Home Again

  “What way.”

  “As if you know I’ll change my mind.”

  “You will.” Her voice trembled just a bit, belied the conviction of her words. Then, softer, “You have to.”

  Madelaine sat at her desk, staring at the photograph of Lina. The ornate crystal clock ticked past the minutes with a tiny click … click … click.

  She closed her eyes and sighed. Even now, almost an hour after she’d seen Angel, she couldn’t believe she’d told him the truth about Lina.

  Oh, Francis, she thought, where are you? I need you right now….

  She swiveled around in her chair and stared at the window. The huddled row of plants smeared into a hazy green wash. It had surprised her so much, Angel’s quietly spoken dream of a young son to play baseball with. Part of her had been terrified by the turn in the conversation, but another part—a hidden, secret part she hadn’t known existed—was thrilled to hear that he’d thought of their baby, that maybe he’d even fantasized about her. And suddenly she’d wanted to tell him about Lina, wanted to rip the lid off the secret she’d kept for so long. She’d wanted to reach out for the young man she’d once loved and take his hand and walk with him … to laugh about the good times.

  She found herself going over all of it in her mind, going back, back to the past she’d tried so hard to forget….

  It was on a sultry August night when she’d realized she was pregnant. At first she’d been happy. She and Angel had spun so many cotton-candy dreams together in the moonlight, dreams in which they married and had children, and neither one of them was ever lonely or lost or afraid again.

  But telling him about the baby hadn’t gone as she’d imagined. She remembered sitting in that horrible trailer, smelling his mother’s cigarette smoke as she whispered her secret.

  Oh, he’d said the right things, said he loved her and he’d stand by her, but she saw the look in his eyes, the wildness, the fear. He didn’t want the baby, wasn’t ready for it, and after that look, that second when she stared into his soul and saw the truth, she never believed the words again.

  She didn’t know what to do after that, and neither did he. She was sixteen, he was seventeen, and they’d thought they were immortal, thought their love could protect them from the ugliness of the world.

  But the ugliness came anyway.

  When Alexander Hillyard found out that his perfect daughter was pregnant, he went crazy. He locked her in her room and barred the windows with thick, black iron rails. No amount of tears or pleading words swayed him. He decreed that she would have an abortion, and they would never speak of her indiscretion again. He would not allow this to ruin her future.

  She waited in that cold, impeccably decorated room for days, huddled alongside the window, staring out, waiting for Angel to come for her.

  Finally she saw him, a slim shadow standing at the perimeter of the property. She launched herself at the window, clawing it with her fingers, crying out his name. But he didn’t hear her.

  She watched him walk up the brick walkway, then disappear into the house. She huddled at her locked door, listening desperately for footsteps.

  Footsteps that never came.

  Fifteen minutes later—the longest quarter of an hour of her life—he left the house. She scrambled back to the window and pressed her face to the glass. At the gate he turned around, his eyes searching the front of the house.

  Their gazes met, and slowly, so slowly, he shook his head, then he turned and walked away. She thought she’d seen tears on his cheeks, but it could have been the rain, she’d never been sure.

  Even after he left, she clung to a fraying thread of hope that he would be back. A thread that broke cleanly the next night.

  She heard a rumbling sound outside and she raced to the window, shoving the Alençon lace curtains aside. He was at the side of the road, staring up at her window, sitting on a brand-new, chrome-plated Harley-Davidson motorcycle.

  And that was when she knew: he’d taken money from her father.

  This time she was certain that he was crying, but she didn’t care. He gave her a wan, tired wave, and then he drove away.

  It was the last time she’d seen Angel DeMarco—until he showed up in ICU, needing her to save his life.

  She knew Angel had thought she’d had an abortion. Her father had wasted no time in telling the daddy-to-be that there would be no baby.

  So what had made her risk it all now, opening the Pandora’s box that had been shut for so long?

  She didn’t know the man lying in that bed down the hall, didn’t honestly know a thing about him. But she knew his roots, knew where be came from and the kind of person he’d once been. The kind who roared away from responsibility on a brand-new Harley-Davidson.

  People didn’t change, not at their core. She had no doubt that the wild, hell-raising, rebellious seventeen-year-old boy was still alive and kicking in that broken thirty-four-year-old body.

  One look. One smile. That’s all he’d have to give Lina and she’d melt, just as Madelaine had done so many years ago.

  She shuddered. Closing her eyes for a split second, she imagined Lina running away from the cold, perfect mother who never did anything right, running into the sunlight warmth of Angel’s smile. Never looking back, never coming home.

  But the time for such fear was past. Madelaine was tired of lying and hiding and pretending, tired of watching her precious daughter slide into an abyss. Madelaine knew—had always known—she had a rope, and she couldn’t go on standing on the sidelines, being a bystander to her own life. She was tired of being afraid.

  Angel might break Lina’s heart, might hurt her daughter irreparably, but maybe he wouldn’t. That was the hope that had filled her a while ago. Maybe he wouldn’t.

  Maybe the past wasn’t what she’d always thought it to be, an immutable spreadsheet of facts and figures and moments found and lost. Maybe it was more amorphous, more forgiving. Maybe Lina and Angel could draw the best out of each other, save each other in this time when both of them were floundering and felt so alone.

  She had to believe it.

  He was running late—as usual.

  Francis plunged his foot down on the accelerator, waiting several seconds for the action to kick in. The tired car stuttered and lurched forward, its engine humming loudly, rattling the cup of coffee wedged between his thighs.

  The twisting gravel road arced to the left, then to the right and back to the left again, snaking through a forest of old-growth timber.

  He drove up the mountain, twisting and turning, emerging every now and then onto the sweeping vista of the river valley below. Finally, at just over an hour late, he saw the resort’s hand-carved sign. He turned in to the tree-lined drive and eased his pressure on the accelerator.

  Multnomah Lodge sat like a wood-hewn tiara in a grove of towering evergreens. The sweeping circular drive curled into the front door, drawing guests in a friendly embrace toward the entrance. Lights glowed through mullioned windows cut into the log exterior. The last autumn flowers, chrysanthemums, hardy roses, Shasta daisies, lined the stone walkways.

  He maneuvered his battered old Volkswagen up to the curb. The doorman rushed out and waited at attention.

  Francis killed the engine, wincing as it sputtered and coughed. Yanking hard on the cold metal handle, he pushed the whining door open and got out. He retrieved his garment bag from the trunk and slung it over his shoulder, then gave the valet the keys and headed inside.

  The interior of the resort was all wood and glass and stone. Northwest artifacts hung from the skinned log walls, and Native American baskets sat clustered on hammered copper tables. The chairs and sofas were overstuffed and upholstered in boldly patterned wool.

  “Father Francis!” he heard a woman’s voice shriek as he hurried across the stone foyer.

  He stopped and looked around.

  His group was seated in a small, glass-walled room that was kitty-corner to the main lobby. He knew immediately that they’d been
there for over an hour, waiting for their priest who was always late.

  He turned and headed toward the room. They were smiling at him as he walked, and he smiled back, looking at each one of them in turn. Old Joseph and Maria Santiago, who’d been married for thirty years and thought they wouldn’t make thirty-one; Sarah and Levi Abramson, whose interfaith marriage was coming apart at the seams; Thomas and Hope Fitzgerald, who’d reached the crossroads in their marriage when Hope’s biological clock began to tick louder—unfortunately, it was a sound only she could hear; and Ted and Janine Canfield, who were having trouble integrating stepchildren into a new family.

  Such good people, all of them. People who loved each other and God and their families. People who were trying to hold fast to a commitment in an unraveling world that didn’t seem to value the old words anymore.

  And they were looking to Father Francis Xavier DeMarco to show them the way.

  He felt like such a fraud. What did he, a man who’d experienced so little, have to offer as a torch in the darkness to couples who were afraid? He’d never been part of a loving family and he’d never held one together, he’d never made love to a woman or disciplined his own child or tried to find the money to put food on the table. He’d never worked a nine-to-five job and lived with those pressures.

  So many things he hadn’t done.

  He sighed. Readjusting the garment bag’s wide nylon strap over his shoulder, he crossed the few feet that separated the foyer from the meeting room. The four couples were seated comfortably on the overstuffed chairs and sofas in the room. Joe Santiago was playing chess with Janine Canfield at a table in the corner. Hope Fitzgerald was sitting on the hearth, her arms looped around her bent legs, her sad gaze fixed on her husband, who sat stiffly on the sofa alongside Sarah Abramson.

  As Francis entered, they all smiled at him and said hello, but he heard so much more in the silence that came afterward than in the sound that accompanied his greeting. Emotions ran deep in this room—sadness, anger, grief, love.

  He steepled his fingers, brushed the underside of his chin with his fingertips as he glanced from face to face, seeing their expectation, feeling the weight of it settling on his shoulders. He wanted to help these people.

  The hell of it was, he knew that he couldn’t. Maybe once, years and years ago, he could have come into this room on a tide of optimism, his thin white collar a protective shield. Back then, the collar never chafed his skin, never felt so tight that he couldn’t breathe. It had been freeing, that scrap of starched white fabric, proof that he was a faithful servant of a Lord he loved. With each passing year, though, it had seemed to grow smaller and smaller, becoming at last a barrier between him and his fellow man.

  And sometimes, like now, he ached to take it off, and ask instead of answer. He wanted to turn to Mrs. Santiago and beg her to tell him what it felt like to curl up in bed against the same body every night for thirty years, to wake to the same loving face. He wanted to ask if love was a safe harbor or a stormy sea.

  He knew that he was experiencing a crisis of faith, knew, too, that it was no different from what thousands of priests had faced before him. But the knowledge didn’t warm him. He missed the hot fire of his convictions—the love for God that had once driven his every waking moment. Without it, he felt confused … adrift.

  He felt unfit to be a servant of the Lord. The memory of how he’d chosen to hurt Lina prickled on his conscience like a fresh burn.

  “Father Francis?” Levi Abramson’s scratchy voice cut into his thoughts.

  Francis forced a smile. “Sorry, I’m just a bit tired tonight. How about if we begin this retreat by fashioning a list of goals we’d like to accomplish?”

  There were nods and murmurs of agreement—as always. He saw the hope flash through their eyes, saw the tentative smiles that touched their faces. And Francis felt satisfied he could give them that, if nothing more concrete.

  “Good,” he said, giving them the first honest smile of the evening. “Let’s start with a prayer.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Angel woke suddenly, a cold, crushing band of pain encircling his chest. Clammy sheets twisted around his legs, bunched in the hands that lay fisted at his sides. The pillows were damp, sweaty-smelling balls beneath his head.

  The cardiac monitor blipped wildly. He waited in breathless silence for the computerized alarm to sound, but nothing happened. He released his breath slowly, evenly, focusing on nothing but each pain-riddled exhalation. One, two, buckle my shoe … three, four, shut the door … The childhood rhyme came back to him and he seized on it, trying to remember the words, trying to focus on anything except the pain.

  His heart thumped and clattered dangerously. He reached tiredly for the button beside his bed and pressed the red dot.

  The door to his room whooshed open and Sarah, the night nurse, waddled to his bedside. “You shouldn’t be awake,” she said reproachfully, checking the monitors that clustered around him, the bags of fluid that hung suspended above his head.

  “I need more drugs,” he said in a slurred voice.

  “You get your next dose at six A.M.” She lifted the thin white strand of paper from the cardiac monitor and studied it, her eyes narrowing. A quiet tsking sound pushed past her fleshy lips.

  “How’s your daughter?” he asked quietly.

  She paused and looked down at him. Slowly she smiled. “She’s doing better, thank you.”

  “I …” He winced. God, it hurt to talk. “I called my business manager. He’s sending her an autographed picture.”

  Sarah beamed, then brushed a lock of sweaty hair from his forehead. “Thank you, Mr. DeMarco.”

  He whispered, “No problem.”

  She checked one last bag, then turned and bustled away. The door closed behind her and silence settled into the room again, punctuated only by the computerized blip-blip-blip of the monitor.

  Angel sighed again, wishing that he could close his eyes and drift off to sleep. Knowing that he couldn’t.

  He turned slightly to look out the wall of glass beside his closed door. The Intensive Care Unit was silent and shadowy, the private rooms darkened for the night. Wraiths in white guarded the nurses’ station, huddled together in pockets of glowing light.

  He stared so long his vision blurred and the nurses and interns became shadows within shadows, talking among themselves, sipping coffee, laughing silently.

  I call her Lina.

  He squeezed his eyes shut. Regret was a raw, throbbing wound in his soul. He couldn’t think of anything but the girl in the photograph. The look of her, so like him. The flame-blue eyes, the jet-black hair, the tiny little mole on the pale skin of her neck.

  He wondered what she was like, this teenager who wore his smile on her heart-shaped face, but before he could even formulate a fantasy, it was gone.

  He knew he couldn’t be a father. Not when he was healthy and certainly not now, when he lay dying. It saddened him, that pathetic realization of his own inadequacy. No man should have to see himself so clearly, know his own bleak soul with such intimacy, but Angel had never been one to lie to himself—only to others. He’d always seen his own frayed edges and known that he couldn’t change them. Change was too hard and the outcome too uncertain. Instead, he accepted himself, accepted and went on.

  It was what he’d always done. Seen the truth and tucked his regrets so deeply in the pocket of his soul that after a while, he’d forgotten they existed. Until a day like today when his shortcomings were exposed.

  His thoughts spun out like a fisherman’s line across the yawning darkness of the room. The years slid away from him, took him back, back.

  It had been a breathtakingly beautiful summer evening—a week before he betrayed Madelaine. He remembered it clearly—a midnight sky lit with the bluish white of a full moon, the rustle of maple leaves overhead, and the faraway sounds of a carnival.

  Come on, Angel, take me on the Ferris wheel I’ve never been on one….

  He he
ard the softness of her words, whispered against his ear, remembered the gentle tugging of her hand as she pulled him down the midway.

  It had been a Ferris wheel ride like no other. He felt the seat rock beneath him, sway and creak as it took them up, up, up, into the star-spangled sky.

  When he looked down, he saw a whole new world. Gone was the tawdriness of the carnival, the dirt beneath the bright lights, and the crass cheapness of the prizes. Instead, he saw it as she saw it. Lights, action. Magic.

  He held her close in that swaying seat, clinging to her, wanting her with all the pent-up desperation of a seventeen-year-old boy in love for the first time in his life. His hand had slid down her arm, feeling the softness of her skin and the sudden goose bumps his touch caused.

  She turned to him then, and that instant was emblazoned on the ragged organ that was his heart—her hair ruffled by the wind, her eyes shining with love, her face backlit by a blanket of stars and moonlight. I love you, Angel DeMarco.

  He gave her the same quiet declaration, feeling the humiliating sting of tears that he didn’t bother to brush away. He felt safe with her in that second, safe enough to cry, and both of them knew it.

  Afterward, they strolled hand in hand down the midway, and Angel was struck again by the magic of it all. He remembered how it had felt tp be swept into that fantasyland; for a boy who’d grown up in a rickety trailer on the wrong side of town with an alcoholic mother, it was a dizzyingly heady time.

  He spent his money at one booth after another, winning stuffed animals and a wineglass and a cheap bow-and-arrow set. But it was the last prize he remembered the most clearly.

  The earrings, she whispered to him, pointing at a pair of garish red metal hoops. He knew instantly why she wanted them—they were so gaudy and cheap that Alex would be horrified to find them in her possession. She, with her pearls and diamonds and emeralds, the poor little rich girl who had never owned a carnival trinket.