Mitch and Collin took him outside. Michael’s ranting faded as they closed the door. Father Mac set up two wooden folding chairs next to Helena’s and offered one to Lizzie. She sat down and took Helena’s hand, avoiding his penetrating gaze.
He sat and leaned forward, arms propped on his knees and head resting on clasped hands. “How are you, Lizzie?” he asked, his voice suddenly quiet.
His gentle tone immediately produced tears in her eyes. “Devastated, Father. Not just over Michael, but what he did to Mar—to Helena, to me, and to—” Her voice broke on a sob.
Marcy rushed to her side and put a protective hand on her shoulder.
Father Mac pulled a handkerchief from beneath his vestments. He handed it to her, then lifted her chin with a gentle prod of his fingers. “Lizzie, Brady has chosen to forgive all. You can do no less. But before we talk about John, I’d like to talk to you and Helena about why you called the wedding off.” He looked up at Faith and Charity. “Would one of you mind getting your mother a chair, please, and perhaps for yourselves as well? Both of you can stay to support your sister if you like, but given the delicate nature of this discussion, perhaps Sean should take Katie and Steven outside for a while.” Father Mac glanced up at Sean. “Is that all right with you, Sean?”
“But, I want to stay,” Katie insisted.
Patrick grilled her with a look. “Defying your parents is one thing, Katie Rose, but defying a priest borders on sacrilege. I suggest you go quietly—now.”
“Come on, Katie, I’ll buy you and Steven a soda at Robinson’s,” Sean said.
She stalked to the door, lips pursed tight. “Bribery. That’s a sin too, isn’t it, Father?”
The door closed, and Father Mac turned his focus on Helena. “Mary—or Helena, I should say.” He paused to run a hand over his face. “That’s going to take some getting used to, I’m afraid.” He drew in a deep breath. “Let’s start at the beginning, shall we? Why did you lie about who you were?”
Helena peeked up with eyes as raw as Lizzie’s, her face flushed with shame. “I . . . didn’t intend to lie, Father, I promise. Michael needed Brady to sign the will before the inheritance could be distributed, and he didn’t think John would do it for him. So he sent me.”
She looked down and fidgeted with the tips of her polished nails. “When I walked into John’s shop that first day, it was obvious he didn’t recognize me. I mean, why should he? I hadn’t seen him since I was ten. And I wanted to tell him who I was so badly, really I did, but I was afraid. He was so warm and kind that I . . . I thought he would hate me if he knew who I really was.” She bit the edge of her lip and looked up with timid eyes. “So I lied,” she whispered, “and things went from bad to worse.”
“How’s that?” Father Mac asked, settling back into his chair.
“I not only lied to Brady, but to Lizzie and to everyone at Bookends. I never intended to stay in Boston for longer than a day or two, but when I saw John, I . . . I wanted to get to know him again. He’d been my favorite growing up, as well as my mother’s. He was the quiet brother, but the kind one too, always letting me tag along when he went fishing, reading me stories, even playing hopscotch if I asked. Michael would make fun of him, calling him a mama’s boy because John always preferred being home rather than out with Michael.” She drew in a deep breath. It quivered out again in a shaky sigh. “I just wanted to see if he had changed, that’s all. And he had—he was even kinder and gentler than I remembered.”
“So you fabricated this life of Mary Carpenter. When you became close to Lizzie, why didn’t you tell her the truth?”
She glanced at Lizzie. “I wanted to more than anything because Lizzie was the best friend I’ve ever had. The only real friend I’ve ever had,” she whispered. “Except for John.”
Father Mac studied her with a furrowed brow. “Then why didn’t you?”
Helena put a hand to her eyes, obviously uneasy with what she was about to say. “Because I was afraid . . . afraid she would hate me.”
“For lying about your identity?”
She lowered her head, one palm still obscuring her eyes. “Yes, and for not telling her the truth . . . about the kind of man that Michael is.” She drew in a deep breath and suddenly straightened in the chair, her back rigid and her lips resolute. “Back when I first came to Boston and didn’t return home after several days, Michael called me at the Parker House Hotel. When I told him I wasn’t coming back, he flew into a rage, not only because I failed to bring John back, but because . . . I wouldn’t be in New York anymore.” Her shoulders cringed in a painful heave. “You see, I was convenient.”
“Convenient?” Father Mac asked.
Helena looked up and nodded. Her eyes, glossy with tears, were steeped in shame. “I was his charge, his slave, if you will, to do his bidding.” She shivered. “You might say he was blackmailing me.”
Father Mac leaned forward. “Blackmailing you?”
Her chin began to quiver and tears streamed down her face. “You s-see, a-after John left home, Mother’s drinking escalated until she was little more than a zombie, day in and day out.” A hardness settled over Helena’s features. “And Michael took full advantage. John had always been my defender, my buffer against Michael’s cruelty, but then he left, and suddenly I was at Michael’s mercy.” A bitter laugh rasped from her throat. “Mercy. As if that’s a word Michael knows anything about. I felt so alone, so lost. No desire to fight or even to live. I was little more than a shell, too afraid of Michael to stand up to him.” She shielded her eyes once again. “So I did whatever he told me to do—whether it was right or wrong.” Her body convulsed with a tearful heave.
“Helena, you don’t have to go on—”
She looked up, her eyes almost wild. “Yes, Father, I do! Lizzie needs to know what kind of man she almost married . . . and I need to be free.”
Father Mac exhaled slowly. “I see. So Michael was blackmailing you. Why?”
“He didn’t want me to tell Lizzie who I was. He was afraid I would tell her about his sordid past and his countless . . . indiscretions with women. I tried to dissuade her without divulging the truth, but Lizzie always defended him, saying I didn’t know Michael. And I began to believe that maybe I didn’t. That perhaps he had changed. For the first time ever, I could tell he was in love, really in love. And I hoped . . . that maybe Lizzie had changed him . . . just like John had changed me. After all, I was no longer Helena Brady. I was Mary Carpenter, a woman who, according to John, was ‘a new creature in Christ Jesus.’ So I decided to keep quiet. Until last night.”
“What happened last night, Helena?” Father Mac asked quietly.
Helena peered beyond him, lost in a vacant stare. “Michael was drunk when he came to my apartment. He seemed a bit melancholy and started rambling . . . about how he’d only started seeing Lizzie as a means to force John to sign. But he’d gotten caught in his own trap, he said, and fallen in love. Said Lizzie made him feel whole and clean . . . for the first time in his life. When he first started seeing her, he knew I wasn’t happy about it, but he threatened me. Told me if I tried to stop it, he would reveal everything—to Lizzie and to Brady—tell them that I was a liar and a fraud.”
She shivered. “I couldn’t let him do that. I couldn’t risk losing the respect and trust of the two people I loved most in this world. So I lied to myself, forced myself to believe that it would be all right if Michael married Lizzie. After all, she had changed him so much already, softened him almost, that I thought she would be good for him. I hoped she could reform him, eradicate his past . . . just like Brady had done for me.” She closed her eyes. “But I was wrong.”
Father Mac worked to appear calm. He rested his head on clasped hands, but his eyes burned with silent fury. “What do you mean, Helena?” he whispered.
Helena drew in a cleansing breath. “Michael is a man of strong appetites, Father. I know he loves Lizzie, but he’s not good at being faithful, celibate. But I thought Lizzie had changed a
ll that. I told him I was proud of him for turning over a new leaf. That’s when he laughed and said a bachelor at the Parker House was never lonely. It was then I realized Michael had no intention of being faithful to Lizzie. Not only has he been . . . entertaining other women at the Parker all along, but he made it abundantly clear he had no intention of changing after they were married.”
Patrick put his head in his hands, while Father Mac waited for Helena to go on.
“I told him I would tell Lizzie, but he laughed. Said that he didn’t think I would, that I had too much to lose.” She shivered and her eyes swam with tears of regret as she searched her friend’s face. “But after last night, I realized that you had so much more to lose . . . and I . . . I couldn’t allow that. Please forgive me, Lizzie, for letting it get this far.”
“Helena,” Father Mac leaned forward. The intensity of his tone captured their attention. “As far as the details of your past . . . have you received the Sacrament of Penance?”
Helena nodded.
He drew in a deep breath. “Good, good. Then as John said, you are indeed a new creature in Christ Jesus.” He rested a firm hand on her arm and exhaled slowly. “And speaking of John, I’d like to ask a few more questions, if I may.” He glanced at Lizzie. “Who in this room knows about John’s past?”
Lizzie met her father’s gaze across the room, while her mother took her hand. “Only my parents,” she whispered.
He nodded and glanced up, first at Charity, and then back at Faith. “Girls, if you would be kind enough to step outside, I would appreciate it.”
Charity squeezed Lizzie’s shoulder and followed Faith from the room. When the door closed behind them, Father Mac turned back to Helena. “When Brady went to New York to sign the papers, he told me he met his stepsister—”
Helena caught her breath. “What?”
“He said he met ‘Helena,’ and that she confirmed the fears he had about his past.”
Helena’s lips parted as comprehension flickered in her eyes. “No, Michael wouldn’t . . .”
Father Mac’s eyes narrowed. “Yes, apparently he did. I have a hunch that Michael was well aware of John’s inner struggles over his love for Lizzie and knew that his brother’s deep-seated shame kept him from pursuing it. I think he wanted to keep them apart and used John’s shame and guilt over his past to do just that.”
Father Mac leveled a sober gaze on Lizzie. “But John and I had counseled for months before the trip to New York, and again the day after he returned. He had reconciled with God over his attraction to his stepmother at the age of seventeen and his affinity for alcohol at the age of fourteen . . .” Father Mac hesitated and turned back to Helena. “But he never could tell me for sure what happened that night with your mother. He said he remembered the two of them talking and drinking in your mother’s room, and he admitted thinking—feeling things . . . he knew he shouldn’t. They were both drunk and apparently intimacies took place, but he swears he told her no and fled for his room. He remembers nothing from that moment on . . . until your mother’s screams woke him in the night and you stood there crying. He said she accused him of . . . seducing her . . . using her, and he simply didn’t know the truth. That is, not until New York, when his supposed stepsister told him that he slept with your mother.”
Helena gasped.
Father Mac shifted his gaze from Helena to Lizzie. “But even then, although he was bruised and battered from what he believed to be true, after a lot of prayer and soul-searching, he was finally ready to pursue the love he longed to have with you, Lizzie.”
A hand flew to Lizzie’s mouth, and fresh tears welled in her eyes.
Father Mac returned his gaze to Helena. “So, we need to know, Helena . . . Lizzie, me, and especially John . . . what happened that night?” His voice lowered to barely audible. “Did John have relations with your mother?”
Helena’s eyes widened in shock. “Oh no, Father, never! And I swear I thought he knew that. My mother woke me with her screaming that night, and I ran to John’s room, sobbing when I saw their terrible row. And, yes, she accused him of that, but I thought he knew the truth! Years later—before she died—she told me she regretted that night because it ruined everything that she and John had had. They had been so close, the best of friends, but in a moment of weakness, she had tried to become more, and his rejection had enraged her. It all happened so fast—one moment they were screaming, and then the next, John was gone.”
“Did you believe your mother’s story—that John had seduced her?”
Helena put her head in her hands. When she spoke, her tone was thick with shame. “Yes—until I learned the truth before she died.”
Father Mac stood and pulled Helena to her feet. He enfolded her in a protective embrace, his jaw taut with tension. “It’s all right, Helena. It’s over. You’ve done the right thing, and now you’re free from your past.”
Her body shuddered as she wept against his chest. “But John . . . I thought he knew . . . knew it was all a lie. That the only demon he wrestled with was bitterness.”
Father Mac sighed. “No, the devil wasn’t about to let him off that easily. Not a man like John.” His eyes flicked to Lizzie as she sat in a daze, shoulders slumped and eyes lost in a vacant stare. He sat Helena back in her chair, then squatted in front of Lizzie. He took her limp hand in his. “Don’t blame yourself, please. John doesn’t blame you.”
She shook her head, and the motion dislodged rivulets of tears from her eyes. “No, John wouldn’t. But I do. I’ve known from the age of thirteen the caliber of man he was, Father, but I blamed him anyway, for a past I was all too willing to believe.” She squeezed her eyes shut. “How could I do that?”
Father Mac gently took her face in the palm of his hand. His heart twisted at the guilt he saw when she opened her eyes. “It’s called humanity, Lizzie,” he whispered, “and by its very nature, we are drawn close to the breast of a forgiving God.”
Her chin trembled. “But I love him, Father, and yet I condemned him.”
“As he condemned himself, Elizabeth. Consider yourself in good company.”
She sniffed and pushed a tear from her eye. “In good company. Oh, Father, how I wish that were true—now and in the future.”
He stood to his feet and smiled. “Then I suggest you stop wishing and start praying, young lady. Has John Brady taught you nothing?”
Her eyes misted as she rose to give him a hug. “No, Father, he’s taught me everything.”
Lizzie went through the motions of getting ready for bed, but her heart wasn’t in it. What was the use, she wondered? She wouldn’t sleep anyway. At least not well, if the last month had been any indication. She finished brushing her teeth and spit in the sink, wishing she could expel the malaise inside as easily. But apparently it was here to stay, lodged in her chest along with the guilt that, lately, made her rib cage feel two sizes too small. She took a deep breath and exhaled, hoping to release some of the tension inside, but the motion only made her feel more depleted—not only of air, but of the will to breathe it.
She blinked at her reflection in the mirror, momentarily shocked by what she saw: a woman instead of a little girl. She took note of the subtle changes that indicated as much—the fullness of her heart-shaped face, now thinned and matured, and violet eyes, once so wide and wondering, now tapered into those of a woman in pain. After years of pining to grow up and leave her youth behind, she had finally arrived. Her eighteenth birthday had long since come and gone, and now, along with it, any chance of happiness she’d ever hoped to have.
She turned out the bathroom light and lumbered down the hall, praying that Katie had fallen asleep. Her little sister would want to chat, no doubt, and Lizzie had little to say these days. Not since she’d called the wedding off. No, since then, she’d existed in a fog of self-doubt and condemnation, wondering why anyone would want to talk to her, much less love her. She didn’t deserve it. Not after what she’d done to Brady.
She tiptoed into
their dark room, grateful to hear the even rhythm of Katie’s breathing that indicated she was fast asleep. The sound was raspy and nasal, and Lizzie’s lips softened into a tired smile. The poor thing, all stopped up by a nasty cold. She bent to tuck her sister in, then leaned to kiss her cheek.
“Give her a restful sleep, dear God,” she whispered, “and help her to get well.” She crawled into her own bed and blinked at the ceiling, fighting the usual prick of tears in her eyes. “And I’ll take the same, if you’re so inclined, Lord, although I would certainly understand if you’re not.”
She turned on her side, and then the other, but as usual these nights, all positions of comfort evaded her. Her body felt heavy, but her eyelids were not, and so she stared, her gaze lost in a wide shaft of moonlight. The hands on the clock slowly ticked by, and she considered trudging downstairs to read one of her books in the parlor, but even that held no appeal. How could she lose herself in the fantasy of romance now, after it had deluded her so completely? She had staked everything—her heart, her hopes—on happily ever after with the man of her dreams. Only her dreams had become a nightmare that was obviously here to stay. Now, she not only had to live with the pain of loving a man she could never have, but also the guilt of wounding him to the core.
And for what? Childhood fantasies that bore little resemblance to the truth. A critical lesson learned too little, too late. She shivered and closed her eyes. There was no such thing as a fairy-tale romance, she had discovered, no such thing as a fairy-tale prince. Not when humanity stood in the way, with its inevitable failings and flaws.