Chapter Twelve

Rain drummed on the city streets, splashed on the asphalt roof of the building next door, and formed murky puddles in the loose gravel. Madelaine stood at the window, staring at the misty gray city two floors below her. Down there, it was such an ordinary October day. Nothing different, nothing new.

The Madison Street stoplight blipped from red to green to yellow. Multicolored umbrellas moved down the slick sidewalks, weaving in and out among each other. Cars started and stopped and turned down corners, disappearing beneath green canopies of the neighborhood trees.

Life went on.

But not for Madelaine. Even now, as she stood there, looking at the sights she’d seen a million times, she saw things she’d never seen before. She noticed how the pigeons that perched on the windowsill stuck together, cooing softly to one another; how the leaves that every so often blew from the trees and stuck to the glass were steeped in color—red, gold, green, and brown—how the sunlight could break through the clouds in a spear of butter-yellow light that seemed to shoot from Heaven itself.

Slowly she turned away from the window and moved toward the bed.

Angel lay as still as death, his skin ashen, his lips pale as chalk. He was breathing—finally—without the help of a ventilator. Beside him, the cardiac monitor clicked away, spewing out a second-by-second account of the heart that was failing.

Failing. Had failed.

She plucked up the seamless, narrow sheet of paper and studied the graphlike analysis of his heartbeat, then she leaned over him, brushed the damp hair from his forehead. Her fingers lingered against his warm, sweaty skin. Come on, Angel. Come on.

His eyelids fluttered, but he didn’t waken.

She pressed her hand to the side of his face and closed her eyes. Quietly the memories tiptoed into her mind. She remembered the day she’d met Angel DeMarco. The mousy candy striper and the hell-raiser.

That first day, she meant nothing to him; she’d known that, of course. She could see the falseness in his smile—the way it was just a fraction too calculated to be truly welcoming.

Yes, she saw from the beginning that it was a lie, but she didn’t care. Even a fake smile was so much more than she was used to, and if she closed her eyes and listened only to his words, it was all so painfully sweet.…

With the distance of time, she knew what had happened in that moment when he’d first smiled at her. She’d been desperately lonely, and it had never occurred to her that someone would smile at her with genuine affection. Her father had trampled her fragile girl’s self-esteem until she expected much too little.

Angel had come to her when he was discharged, come to her and held out his hand and whispered, “Come with me.…

Even now, all these years later, the memory was a current of electricity. She’d been afraid to reach out, but more afraid not to, and so she’d stood there, paralyzed by her own inability to decide.

Come with me.…

The second time he said it, it was like a gift. She felt herself go hot, then cold. Words bubbled in her throat and slipped out, unspoken, on a giggling laugh.

She knew he would turn away then in disgust and blow out of her life on the same wind that had brought him, and the panic of that realization made her heart hammer in her chest and her throat go dry. But he didn’t move, he just stood there, his hand reaching toward her. He looked at her, really looked this time, and for a split second the false smile faded and a real one took its place. She knew then, in that instant, that she would do anything—anything—to see him smile at her like that again.…

Angel coughed, and the sound caught Madelaine’s attention. She looked down at him.

He blinked, coughed again. She waited for him to waken, and when he didn’t, she pulled up a chair and sat beside him, quietly reading aloud a passage from The Hobbit, which she’d begun an hour ago.

Halfway into the second chapter, he opened his eyes. She waited, not even realizing that she was holding her breath. She closed the book and set it on the bedside table.

“I’m gonna die, aren’t I?” He gave her a quirky, fleeting smile, and for a second he was the old Angel again, and she was the girl who’d loved him with all her heart.

“I’m not going to stop believing in a miracle,” she answered quietly, knowing it wasn’t the answer he wanted, knowing, too, that there was nothing else to say.

“Tell me about this miracle,” he said, “tell me about life with another man’s heart. What will it be like?”

He said the words easily, as if he were asking for a bedtime story, but she saw the truth in his eyes, the fear he was asking her to assuage. He did want a bedtime story, something to cling to in the darkness of his pain, a reason to keep believing.

She moved closer to the bed. “I had this patient once, his name was Robert, and he came to us as broken as you are. He waited four months for a donor, and when finally one was found, he almost wouldn’t go through with it. He probably wouldn’t have, except that his wife insisted.” She smiled softly. “Afterward, he moved back to his small Oregon town, and I didn’t hear from him for two years. Then, one day, he came by to see me—and he brought his newborn baby girl with him. They’d named her Madelaine Allenford Hartfort.”

It was a minute before Angel spoke, and when he did, his voice was ragged and hoarse. “How will it really be?”

The simple question hurt. He’d known that it was a fairy tale, that endings like that were for people who believed in them. “You’ll be on medication for the rest of your life. You’ll have to eat a heart-healthy diet and you’ll have to exercise. Millions of Californians live that way by choice.” She tried to smile, but found that she couldn’t. She leaned closer, allowed herself to stroke the damp, sweaty hair from his eyes. “But you’ll be alive, Angel. You can still act in movies, still throw temper tantrums, still be your larger-than-life self. Everything that matters in life will still be yours for the asking.”

“What about children?”

It took her a second to respond. “Did you want children, Angel?”

He gave her a smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “Please don’t talk about me in the past tense. I’m particularly sensitive.” He allowed a silence to slip between them before he finally answered. “Yeah, I wanted kids … once. I used to wonder sometimes … used to see myself playin” ball on an autumn evening with a blond-haired little boy. Course, now …”

Madelaine couldn’t breathe. The silence stretched between them, lengthening. Madelaine finally said, “Don’t do that to yourself.”

He turned his head slightly, stared at a place just to the left of her head. “Next time.” His voice fell to a harsh whisper. “Next time don’t save me. I don’t want to …” He squeezed his eyes shut, but not before she saw the glistening of tears. “Not like this …”

And in that moment, so many things fell into place. She gazed down at him, remembering and forgetting everything in the space of a single breath. This man she once loved was hurting, and though he didn’t know it, wouldn’t admit it, he was reaching out to her just like she’d always secretly prayed he would. Some part of him was counting on the candy striper girl to care about him again.

He was the old Angel, the boy who’d taken her hand and showed her a whole new world, the boy who’d cried when he told her he loved her.

This man, with his secret dreams of a lost son and his quiet admission of defeat, this man maybe she could trust.…

She lurched to her feet and turned away from the bed. Chewing on her thumbnail, she walked over to the window and stared outside, watching the silver rain fall.

She was afraid of her own emotions right now, afraid she was feeling instead of thinking and every time she’d done that in her life, it had cost her dearly.

“You know, Mad …” His voice drifted softly toward her. Almost against her will, she turned back to face him.

He lay there, looking weak and broken. “You haunted me,” he whispered, trying to give her a smile.

She saw the wrenching emotion in his eyes, the regret and the sorrow, and she realized that her own fear was nothing compared to his. He needed her now, needed her more than he’d ever needed that sixteen-year-old candy striper—and she needed to be strong. To face her fear of abandonment and do the right thing.

“You can’t die, Angel,” she said softly, so softly she wondered if he could even hear her. She swallowed thickly, feeling as if she were walking out on a narrow, shaky ledge, but there was no turning back. She couldn’t let Angel die without giving him the one gift that might make him believe in the fairy tale.

He gave her a shadow of that famous grin. “Watch me.”

She drew her hand back and gazed down at him. “If you died, your daughter would never forgive you.”

It had to be the drugs. He couldn’t have heard what he’d thought he heard.

Your daughter.

The words twisted deep. For a split second he felt a flash of pure, white-hot hope. “Sorry, Mad. I lost track of what we were talking about.”

“I said you had a daughter.”

“Is this a joke?” he whispered.

He thought he saw a sparkle of tears in her eyes, then they were gone. She shook her head slowly. “You think I’d be that cruel?”

“No. But …” He stopped, not knowing what to say or what to feel. “A daughter,” he said slowly, trying to make it sink in.

A daughter. He squeezed his eyes shut.

Madelaine had kept her from him, hidden his child away as if he had no right to even know of her existence. She knew he’d thought she had an abortion, and she’d let him go on thinking that, let him live his life without ever knowing he was a father. “You bitch,” he hissed. Anger was a black, bitter taste in his mouth, and he wanted to hurl curse words at her, wanted to make her feel as betrayed and hurt as he felt right now.

He was glad when she flinched. Then, wordlessly, she reached into her purse and pulled out a black leather wallet. Flipping it open, she withdrew a picture and handed it to him.

For a second his hands shook so hard, he couldn’t focus on the picture. He closed his eyes and concentrated on his breathing, ignoring the stuttering misbeats of his ragged heart. Then, very slowly, he opened his eyes.

The girl who stared back at him was a mirror.

His daughter.

She looked young, with electric blue eyes and jet-black hair. The smile she wore was familiar—big and bright and mesmerizing. She was dressed in black, a man’s tuxedo vest over a T-shirt, and several black loops hanging from each ear. There was a cocky defiance in her gaze that made Angel feel as if he knew her.

He couldn’t release the picture. He held it, stroking the porous surface, as if by touching the photograph he could somehow get to know the girl. His daughter.

Slowly, the anger in him bled away, congealed into the cold hard rock of regret. Of course Madelaine had kept this secret from him—what else could she do? What choice had he given her?

“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I have no right …”

“No,” she said in a steely voice, “you don’t.”

“I thought …” He found he couldn’t say the words.

She nodded. “I know. You thought I had an abortion. My father couldn’t wait to tell me of your reaction.”

“Tell me what happened.”

She looked away from him, covering her mouth with one hand for a long time. He knew how much this moment was hurting her. He wished he could touch her, tell her it was okay, that he understood, but he couldn’t do it. He didn’t understand a damned thing.

“It was a long time ago,” Madelaine said at last. “After you left, Alex threw a fit.” She gave a tired laugh. “You will not have that greasy little wop’s child, do you understand me?” she said in a perfect imitation of Alex’s blustering voice. “He locked me in my room for three days. I waited for you.…” She gave him a practiced smile. “When I saw the Harley, I knew what you’d done.”

“Mad—”

She pushed a nonexistent lock of hair from her forehead and went on without looking at him. “Alex decreed that I would have an abortion and there would be no more talk of this disgrace.” She drew in a shaking breath. “I agreed. What else could I do, where else could I go?”

She swallowed hard and stared at her own hands. “I got in the limousine and let the driver take me to the doctor’s office where Alex had set up the appointment. I was going to do what he asked, just let him decide what was best for me.” She shook her head. “I didn’t care about anything.”

He watched as she slumped forward, saying nothing for a long time. Then slowly she straightened, her chin came up. He knew that she was waging a painful battle and she was fighting the only way she knew, the way Alex had taught her.

After a few more seconds, she went on and her voice was flat. “Everything changed when I got to the clinic.” She shuddered, stared blankly at the gray wall. “That cold brick building … the yellow sofas filled with girls just like me. I remember when they called my name, I jumped. I followed the nurse to the examination room and took my clothes off. I put on that flimsy cotton hospital gown and climbed onto that paper-covered table.”

She shuddered again. “I stared at those stirrups and thought about what they were going to do to me, to my baby … to our baby, and I couldn’t do it.”

Her pain knifed through him, hurt like hell. “Jesus, Mad …”

“I got dressed and sneaked outside. The limo was waiting at the curb, but I knew there was no going back. Alex had made that very clear. I could only please him—the great, unpleasable Alexander Hillyard—by having the abortion. So I called the only person I could think of.”

Angel knew before she said it.

“Francis.” She smiled when she said his name. “You remember what he was like back then. Eighteen. Shy, bookish. He had just started at the seminary and he was on his way to becoming a priest. But he came for me that day, and the next day and the next. He saved us both.” She gave a breathy little laugh. “He didn’t ask any questions, didn’t say anything except Hey, Maddy-girl, you’re in the wrong part of town. He set me up in a halfway house for pregnant teenagers, and I loved it. I’d never known other kids my age, never had any friends except you, and I learned a lot. I’d already gotten my high school diploma, so I started college at sixteen. Thank God my mother left me a trust fund to cover expenses. I busted my ass to get through med school in a hurry.”

Angel closed his eyes. He could envision every moment of her life, the way Francis was always there to help out, a shelter from every storm. Not like Angel, who’d never stuck around for anything or anyone.

“Her name is Angelina Francesca Hillyard. I call her Lina.”

I call her Lina. Suddenly she was a person, this girl in the picture who had his face. Not some imaginary word or image, but a real live person. A daughter who would want something from her father. Want a lot of things.

Panic sneaked up on him, twisted him into knots. “Does she know about me?”

“No.”

He sighed in relief. “Thank God.”

“You said you dreamed about a little boy.…”

“Dreams,” he said dully, staring up at the ceiling. He could feel himself going down the wrong path, doing the wrong thing, but as always, he couldn’t change it. Didn’t really want to. He felt empty inside, eviscerated by her revelation and his own fear. “I said I’d wondered about a baby, but …” For a second he couldn’t go on, his throat was so full. Finally he swallowed hard and looked at her. He could see the pain in her eyes, knew what he was doing to her right now, and though he regretted it, there wasn’t a damn thing he could do to change it. “A dying man’s talk, Mad. That’s not a real dream. It’s self-pity, regret. Pretend. It’s like turning Catholic at the end just in case. It doesn’t mean anything.”

She was pale. “What are you saying?”

God, it hurt to let her down like this, to let himself down. But he wasn’t worthy of being a father. He didn’t deserve a gift like that. “Why did you tell me about her, Mad? Why?”

“I thought you needed a reason to live. I thought Lina might make a difference.”

“No,” he said, realizing midword that he was shouting. “What am I supposed to do, Mad, play daddy on a deathbed for some sixteen-year-old girl I’ve never met? Is that what you thought—that you could waltz some strange kid into my room and I’d hug and kiss her and die a happy man? That she could watch my last gasping breath and feel better for having known me?”

“No.” The word was a croak of sound, broken. “I thought …” She shook her head. “I don’t know what I thought.”

“You were right not to contact me all those years.” He sighed, knowing suddenly the truth about himself, hating it. “She wouldn’t have made a difference, Mad. I would have walked from her just like I walked from you. It’s what I do.”

“But now—”

“I don’t want to meet her, Mad.”

She drew in a sharp breath. “Don’t say that. She needs you.”

“That’s exactly why I don’t want to meet her.” His gaze pleaded with hers for understanding. “You know me, Mad. Even if I live—which I won’t—I have nothing to offer the kid. I’ll be infatuated with her for a few days, maybe a month, and then the glow will wear off. My feet’ll get itchy, I’ll start drinking again, and I’ll start resenting her for keeping me here.” Bitterness tightened his voice. “And then one day I’ll be gone.”

“But—”

He reached out, touched her. She leaned into his hand, let his fingers curl around her chin. He gave her the only thing of value, the only truth he knew. “I’ll break her heart, Mad. Whether I live or die, it doesn’t matter—either way, I’ll let her down. If you love her, protect her from me.”

She looked at him, and in the depths of her eyes he saw the pain he’d caused, and something else, something he couldn’t name. She kept staring at him, saying nothing, and as the clock ticked past the minutes, he began to feel uncomfortable. There was an expectancy in her gaze that nibbled at his self-confidence, confused him. “Don’t look at me that way,” he said.

“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.”