Just Like Heaven (15 page)

Life couldn’t be trusted. It threw curveballs at you when your back was turned, then laughed when you tried to pull yourself up again. Nothing stayed the same and the best thing you could do was keep moving forward.

How many people had he dropped that load of crap on over the years?
Stay strong. Things will work out in the long run. It all happens for the best.

Some of the biggest lies known to humankind.

The truth was that life didn’t always work out the way you thought it should. You could do all the right things and still end up with your heart broken and your soul in pieces. It was what you did about it that mattered.

Booze didn’t work. He knew that for a fact. The pain still managed to find its way through the fog of vodka and whiskey. It managed to find its way into his dreams.

He probably would have spiraled down into tragedy before the first anniversary of Suzanne’s death if his bishop and two parishioners hadn’t staged an intervention and pushed him in the direction of help.

His faith had taken a beating during her illness. It took getting sober to reawaken his soul and remind him that God had given him the tools to rebuild his life. Faith gave him a stronger spine, a deeper resolve, the assurance that there was a plan hidden deep within the chaos and all he had to do was try a little harder, pray a little longer, and God would help him find his way to the finish line.

He had gone to a meeting tonight across the street from the Medical Center at Princeton because, for him, change was also a trigger for old behaviors. Charlotte Petruzzo’s hospitalization coupled with Maggy Boyd’s phone call awakened old feelings in him, bad ones, the kind of feelings that could send a man looking for old friends in dangerous places. It helped to talk about it with people who understood; it helped to put ego aside and work the program the way it was meant to be worked.

Not as easy as it sounded.

He rolled up the gravel driveway and shut off the engine. The house was dark and quiet, the SOLD sign Day-Glo bright in the moonlight. He should have turned on a light before he left, maybe switched on a radio against the silence. Once he was settled up in New Hampshire, he would find himself a shelter dog and—

No point making plans just yet. Suddenly those plans were cast in shadows.

He slapped together a PBJ on squishy white bread and scarfed it over the sink. He washed it down with a quart of skim. He flipped through the mail, paid his electric bill, checked his machine for messages, stripped, and showered.

Unless he was in the mood to recaulk the tub, he had run out of ways to avoid switching on his laptop and downloading his e-mail.

 
He shut down the laptop, locked up the house, and went to sleep.

“You won’t be here?” Kate popped out of her bedroom, wet hair tumbling over her shoulders, and grabbed her mother’s sleeve. “You can’t leave me here alone!”

“I’m taking advantage of the situation,” Maeve said, blue eyes twinkling, “and going out for a late lunch with Amelia and Sunny. You’ll be in good hands.”

“I was counting on you being here with us,” Kate said. “You know, in case conversation falters.”

“I don’t think that will be a problem.”

“Please!” Kate wasn’t too old to beg. “If you’re not here it will look like I think this is a date or something.”

“Isn’t it?”

“Of course it isn’t. This is a thank-you lunch, that’s all. I’m repaying a debt of gratitude.”

“You could always write a check to his favorite charity, honey. That would cover it.”

Maeve looked altogether too amused for Kate’s taste. “I already thought of that but he nixed the idea.”

“Then I guess you’ll have to feed him lunch.”

“You’re doing this on purpose, aren’t you?” Kate flew down the stairs at her mother’s heels and had to stop at the bottom to catch her breath. “Wasn’t this in one of your books?
Matchmaking Magic
or something?”

Maeve checked her hair in the hall mirror. “
Matchmaking and Magic,
but you were close, honey, and yes, you’re right. I am doing this on purpose.”

Her mother’s admission knocked the wind from Kate’s sails, and she sank down onto the bottom step and buried her face in her hands. “I thought you were supposed to be taking care of me while I get back on my feet, not torturing me.”

“I talked it over with Gwynnie and we both agree this is the right thing to do.”

“Wonderful. Now you two are talking about me behind my back.”

“We’ve always talked about you behind your back,” Maeve said, hunting around for her purse and car keys. “You just weren’t paying attention.”

“He’s going to know you set this up.”

“You’re a forty-one-year-old woman. I don’t think he expects you to need a chaperone.”

“I’m a postcardiac patient. I need supervision.”

“He’s a trained EMT. You’ll be in good hands.”

“I still have to shower, blow-dry my hair, figure out what I’m going to wear and—how could I forget?—put together a fabulous lunch for the man who saved my life.”

Maeve took Kate by the hand and led her into the kitchen. “I made the lunch,” she said as she swung open the door to the fridge. “Sesame chicken on a bed of bok choy with julienned vegetables and a Thai-influenced dressing. Peach iced tea. Mango sorbet for after.”

“This is so wonderful!” Kate peered into the fridge like a kid on Christmas morning. “I can’t believe you did this for me, Mom.”

Maeve sighed in pretend exasperation. “It’s nothing to cry about, honey. It’s what mothers do. You know that.”

It wasn’t exactly something her mother had ever done before, but Kate was too busy sniffling into a square of Bounty to quibble. These random acts of kindness were going to be her undoing.

“Finish blow-drying your hair,” Maeve ordered. “I’m going into town to see if Fran made those delicious brownies today. That sorbet might be a bit too precious for your Father Mark.”

The rest of the morning passed in a blur of expectant primping. The last time Kate could remember putting so much effort into her appearance was the night of the St. Aloysius High School Christmas Festival during senior year. That was the night she and Ed made love for the first time and, quite probably, the night Gwynn was conceived.

She fiddled with the flowing sleeve of her deep peach silk sweater. At least she knew one thing for sure: no babies would be conceived between the salad and the sorbet. That crazy out-of-control feeling that had possessed her Sunday night in the parking lot of The Old Grist Mill had dissipated itself, for which she was deeply grateful. She no longer worried that the sight of him on her doorstep was going to fling her backward into romantic chaos and hopeless longing. She might still be crying her eyes out at the drop of a kindness, but her brief infatuation with romance seemed to have run its course.

Nobody needed to know she had fallen asleep last night with the laptop on the pillow next to her just in case he sent an e-mail or tried to IM his regrets at three in the morning and needed an immediate response.

At twelve forty-five she walked into the living room and pirouetted for Maeve. “How do I look?”

“Like a dream.” Her mother looked up from her magazine and considered her. “You’ve always looked beautiful in that color.”

“What about the skirt?” She did a half-turn and looked over her shoulder. “Does it make me look too fat?”

“It makes you look wonderful.”

“Maybe it’s too dressy for a Tuesday lunch. I’ll be right back.”

Five minutes later she was back downstairs in her most flattering pair of jeans, the gorgeous peach sweater, and ballet flats. She’d gathered her hair into a casual topknot, letting tendrils and waves fall where they might. Makeup, a little perfume, her favorite earrings, the ones that looked like captured sunlight.

“What do you think?” she asked Maeve, who was taste-testing the peach iced tea.

“You were right.” Maeve nodded her approval. “That’s absolutely perfect.”

“I sound like Gwynn, don’t I? What’s happening to me?” She never wasted time debating outfits and hair-styles. Even as a teenager she had known what worked on her and what didn’t and never turned to Maeve for help.

“Everything’s all set,” Maeve said, scanning the kitchen one last time. “I think I’ll go.”

“You can’t go yet. He isn’t here.”

“It’s eight minutes to one.”

“What if he doesn’t show up? I’ll be here all by myself.”

“I have my cell with me. If he doesn’t show up, call me and I’ll come right home.”

Maeve’s mind was made up and she was gone with five minutes to spare.

Kate was amazed by just how much worrying, fussing, and doubting a woman could cram into three hundred seconds. She questioned the lunch, her hair, her sweater, the sugar level of the iced tea, the existence of God, the old Latin mass, the flavor quotient of sesame seeds, Gwynn’s choice of mate, and why she had ever thought inviting an Episcopal priest to lunch was such a great idea.

And then she heard the sound of an ancient Honda in her driveway and saw a tall, dark, and handsome man on her front porch and everything else fell away.

Eleven

He knew exactly what he was going to say when she opened the door. He had worked it out on the drive up to Coburn, practiced the timing while he waited for the florist to put some fussy shiny paper around the pot of showy flowers. Funny without being over the top. Warm without being smarmy. Neutral without being cold or distant. Writing an Easter Sunday sermon was easier, but finally he got it nailed.

He had the patter. He had the blooms. He even had a sunny day.

The whole thing was perfect, or would have been, except for the fact that the second she opened the door and he saw her standing there in a pair of jeans and a silky sweater, his brain short-circuited.

She looked fresh and young and as far as he could see she wasn’t even wearing any makeup. Her hair was piled on top of her head but tendrils of shimmering auburn had escaped, framing her face with softness. She was exactly what God had been aiming for when he created Woman. Was she beautiful? He wasn’t sure. The world’s opinion didn’t matter. The only thing he knew for certain was that he wouldn’t change a thing.

She wasn’t smiling. She stood there looking at him with the same expression of surprise that he imagined was on his face too. Surprise. Shock. That sense of recognition he had felt each time he saw her, as if everything that had ever happened to him in the past, every triumph, every mistake, every dream lost and then found again, had been preparation for this moment.

Somewhere on another street a car horn blared, breaking the spell they were falling under.

“You’re right on time,” she said with a wide and happy smile. “Come in.”

“Traffic was light,” he said, catching the intoxicating scent of her skin as he stepped into the hallway. “That shortcut you gave me was great.”

He handed her the pot of flowers and her smile grew wider. “I love tulips,” she said. “I’ll replant the bulbs in the yard this autumn and have blooms next spring.”

You would think he had won the Oscar when all he did was pick the right plant. “Something smells great,” he said as they walked toward the back of the house. “Sesame?”

“I’m impressed,” she said as they entered the kitchen. “I’m not sure I could have picked that out on my own.”

“I lived over a Chinese restaurant when I was in seminary.”

“Did you?” She opened the fridge and withdrew a large glass pitcher of something amber. “Maeve and I lived over a Hungarian restaurant when I was in sixth grade. I acquired a taste for chicken paprikash and violins that I can’t seem to shake.”

He suddenly noted that there were two plates on the counter, two glasses, two sets of silverware.

“Where is your mother?” he asked. “I thought she would be joining us.”