the midst of giving Cinderella a head of deep, black hair, she was the first to look up, see Cassandra, and walk over to her.
The little one wrapped her arms around Cassandra's legs and looked toward the kitchen. "Someone's here. Talking to Mama."
Cassandra rustled Rosie's hair, then gestured back toward her coloring book. She nodded, released her hug, and followed the direction. Marco looked up from the book of dinosaurs looked up as Cassandra walked to the kitchen, pushed up his glasses, and waved to her. Cassandra caught the motion out of the corner of her eye, paused, and waved back. With a pause at the kitchen entrance, she listened in for some sense of the situation.
"And your mother knows you're here?" That was Hannah's voice. "I'm not going to get a call in the middle of the night about this?"
"I called while I was halfway out." The words of the other voice were stretched with pleading and complaint. "You know my Ma, she couldn't care less where I'm at right now."
Hannah breathed an exasperated sigh. "I wish you wouldn't talk like that—as a matter of fact, you're stopping that right now."
Cassandra leaned past the threshold and knocked on the kitchen wall. Beside the tired, weather-lined Hannah stood a young man in a leather jacket who jumped at the sound. "Shhh—shoot!" He seemed to correct his language upon a glare from Hannah. "Who is this?"
"You two have met before," Hannah said. "Cassandra, this is George. Your…" she paused to consider the word, and went with, "cousin. He's Joel's eldest son."
Instantly Cassandra's heart beat a little faster. Hannah and Father Ryan's youngest brother, Joel, didn't come up in conversation often. Cassandra didn't understand the entirety of why talk of him was avoided, but she'd heard an occasion stern word from Hannah he didn't need to be brought up.
George hesitated for a moment before he put out his hand. "Oh yeah, that's right. Hey, cous, it's been a bit."
Cassandra looked back and forth between his face and his hand for a moment before she stepped forward and shook it. As they held one another, the kitchen timer went off. Peter walked in from the living room without saying a word or looking at any of them, crossed to the stove, and set it for twenty-five minutes.
Hannah stepped in front of him on his way back. "You boys doing all right?"
Peter nodded and briskly moved past her.
Hannah then looked up at Cassandra. "Cass, we're still talking over a few things, do you mind?"
Cassandra shook her head, she'd wanted to get moving back toward her bed anyway. She gave a last nod toward George, stepped back into the living room, and went up the stairs toward her bedroom. Her room was the smallest at the end of the hallway, but since she didn't share it and her setup was pretty Spartan anyway, it didn't bother her.
When she arrived at the door, there was a creak from across the hallway. "Cassie? How you feeling after last night? Still sore?"
Cassandra turned. The bedroom opposite hers belonged to Hannah and John's only biological child, their daughter Lucille. By their parents' estimation, Lucille was a little older, but depending on who needed coolheaded but bottomless loyalty and who needed to know how people worked, the two traded off being big sisters to one another. Lucille stood leaned against her doorframe in one of the belly-cut shirt that showed her pierced navel that Hannah hated. Just as she'd done with the monsignor earlier, Cassandra made the, "Stable," motion.
"Well, that's good," she said. "I take it you saw cousin George downstairs?"
Cassandra nodded.
"Did Mom ever tell you about him? You know, him and his side of the family and all?"
With one arm out, Cassandra moved her hand up and down to suggest, "Just a little."
Lucille sighed and shook her head. "You can't hold it against him. George is kind of a jerk and a punk, but he didn't ask for this." She paused to consider, then followed, "Not everyone in the family is as good as my mom and Uncle George. Uncle Joel, he's cousin George—" Lucille stuck out her tongue and made a face. "Ugh, too many Georges. Cousin George's dad, Uncle Joel, he's been doing hard time since before you started living here. He did some stuff for the Irish mob, I don't know the specifics, but bad stuff, obviously."
Cassandra nodded along with all of this, but as she did, Lucille uttered a low chuckle.
"What am I even saying? You probably don't get a lot of what I was saying just now."
With a little smirk of her own, Cassandra repeated her, "Just a little," hand motion.
"Mom doesn't like dealing with that side of the family. I mean, I get it, but he didn't ask to come from all that." Lucille threw in an overdramatic shrug. "Don't know why I'm telling you all this, you probably were thinking that a long time before I was, I just wanted to get it off my chest, I guess."
Cassandra nodded to her again, then put a finger up to her increasingly bloodshot eyes.
"Sorry, sorry," Lucille said. "I'll let you get some sleep." Before she went back to her own room, she stepped forward and pulled Cassandra into a hug. Some of her siblings didn't handle touch well at all, and it took a few attempts when they were children to get Cassandra used to it, but once she was, she valued the little moments of being held.
When she was released, Cassandra turned back toward her bedroom. There was sleep to be caught up on, because she'd be returning to the cathedral that night.