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 into 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.

She loved him; he knew that, had always known it.

Love is a gift from God.…

Francis’s breath released in a quiet sigh of wonder. It was as if the words had somehow formed themselves just for him. The same words he’d said a million times in his life, but this time he understood them.

Love is a gift from God.

He knew the doctrine of his faith would call his love for Madelaine a sin, but Francis had never been able to believe that. Breaking vows, yes, that was a sin; but the simple, singular act of loving? He’d never believed that his precious God would deem it such. It was His gift to us, His ultimate blessing.

Madelaine wasn’t his lover; he’d never truly thought of her that way. She was his love. As was Lina—his precious, precious Lina—and Angel.

Angel. He thought of his brother, and as he did, a thousand remembered images sprang to his mind. At first they were the usual memories—the ones that had hurt at the time and kept on hurting, the ones that Francis could never quite get rid of. Their mother, getting nine-year-old Angel drunk and beating him up, locking him up in that dark closet until he promised to be as good as his brother. And the words, always the words, spoken to Angel in that gravelly, slurred voice, I shoulda had an abortion.

Francis had always tried to change what couldn’t be changed. So many nights he’d held his bruised baby brother in his arms and cried to his God, his own trembling voice begging for help. Then, one day, Angel stopped reaching for his big brother, and that had been the most painful time of all. Francis had seen the dawning suspicion in Angel’s eyes, the question that lurked there—why? those green eyes had asked. Why am I so different?

But Angel had never asked the question aloud, and Francis had never found an answer. So they went on, living side by side in that crappy little trailer, pretending to be brothers, when, with every passing day, they were becoming only strangers. And Angel—Angel had become what his mother had predicted he would become—a hell-raising, shit-kicking kid who didn’t care about anything, especially himself.

There had only ever been two people who believed in Angel—Francis and Madelaine—and Francis had let him down. All those years he’d let their mother terrorize Angel, and he’d stood by, unable to do anything. He’d watched as the goodness was slowly, systematically ripped from his brother’s soul.

And he’d done it again, just last week. He’d gone to the hospital, seen his baby brother lying in that narrow bed, and done nothing; he’d let the past swirl around them, just opened that damned door and let their mother’s ugly spirit in. Francis wasn’t a kid anymore and he wasn’t impotent. This time he could be the protector he should have been before. Maybe he could even give his little brother a reason to stay.

Believe in the road.

Angel coming back, now after all these years … Lina asking the question that had been unasked for so long … It had to mean something.

Francis could make it mean something. He could redeem himself in the eyes of God, and in his own eyes. He could rectify the mistakes he and Madelaine had made, and those that were his alone.

He rose to his feet and went to the window. He imagined himself standing in the midst of that rainy darkness, wanting to believe in the road beneath him. His heart was beating so quickly, he could hear it thudding in his ears. Please God, show me the way.

Suddenly he found it, the courage he’d been searching for his whole life. It was there in his heart, heating him like that last burning coal in the midst of a black, dead fire.

He knew where he belonged and what he had to do. For once in his life, he knew. How had he missed it? How had he not seen that for the first time in years, everything that mattered to him was at home—Madelaine, Lina, Angel? He could bring them together, and now, all these years later, they could be the family they should have been all along.

Believe in the road.…

With the thought, it came again, the sense of having been touched at last by the hand of the God he’d prayed to and believed in for all his life. The faith he’d thought he’d lost filled him to overflowing, warming the dark, cold corners of his soul with searing bright light.

Grinning, he glanced again at the clock. It was seven-thirty. He could be in Seattle by eleven-thirty and back here in time for the Monday morning breakfast.

Perfect.

He looked dead.

Madelaine’s gaze shot to the cardiac monitor. The intermittent green line peaked and dipped in sharp, erratic beats across the blank screen, clicking along on its uneven rhythm. The pink line slid along beneath it.

She released a heavy sigh and shoved a hand through her hair again, leaning closer to the bed. Her chair screeched across the linoleum floor. Beside her, a tray of cold mashed potatoes and gravy sat congealing into the rolled white flaps of pressed turkey.

She knew it had been brought in by mistake, that sickening high-fat meal, but no one had come by to reclaim it yet. She guessed it was because no one thought there was any rush. Angel DeMarco, it was well known, hadn’t noticed anything like a bad smell in almost a week.

He’d been in and out of consciousness briefly, here and there, bits of time when his eyes were open and his fingers trembled and she knew he wanted to speak. But by the time she got the tube from his throat, he was usually gone again, drifting, babbling, laughing and crying.

As always, she stopped by and sat with him for an hour after her shift was over. She kept coming back, urging him to fight harder, to believe in a surgery she found she couldn’t believe in much herself anymore.

She brushed the damp hair away from his warm forehead. “Lina and I watched one of your movies together last night. It was … interesting. Well, since you’re unconscious, I guess I can be honest. It was dreadful, actually—too much blood and violence and sex. But Lina liked it, and your acting was incredible. She thought you were totally cool—not, of course, that she said this to me. She hasn’t spoken to me in days.”

Madelaine stroked his cheek absentmindedly, staring out the room’s small window. The wind was driving against the glass in shuddering little spurts. Rain blurred the view into a wavering sheet of gray and black. It was the beginning of a powerhouse rainstorm, she could tell.

Madelaine went on talking to him, hoping against hope that somewhere inside all that feverish sleep, he could hear her. Maybe even that her voice could be a lifeline he could follow back to consciousness. “I don’t know what to do about her, Angel. She’s quiet one minute and furious the next. Nothing I do is right. She’s in trouble. I … I need your help.”

She realized suddenly that she was telling him the truth, not just some words made up to appease or communicate with him, but the truth. Her truth.

She jerked her hand back and stared down at it, seeing the tiny trembling in her fingers. Oh, God …

When had she done it, started to believe in him again?

She tried to think about it, to rationalize it all away, but sometime in the last week—she didn’t know exactly when or how—she’d begun to think of Angel as Lina’s father. Not in some abstract biological/genetic way that was clearly factual, but in a more insidious way. A dad. Someone to help out, be there, share the load. Someone who meant that Madelaine wouldn’t always be alone in parenting.

It was ridiculous to expect that of him. Ridiculous and terrifying.

She couldn’t count on Angel DeMarco—hadn’t she learned that lesson well enough the first time?

“Maybe I’m the one in the coma,” she said with a self-deprecating laugh.

Before she could say anything else, she heard her name paged over the hospital’s intercom. She picked up the bedside phone and punched in the operator, who transferred a call to the room.

Madelaine answered on the first ring. “Hello?”

“Maddy?” The voice was broken by static, but she would have recognized it anywhere.

“Francis! Where are you?”

“I’m leaving Portland now. Can I meet you at your house?”

She glanced at the darkness outside, then at the wall clock. “It’s seven forty-five. Why don’t you wait—”

“Tonight.”

“All right, Francis. I’ll stay up. See you about what, eleven-thirty?”

“Maybe a little before. Okay?”

She laughed. “Francis, you’ve never been early in your life.”

“You’ll see.”

She laughed again, and felt her anxiety slip away. Tonight she’d make up to Francis for hurting his feelings the other day, and for a brief time—maybe just a night—things could be the way they’d always been. Francis, her Francis, would help her through this rough time and show her the right way. “Okay, Francis. ’Bye.”

Then she hung up.

Thunder grumbled across the black night sky. Lightning snaked from the bloated clouds. Jet-black evergreen trees climbed up a steep granite slope to the right of the road. A ravine fell away from the left side, its edge marked by a silvery guardrail. The blacktop traversed the hillside, unfurled down, down, twisting and turning.

Francis leaned forward and wiped a hand across the foggy interior of the windshield, staring beyond the blurry streaks to the road in front of him. He had the driver’s window partway down, and though it was freezing in the little car, it was the only way he could keep the windshield from getting completely fogged over by his breathing. The defroster was on the blink. Again.

Paul McCartney’s voice crackled through the worn speakers in a mix of static and rhythm, breaking in and out as the serrated tree line grew and receded along the road.

Rain slashed at the car, ran in rivulets across the edge of the windshield, and splattered the side of his face from the half-open window. He couldn’t risk taking a hand from the wheel to wipe the moisture away, so he let it slide down his neck and burrow beneath his sweater, collecting in a cold, itchy noose along his collar.

He hunched forward, peering through the cloudy glass, clutching the leather-wrapped steering wheel. The wiper blades stuttered across the wet glass in a metronomic whick whick whick

He turned a corner and saw with relief that the road straightened. His headlights skipped along the intermittent yellow lane divider. A hint of gray light pushed through the thinning trees, a reminder that he was almost at the base of the hill. Soon he’d be on the interstate, and the storm wouldn’t slow him down but a few miles an hour.

He glanced at the speedometer, saw that he was doing a leisurely thirty-five miles per hour, and tapped the accelerator. The red needle jerked a notch, then climbed up to forty, forty-five. The radio latched on to a solid signal and Patsy Cline’s liquid voice oozed from the speakers. Craaaazy … crazy for feelin’ so blue …

The road swept into a graceful arc to the right. The silvery guardrail glimmered in the headlights’ glow, protecting the road from the steep bank beyond it.

He maneuvered around the turn, singing along with the radio.

He sensed the danger before he saw it. Instinctively Francis cut back on his speed, but it was too late.

In the dim glow of his headlights, he saw a flashing bud of red, heard the shrill whining of a siren. Flares throbbed through the darkness in scraps of color. He yanked his hand from the wheel and smeared his palm across the murky windshield.

It was a police car parked on the side of the road. Beside it, a yellow station wagon was angled across the two lanes. Shadows—people, he realized with a dawning sense of horror—stood alongside the patrol car.

He tried to scream oh, God, no, but the cry lodged in his throat. His hands clamped around the wheel, gripping tight. His foot jumped from the accelerator and slammed onto the brake pedal.

He knew instantly that it was a mistake. The wheels locked hard, rubber screeched on the slick pavement. New tires, he thought irrationally, he needed new tires. These were old and bald and …

The back end of the car skidded around. Francis watched, horrified, as his headlights stabbed into the thicket of trees.

He took his foot off the brake and eased down on the accelerator, trying to regain control. But the car was on its own, pirouetting down the rain-wet asphalt in a horrifying dance that made him dizzy and sick to his stomach. The smell of burning rubber was everywhere.

The guardrail came flying at him. Behind it, a huge tree loomed in the darkness. He thought instantly of the seat belt he wasn’t wearing.

Oh, God, he thought, help me, help m—

The car hit the guardrail and exploded in a shifting, grinding crunch of metal. Francis felt himself pitching forward, forward. I believe in God, the Father—Head smashing through something and the taste of blood. Shattering glass, glass everywhere …

And then quiet.

He heard the dull, whining drone of his car’s horn, blaring through the darkness, and the pattering of rain on the curved metal roof of the Volkswagen. There were voices, coming at him from far, far away. Jesus Christ, Sammy, call an ambulance.

He crawled out of the wreckage, through the trail of broken glass. Strangely, he felt no pain, no pain at all, and the metallic taste of blood had vanished.

Slowly he straightened.

Rain slashed all around him, thumping on the road, running in rivulets in the concrete gully beside him. But he wasn’t wet anymore.

It took him a minute to realize that. When he did, he felt a pinprick of fear.

He looked at the wreck, at the Volkswagen that was twisted and broken, one headlight shining into the sky like a single unseeing eye. The horn was still blaring; he could barely hear it above the shrieking of the wind and the hammering of the rain.

Then he saw his body, draped over the hood of the car, one arm bent at an awkward angle, the other flung to the right. Even from here he could see the blood that pooled beneath his stark, white profile and dripped down the hood. A fine dusting of glass sprinkled across his ripped, bloodied cardigan. His eyes were open.

People surged across the road, clustered around the remains of the car. One of the policemen picked up his limp wrist. There’s a pulse.

Back in the patrol car, the other officer spoke urgently into a hand-held radio, spitting out words that Francis couldn’t quite make out.

Francis wanted to call, I’m here, over here, but he couldn’t seem to speak. Or move. He just stood there, feeling warm and dry in the middle of the rainstorm, watching the strangers whirl around his body, poking, prodding.

An eerie pulling sensation started in the pit of his stomach and radiated outward. The world tilted slowly, slowly, and he felt himself being drawn away from the road. Or the road disappeared out from underneath him, he wasn’t sure. He felt the darkness falling, closer, closer, the sky curling around him, soothing him.

His last thought was Madelaine.

And then there was nothing.