Home Again

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.