Home Again

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.”