He smiled wanly. “Fair enough, my boy, fair enough. She’s exhausted, but she’s waiting for you.”
When I didn’t immediately blow past him, he frowned, considering me. “Is there something I can help you with?”
I hesitated. “I’m not any kinda good man.”
His Lafayette blue eyes scoured my face, my wrapped palms and tombstone-tatted knuckles. “If you say so, though I believe there is goodness in every man.”
“Only goodness in me comes from the woman in this hospital bed,” I indicated with a jerk of my chin. “Maybe we split in two, the good and evil, but I’m the latter through and fuckin’ through. I got no regrets about it, but I’m wonderin’, you think a man like that, livin’ life the way he wants, sinnin’ and all, could be a good father? I got my doubts.”
“You’re asking me as a Pastor or Bea’s grandpa?”
“Both, I guess.” I wanted to know how much grace there was in his God, if what Bea said about Him was true, that He didn’t cast harsh judgments or write lost souls off as lost causes.
The pastor smiled, the lines beside his eyes fanning, brackets emerging around his mouth. His was a face that smiled often. “You know, Priest, I might be a holy man, but even I’ve made mistakes. I raised my own son to be a terrible man. I let him turn my grandchild out of his house. But I learned from my sins, and I truly believe that is the mark of a good man or woman. If we blunder, do we apologize to the wronged party sincerely? Do we move on, having learned more about ourselves and how to be better? You say you have no regrets about who you are. I see nothing wrong with that as long as you still allow for change. Has your love for my granddaughter not changed you for the better? I believe it probably has, and I believe that a man who can be moved by love is spurred toward greatness. If you have it in you to love your child, I have no doubt you will be a worthy father.”
I swallowed the acrid dryness at the back of my throat, grateful he hasn’t quoted scripture or referenced God directly. I was about religioned out at this point.
But his words struck a chord, however slight, especially when he peered up at me, not a small man, just slight and narrow, and added, “But what I think doesn’t matter nearly as much as Beatrice, and if I know my granddaughter, she wouldn’t have fallen in with you in the first place if she didn’t believe you were the very best of men.”
“Thank you,” I grunted, ready to get to my woman.
He smiled. “You’re family now, so I should think you can call me Michael.”
I nodded curtly, already moving into the hospital room, forgetting about his kindness and its direct contrast to Father O’Neal and Seth Linley the second I caught sight of my girl.
She looked so little in the white hospital sheets, her gorgeous mane of silver blond hair dull with blood and grime, pushed back by a pink velvet headband someone had brought for her. She’d been gazing out the windows at the snow starting to fall in thick white flakes outside.
She didn’t turn to look at me even though I knew she was aware of my presence. Instead, she stared down at her hands where she held the carved Dara Knot I’d given her years ago.
“It’s so funny because I know so much about you in some ways. I know the constellation of freckles on your cheeks and the exact ridges of calluses on your hands. I know you don’t drink and that you hand-roll your clove cigarettes. I know you’re from Ireland, that you snuck over on a freighter with the help of a kind stranger. I even know your address when so many don’t.” She tipped those huge clear blue eyes to me, each striation in the iris stark and visible beneath the lake water blue. “I know you love me. But I don’t know how you feel about marriage. I don’t know how you feel about babies, and…and I’m pregnant. Which isn’t really a surprise because we didn’t use protection, even though I know you thought you wouldn’t be able to reproduce and––”
I started toward her, done with her soliloquy but unable to stop the flow of her beautiful voice because I was just so fucking relieved she was alive to speak at all. So I moved toward her in three ground-eating strides and bent in half to grab her chin between my knuckles and seal that chatting mouth closed with a kiss.
She tasted of ash and sorrow, but also, as my tongue swept deeper as I sat on the bed to press closer to her sweet body, I thought somewhat uncharacteristically that she tasted of hope.