It cost him eight dollars in quarters to place the earrings in her hand. But the look in her eyes was worth every cent.
After that, they walked to Carrington Park and stretched out beneath a hundred-year-old oak tree, wrapped in each other’s arms as they stared up at the night sky. They talked forever, spilling secrets and making vows, dreaming aloud of their future.
He held her, kissed her, and vowed to always be there for her.
Dawn washed their night away in shades of pink and purple. As they rose to leave, Madelaine pulled the hoops from her ears and stared down at them. “I can’t bring them home. My father… he looks through my things.”
He reached for them. “I’ll keep them.”
“Let’s leave them here. That way a part of us will always exist under this old tree. When we’re old, we can come back here with our grandchildren.”
Ah, he could still remember it, the overwhelming love he’d felt for her in that moment.
They wrapped the cheap red earrings in one of Madelaine’s expensive, monogrammed handkerchiefs and buried their treasure at the base of the tree.
Afterward, she looked at him, her eyes moist with tears. “I’ve got to get home now,” she whispered.
The next time he saw her, she was sitting on his mother’s ratty old couch, telling him about the baby.
He knew he said the wrong things then, but he didn’t know what to say. He was so damned scared. For a week afterward, he called her house and hung up when her father answered. Finally he rode to her house and saw the iron bars that had been fixed across her bedroom window, and he knew what had happened. Alex had found out about the baby.
He wanted to turn tail and run and run and run. He almost did it, then he saw something—a shadow pass across the bright light in her bedroom—and he thought of that moment on the Ferris wheel. I love you, Angel.
The memory gave him the courage to park his bike. Flipping his collar, up against the pouring rain, he walked up the pathway to the double front doors and knocked hard.
There was a rustling of feet, a click of metal on metal, then the door opened.
And God stood in the doorway, wearing a Brooks Brothers suit and holding a martini glass. Angel had never seen a man so big and overpowering, so intimidating; he had a voice that boomed into the darkness like a bullhorn. So you’re the little wop who screwed my daughter.
The rest of the meeting melted as it always did into a blur of shame and regret. Instead of the actual sequence of events, he remembered bits and pieces of their conversation; words that drove through the heart and soul like razors.
Who do you think you are to come to my house, to knock on my door as if you belong here? You’re nothing. Nothing.
With each word, delivered like a blow, Angel felt himself growing smaller and smaller, until, in the end, there was nothing left of him at all.
What’ll it take, kid, to get you the hell out of her life? One thousand dollars, five thousand, ten thousand? How about if I fire that drunk mother of yours? You didn’t think I knew she worked in my mill, I see. The world’s full of surprises, isn’t it?
It took a minute for the words to register, but finally Angel understood: Alex was offering him a way out.
Ten thousand, kid. Think about it….
He didn’t want to think about it, tried not to, but the offer seduced him.
You’re no hero, kid. Take the money.
Angel closed his eyes, hearing, seeing, feeling it all over again, the moment that had forever defined him. He shouldn’t have followed Alex into the house, but he had; he shouldn’t have gone into that dark, shadowed office, but he had. He remembered it all suddenly—the sound of the desk drawer sliding open, the ripping hiss of the check as Alex eased it from his book.
Angel thought now of the moments, the seconds, he could have said no. Up until the last heartbeat, when he’d held the check in his hand and seen all those zeroes.
Alex had sensed Angel’s uncertainty, smelled it, and gone in for the kill with a hunter’s precision.
What’ll you give Madelaine? Life in some sleazy trailer, a beer with your TV dinner after work? And how about you—you going to spend the rest of your life tossing toilet paper like your mother? Or are you going to take what I’m offering and get the hell out of this town?
Angel thought of his parents—thirty years spent toiling on the paper line, only to come home and get drunk and knock the shit out of their son. His father, dead of alcohol poisoning before his fortieth birthday.
Alex went on relentlessly, waving the check at Angel. I’ve seen a million guys like you in my life. You’re nothing, going nowhere. You’re not good enough to lick her shit-covered shoes.
Angel tried. God help him, he gathered his shredded courage and tried. I could be a good father. But he knew, even as he said it, he knew it was a lie, and Alex knew it, too.
The old man laughed. To what? She’s having an abortion tomorrow. You didn’t think she’d really have a child of yours, did you? She’s a Hillyard, for Christ’s sake.
Angel was relieved. Even now it sickened him to remember how relieved he’d been by the words.
Take the money, kid. It’s all there is for you.
And Angel did it. He turned and ran, the check clutched in his sweaty fingers. All the way out, he told himself it didn’t matter, that he could cash the check and spend the money and still come back for Madelaine.
But by the time he reached his bike, he knew the truth, and it ripped through him, twisting his insides until he thought he might vomit in the street. He was leaving her because he wanted to leave her, because he wasn’t strong enough to stay and take a job in some crummy factory and be a father to his unborn baby.
There will be no baby. He tried to take comfort from the knowledge, but somehow it only hurt more.
He was scared. God, so scared. He didn’t want to give up his whole future, not yet.
Slowly he turned. He saw her up there, her pale oval face trapped between the iron bars that blocked her window, captured in the rain-smeared glass.
Then he jumped on his brother’s bike and rode away, the check as heavy as pieces of silver in his coat pocket.
Angel released his breath in a heavy sigh. Yeah, he’d ridden away, ridden hard and fast and long, and ended up right where he began.
I call her Lina.
The words slammed him back into the present.
And he felt the first threatening thud inside his chest.
He closed his eyes and lay still, taking shallow breaths. The sweat on his forehead turned cold, slid in streaks down the sides of his face.
He tried to reach for the nurses’ button, but he was too weak. He couldn’t lift his arm.
The cardiac monitor clattered and hummed, then screamed in alarm.
Heart failure.
Angel tried to keep breathing. His body seemed to encase him, bloating bigger and bigger, a seeping darkness that filled everything. And in the center of it all was the pain.
In some distant part of his brain, he heard the commotion—the door banging open, the light spilling in, the voices raised in alarm. He heard them calling his name, but he couldn’t answer. There were layers and layers of darkness between him and the light, and he was tired, so tired. Hours seemed to pass.
Then he felt her touch, heard her voice through the screaming cacophony. “Angel?”
He tried to reach for her, but his body fought him, a limp dead thing without will or ability. He blinked hard, forced his eyes to open.
Madelaine was leaning over him, her hair transformed into a halo by the glaring overhead light. For a second he was back on the Ferris wheel, seeing her draped in starlight. “Mad,” he croaked.
“Don’t you die, Angel DeMarco. Don’t you dare.” She turned her head and gave orders in a composed, controlled voice that calmed him. Then she turned back to him, stroked his damp forehead again. “You’re going to make it through this, Angel. We’ll find you a heart. Just don’t give up.”
r /> Her face kept going in and out of focus.
“Angel? Stay awake.”
His eyelids felt heavy. He thought there was something he needed to say to her, then the thought was gone.
“Pulmonary edema,” Madelaine said under her breath. Then louder, “Get the code cart. God damn it, people, let’s move….”
He knew the words should frighten him, but he couldn’t feel anything anymore.
Chapter Fourteen
The cool autumn evening sky had begun to soften, blurring at the edges in shades of pink and lavender and blue.
Francis sat Indian-style on the hardwood floor of the Quilcene Room, his gaze fixed on the night unfolding beyond the floor-to-ceiling window. Crows cawed to one another, swooping from their perches in the cedar trees, chasing smaller, weaker birds into hiding places along the eaves. He could hear the scraping of their clawed feet on the planks outside. It was just past twilight, the time of night when the horses and cows on nearby farms whickered and lowed for their nightly rations of hay, when deer warily crossed the country roads in search of the last sweet grass before winter.
Thick gray clouds drew cautiously together and sent a few spitting drops of rain downward. A breeze tapped the window and kicked up a pile of browning leaves. Pine needles sprinkled to the ground, collecting here and there on the white-painted windowsills.
“Father Francis?”
Francis drew his gaze away from the window and glanced around the room at the men clustered near the fireplace. Shards of light leapt from the roaring fire, twisting across the serious faces that stared back at him.
It was their sixth night together, the last before a forty-eight-hour break when each of the couples would spend some romantic time together. Francis looked at the men and smiled.
As always, he’d refound his faith in both man and God by performing his priestly duties. Yes, he still felt a bit fraudulent, giving advice with so little experience to back it up, but over the days and nights he’d spent with these people, he’d seen the effects of his efforts … in the way Joe Santiago had begun to reach for his wife’s hand as they walked to the dining room; in the fleeting smile Levi Abramson tossed to his bride when she spoke of their children; in the slowly developing sense of hope that had started as a nugget of promise and grown into something more.
It had strengthened Francis’s faith again.
“Father?” It was Thomas Fitzgerald again, quietly bringing Francis back into the conversation.
Francis grinned. “Sorry, guys. I was just thinking.”
“Any divine inspiration slide your way through the rain?” Levi asked with a laugh.
Francis started to respond, then stopped. Something—some wisp of knowledge—shivered in the air around him, collecting like tiny sparks of lightning on a thin metal rod. He could hear it, feel it, calling out to him in a quiet whispering voice.
Could it be that simple?
“You know, Levi,” he said slowly, feeling his way like a blind man through the alley of his thoughts. “Maybe it did. Maybe divine inspiration isn’t what we think it will be.”
Thomas scooted closer. “What do you mean?”
Francis stared into the fire, feeling its heat, experiencing its dancing color, hearing the popping crack of a log. God felt close to him all at once, closer than He’d been in years. “Maybe it’s divine intervention that brought us here in the first place. Maybe that’s all God’s supposed to do, point us on a road and wait. The road’s there, it’s always there, through the wind and the rain and the snow.”
A silence slipped into the room, collected on the indrawn breaths of the men. Francis looked around, sensing their faith in him, in God, in themselves and each other.
Goodness. Hope. Faith.
He saw it all in this room. “Like you, Joseph,” he said quietly, looking at the older man. “You love Maria and she loves you, but somehow over the years, you’ve lost sight of that road. Yet still you’re here, reaching for her hand, knowing it’s her you want to walk with. Maybe what you have to do is stop searching so hard for the road beneath your feet. Just take her hand and begin to walk, and believe that the pavement is solid beneath you. God has given each of you the incredible gift of love.”
“It can’t be that easy,” Thomas said. He exhaled a heavy sigh, and Francis could see the doubt that twisted the young man’s face. “I love my wife with everything inside me, but she wants something I don’t want.”
“Are you so sure?” Francis asked.
Thomas closed his eyes for a second before answering. “I’m twenty-seven years old. I’m not ready to be a father.”
“Have you told her that?” Levi asked.
Thomas sighed again. “Only a million times. I’ve told her I don’t want a child.”
Francis gave Thomas a small, encouraging smile. “That’s not the same thing at all, Thomas.”
Thomas looked surprised. “What do you mean?”
“I’m not ready’ is not the same thing as ‘I don’t want a child.’”
“But I’ve told her I’m not ready a million times.”
“Have you?” Francis said softly. “Or have those words been tangled up with other words, harsher words, maybe anger, or resentment that she would ask?”
Thomas turned away, stared into the fire. “Maybe,” he said at last. Then, softer, “Maybe.”
“I remember when I was your age,” Joseph said. “I was scared to death to be a father. We had no money, I had no job. Then, one day, Maria met me at the door with a glass of wine and told me we were having a baby. I laughed and hugged her and drank with her—and then went into the shower and cried.” A fine mist covered his rheumy gray eyes and he gave a tiny, jerking smile. “And then came our Maggie. The first time I held her, I … changed. Sort of grew up. Now it feels like a second has passed, but my Maggie is a dentist in New Jersey. And sometimes I miss her so much, I ache.”
“No man is ever ready to be a father,” Ted Canfield agreed with a nod. “It’s like that road Father is talking about. She gets pregnant and you take a step, praying like hell that something solid is beneath you.”
Thomas looked at Francis. “How about you, Father? Did you ever want children?”
The question caught Francis off guard. He looked at the men around him, his gaze going from face to face. He knew he should change the course of the conversation—he was their priest, their counselor, and his problems were private—but he didn’t want to. Just once, he wanted to be a man, only a man in a room of other men, talking about things that mattered. He began talking, slowly at first, uncomfortable with his honesty. “I always knew I wanted to be a priest. My mother said it was a calling, but I only knew that the church was safe. I entered the seminary when I was still wet behind the ears, and I loved it.”
He stared down at his hands, clasped now in his lap, and thought of all the prayers he’d said, all the dreams he’d had. In the bleak days of his childhood, the church had been his escape, his sanctuary. No one drank or screamed or hit anyone there. It was quiet and peaceful, and he’d known—always—that it was where he belonged.
Even later, when he’d learned how difficult it was to become a priest, even when he’d learned all the things he would have to sacrifice for his God, still he’d wanted it fiercely. He knew now, with the distance of maturity and years, that when he’d asked Madelaine to marry him, it wasn’t what he’d wanted. Not then. He’d been so filled with the fire of his faith. And she had known it.
“Did you ever regret it?” Joseph asked. “You know, all the things you gave up?”
Regret. Such a powerful word, steeped in sadness and pain. “No,” Francis said quietly, realizing as he spoke that it was true. He’d never regretted becoming a priest. It had filled him up, his faith, given him a strength and a compassion and a mission. It wasn’t until years later, years upon years, that he’d begun, not to regret, exactly …
Want. Yes, that was the word. He’d missed a lot, and sometimes, like Joseph, he’d gone i
nto his darkened bedroom, alone, and cried for what he’d missed. The yearnings that couldn’t be assuaged, all the moments that had never truly been his. Like when he’d first held the tiny, screaming Lina, and known that she wasn’t his daughter, could never be his daughter. Or the times he’d looked into Madelaine’s eyes and ached at the way she saw him, the chasteness of her love.
“Sometimes,” he said at last, recognizing the truth of his words. “I guess I wanted it all—children, a wife, a family—but I wanted my faith too. We can’t have everything we want. There are always sacrifices…”
“I think we can get what we want in life,” Levi said. “It’s just that we have the devil of a time figuring out what that is.”
“Yeah,” Joseph added. “Sometimes you have to turn the world upside down to see it right side up.”
“But Father is right,” Thomas said. “Love is a gift from God—what we do with it is up to us.”
Francis didn’t want to think about that, about what he could have if he found the courage to change his life. Glancing at the clock, he saw that it was 7:00 P.M. “Okay, we have thirty minutes left, guys.” He reached into his canvas pack and pulled out a stack of yellow legal pads and a handful of pens. “I want each of you to write a letter to your wife, telling her as much of your feelings, your fears, your hopes and dreams, as you can.”
Thomas’s black eyebrows quirked up. “And you pick yellow legal pads for our romantic letters?” He laughed. “Obviously you’ve never written a love letter, Father.”
The men laughed as they reached for the pads and pens. Within moments, each of the men had retreated to a quiet corner and begun to write. Pens scratched quietly on paper.
Did you ever want children, Father?
Wantwantwant. The word repeated itself, ran together and stabbed deep…. Ah, he wanted so much, so many things he couldn’t have….
Visions of Madelaine and Lina came to him, whispering, insinuating their way into his heart, gathering in the air around him. He leaned forward, wanting to reach out, grab them, and draw them close.