With the Father (10 page)

“Yes. I’ll have my people call your people,” I said,
trying to hide my reluctance at the idea. She laughed and turned toward the
coffee shop door.

I really couldn’t blame her for not calling me during
the last five months when I didn’t want her to call either. As sad as it was,
we didn’t have anything in common any more. The ties that once bound us
together had been severed, and she was now just a reminder of everything I’d
lost. Realizing that I was probably now
what
she was talking about
rather than
who
she was talking to didn’t make me feel any better.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m sure she’s already on her
phone, telling someone she saw us here.”

“I’m not worried about it.” He shrugged as if it was
the last thing on his mind. “Hey, Kate says that you’re a runner,” he said,
changing the subject.

I nodded. “It’s been years since I ran competitively,
but I’ve been thinking about doing a triathlon in the fall.”

“That’s what she said. We ran together this morning.
You should join us tomorrow.”

My stomach twisted. “When did you do that?”
 
It was only a little after nine o’clock
now.
 

“Six.”

I snorted involuntarily. “Kate got up at 6:00? She
must have really wanted to run with you.”

“I take it that’s unusual?”

“We don’t usually see the whites of her eyes before
McDonalds stops serving from the breakfast menu.”

It suddenly occurred to me that that might not be a
fair assessment of her any more. She’d been dressed and ready to leave
yesterday when I was still making breakfast. Maybe she was changing her ways.
Or maybe she was just finally growing up.

He chuckled. “Come to think of it, she didn’t talk for
the first mile or so. But once she warmed up, she was fine. She was easy to run
with, though. I get bored out there on my own sometimes. And your sister is
very funny. I’ve never met anyone who speaks her mind quite like she does.”

My stomach churned again. It wasn’t right, and it made
no sense whatsoever but the thought of Kate spending time with him irked me.
“Maybe I will join you tomorrow,” I said, surprising myself once again.

We firmed up our plans for the next day’s run and
talked about the triathlon as I finished my coffee. While I threw our trash
away, Paul gave each of the dogs another drink. Chubs immediately perked up and
lapped up the water greedily while Aurora looked uninterested, still sprawled
out on the concrete.

I urged her up, and we started back the way we’d come,
taking our time this time. Aurora hung back, shuffling her paws at a snail’s
pace.
 

Not in any hurry, I continued our conversation from
our walk over. “Okay, so favorite movie?” I asked. We’d covered TV shows and
books earlier.

“Too broad,” he answered. “What genre?”

“Drama or Action,” I fired off.

“
The Usual Suspects
,” he shot back immediately.
“Counts as both, I think.”

I busted out in laughter.

“What’s so funny?” he asked. “It’s drama not comedy.”

“I don’t know. It wasn’t what I was expecting, I
guess.” I’d assumed that his response would be
The Passion of the Christ
or something similar. I’d been so wrong about him.

He smirked as if he could read my mind. “Next.”

“You brought it up, so comedy.”

“
Wedding Crashers
.”

“Really?” I asked, laughing again.

He shrugged. “I like weddings
and
Owen
Wilson.”
 

“Romantic comedy?” I asked, expecting to stump him
this time.

“
Keeping the Faith
. Favorite movie of all
time.”

“Interesting,” I said.

“You have no idea.”

“I’ll have to check it out.”

We approached my car, and I threw my stuff in it and
turned on the ignition to get the air conditioner running. It was only a little
after ten but it had to be over ninety degrees already.

“
Ummm
, Grace. There’s
something wrong with Aurora,” Paul said. He was kneeling beside the dog
who
had laid down on the hot pavement of the parking lot.
Her breathing was rapid, and every pant was accompanied by a strange noise I’d
never heard before. It was something between a raspy cough and a click, and I
became more and more panicked with each one.

“I think she’s too hot.” He rubbed the wrinkles of
skin between her wide set eyes. She didn’t acknowledge him and instead looked
straight ahead. “I think we better get her to a vet.”

I must have looked horrified because he stood and put
his hands on my shoulders. “Chubs and I will go with you. Get in, and I’ll
drive.”

He scooped Aurora up in his arms and carefully placed
her on the backseat. I ran around the car and slid in beside her while Paul
helped Chubs climb into the front passenger seat. While I waved cool air toward
her face, he ran around to the other side and slid behind the wheel.

The air conditioning didn’t seem to have any effect on
her. By the time we pulled up at the vet’s office, a white froth hung from her
lips, and she’d begun to shake. The car was in park, and Aurora was back in
Paul’s arms in a matter of minutes, but it looked as if it might be too late.

The nurse working the front desk took one look at
Aurora and shouted for help from the back.
 
Doctor Gage appeared and took the dog from Paul. He told his nurse to
put us in a room, and then he disappeared with Aurora.
 
It all happened so fast.

“This is not happening,” I muttered over and over as I
paced the room with Chubs on my heels.

Somewhere between my third and fiftieth lap around the
small room, Paul stopped me. “It’s going to be okay. He will take good care of
her, Grace.”
  

I stood before him and wrung my hands. “How much can
one person take? I mean, really. I can’t go home without her. I just can’t.”
Tears welled in my eyes. “If we lose her, it will break his heart.”

“And yours,” he said.

“It’s stupid to feel this way about a dog.”
 
With that, a torrential downpour of
tears began their descent down my cheeks. I was so tired of crying. I was
especially tired of crying in front of this man. For the third time in as many
days, he pulled me into a hug.

“No, it’s not. You love her.”

“She’s all I have now,” I said, shuddering.

“No, she’s not, Grace. There are a lot of people that
love you.”

“She’s easy. I can handle her,” I said into his chest.
“She doesn’t ask me to talk about my feelings. She’s not scared to be around
me. She doesn’t have to work to be my friend. She doesn’t press me to figure
out if I’m having a good day or a bad day when she comes into the room. I don’t
feel quite so alone when she’s around. And she doesn’t require anything from me
either,” I continued on my teary rant.

“Do you feel alone now?” he asked, with his arms still
wrapped around me. “
Because
 
you’re
not.”

I pulled away and blinked up at him. “No,” I breathed.
Using his thumbs, he wiped the tears from my cheeks.

I would never know what got into me at that moment.
Would never be able to figure out whether it was the months of grief or the
panic stemming from the situation with Aurora or just sheer lunacy. However, in
a moment of madness, I forgot everything. I wasn’t a woman who’d lost
everything. I wasn’t a woman who’d been hanging on by a thread these past five
months. I was just a woman, locked in a room with a pacing basset hound and a
gorgeous man who was saying all the right things.

With damp cheeks, puffy eyes, and a runny nose, I
placed my hands on his chest and pressed up on my tiptoes. When I should have
pushed him away, I kissed him instead. With his hands still cupping my cheeks
and my hands now clutching his thin t-shirt, I kissed him with everything I
had.

I put so much of myself into that kiss that I didn’t
notice right away that he wasn’t kissing me back. But, eventually, it hit me. I
released my grip on his shirt and pushed away, embarrassed and confused.

He stood rigid in front of me, not moving a single
muscle, his arms now hanging limply by his side. His eyes were wide and round.
“I’m so sorry,” I whispered. “I don’t know why I did that.”

I shuffled backwards, trying to get away from him and
bumped into the examination table. I was horrified for more reasons than I
could count. I wanted to look away. I wanted to duck and hide under the table.
I wanted to run from the room, but I could do none of those things. I was
paralyzed by my own fear and embarrassment.

While I silently stared, his expression morphed from
shock into something completely unexpected. He took one long step toward me
until we were dangerously close again. With one finger, he tipped up my chin so
that I had to look him in the eyes, and a palpable energy hummed between us. I
had an almost uncontrollable desire to touch him. I gripped the edge of the
table instead.

“I do,” he said in a low voice. The words were barely
out of his mouth before his mouth was on mine again. There was no hesitation
this time. His lips moved in perfect harmony against mine, and one kiss turned
into a shower of unbearably sweet kisses. They were innocent but full of promise.

With a new intensity, a hand wove through my hair, and
he nipped at my bottom lip. My lips parted in response, urging him to do the
same, begging him for more. He didn’t answer me. Instead, he pulled back,
brushing a thumb across my lips as a parting gift.

He looked down at me, the want in his beautiful green
eyes not masked in the slightest. My head spun. My heart raced.

I’d just kissed my priest.

No. I’d just kissed Paul.

And he’d kissed me back.
  

“What just happened?” I asked.

A contented and reassuring smile appeared. “Life,” he
said. “Life just happened.”
    

]

Grace

“You
kissed him? Just like that?” Kate sat down on the edge of my bed, and I tossed
the book I’d been pretending to read. I hadn’t been able to focus on the words
anyway and was reading the same paragraph over and over just for something to
do.

She had come by my room under the guise of checking on
Aurora, who was still recovering from her bout with heat exhaustion on my bed.
The doctor had prescribed lots of rest and water for the next couple of days
and limited outdoor activities. No more trips to the dog park for a while.
Though Kate was concerned about the dog, I knew her more covert mission was to
check on me. So, while she was still hovering over the snoring dog, I’d
ambushed her by declaring that I’d kissed Father Paul
. “Yes, just like
that. I really don’t know what came over me.”

“I think I know what came over you,” she said under
her breath. She eyed me cautiously. “You’re freaking out, aren’t you?”

‘Freaking out’ was putting it mildly.

I’d come home and put myself to bed, thinking that
I was surely coming down with some sort of virus – a virus that robs you
of your common sense and morality. But, of course, I couldn’t sleep. I kept
replaying the kiss over and over in my head. And then I would berate myself for
it. I couldn’t believe that I’d done it. I was shocked.
And
ashamed.
But mostly, I was guilt-ridden. The guilt was eating me alive
and threatened to swallow me whole. In a perfect world, I could crawl under my
bed and hide for the next ten years.

Actually, in a perfect world, none of this would
be happening. In a perfect world, I’d be cooking dinner for the kids right now.
Jonathan would stroll through the door in about thirty minutes, and it would be
him that I’d kiss.

But the world wasn’t perfect. If I went downstairs
and cooked dinner tonight, only my dad and sister would be there to eat with
me. And to make matters worse, I couldn’t stop thinking about Paul. I
unconsciously brushed my fingers over my mouth.
 

“Oh, my God, you’re thinking about it now!” she
said. “You liked it!”

I threw my arm over my eyes. I desperately wanted
to talk to Kate about it, but I was fearful of what she would say. Not because
she would disapprove.
Quite the opposite.
My fear was
that she would approve. That she would encourage me. Kate lived by a different
set of standards than the rest of the world. Still, I needed to talk to
someone, and there was no one really other than her. Arden would have loved to
hear the sordid details of my kiss with Paul. However, her reaction at the
coffee shop still bothered me.

 
“I’m
not sure how I feel about it,” I said cautiously. “After all, I did just attack
our priest. I guess I’m conflicted.”

“Our friendly neighborhood celibate priest,” she
added.

I shifted onto my back, stared at the ceiling over
my bed, and let out an exasperated sigh. “Thanks, Kate. Like I needed to be
reminded of that.” Sarcasm oozed out of my every pore. “Besides aren’t they
all?”

“The Vatican would say so. Though I’m starting to
question everything I’ve ever known about everyone,” she said, crawling across
me to
lay
down on the other side of the bed. “So
details. I want all of them.”

She remained silent while I described how I’d
jumped him in the vet’s office, trying not to leave anything out. “So I was
acting like a sobbing maniac. He was giving me a friendly hug, trying to
comfort me, and I basically attacked him,” I finished. “Just like that. He
didn’t see it coming.”

“Wow.” Her voice was distant as if she was deep in
thought.

“Yeah, so how hot is the room in hell for a woman
who attempts to seduce a priest?”

“It doesn’t sound to me like you had to do much
seducing. Sounds to me like he was a willing participant.”

“He wasn’t,” I said, wanting to protect him.

“So, he didn’t kiss you back?” she asked
incredulously.
 
“I don’t believe
that.”

“Why?”

“Because I have a theory about Father Paul.”

“What’s that?”

“I think he likes you. In fact, I
know
he
likes you. Whether he’ll do anything about it is a whole other matter. But I
know for a fact that he likes you.”

“How do you know that?” I didn’t know why I was
even asking.
 
It was ludicrous. We
weren’t two high school kids, and this wasn’t my first crush. We were grown
adults. He was a priest. I was a widow.
A new widow at that.

“Just tell me the truth. Did he kiss you back?”

“No … well not at first, at least. I think I
shocked the pants right off him.”

“You wish,” she said, laughing at her own joke.

“Kate, stop!”

“Sorry,” she said, trying to gain her composure.
“He’s just so
flippin
’ good-looking. It’s hard not
think about him like that.”

“Well, I for one, never had that problem … until
recently.”

“So you admit that he’s hot.”

“He’s attractive,” I conceded with reluctance.

“Uh, huh. And so after the shock wore off, what
did he do?”

“He kissed me back,” I whispered. “But you can’t
tell anyone, Kate. They’ll kick him out of the church. They will, right?”

“Beats me. I’m sure they have programs to try to
reform him before they kick him out. Jeez they probably wouldn’t do anything to
him with all the problems the Catholic Church is having with their priests I
seriously doubt the Pope is going to get his panties in a bunch over one kiss
with one woman.
 
They’ve got bigger
fish to fry than that.”

“This is serious, Kate.”

She flopped onto her back beside me. “I know. I’m
not trying to make light of it. But it’s only a problem if you want to kiss him
again.”

“I’m not going to kiss him again.” I wasn’t. I had
no intention to do so, but even as I said it I knew that I didn’t want it to be
true. And then the guilt crashed over me again. “It was just a one time thing.”

“You just said ‘I’m not going to.’ You didn’t say
that you don’t want to.”

I groaned. “You know what I meant.”

“Sure I do. And, what I’m saying is that it
doesn’t have to be a one time thing if you don’t want it to be,” she said in
true Kate fashion.
 

Kate would never allow an edict from the Vatican
to get in the way of her happiness. She went where her heart led her with no
thought to the consequences. It wasn’t even that she was a rule breaker because
the rules never applied to her in the first place. I’d always admired that
about her. However, admiring the trait in someone else doesn’t mean that it’s a
trait you’d want to adopt for yourself even if you could. I doubted that I
could ever live my life the way she did.

“The priest thing is sort of a huge obstacle.”

“It’s a doozy,” she agreed. “But it’s funny that
you are facing this particular dilemma today because I was just researching
the
 
whole
Catholic celibacy thing yesterday.” She waved her hand in the air as if ‘the
whole Catholic celibacy thing’ was a fly buzzing around us, annoying but of no
real consequence.

“Why?” I asked, my voice dripping with suspicion.

“I was curious,” she said, shrugging innocently.
“We’ve been hanging out with Paul a lot this week. I bet when he was younger,
he could have had any woman he wanted. Shit, he practically still can. But he’s
chosen this path for his life instead. The Mystifying Minister baffles me.” The
amount of thought that she’d put into this baffled
me
. However, she
wasn’t the only one who’d recently become mystified by Paul.

I knew
better
than to
plant ideas in Kate’s head. Hers was already full of enough bad ideas to last
the both of us a lifetime. She didn’t need to know that I’d thought of nothing
but him all afternoon. That even though I knew it was
an
impossibility
, I’d wondered if he would kiss me again when I dropped him
off at his car, and I’d been disappointed when he hadn’t. She didn’t need to
know that the kiss had been nagging at me all afternoon.

I could do the same research myself, but I didn’t
want to wait for her to leave. Besides, she’d already done it. There was no
reason to duplicate efforts. “Okay, I wouldn’t say that I’m facing a dilemma,
but what did your research teach you?” I asked, trying to be as nonchalant as
possible.

“Well,” she started, “surprisingly, the whole
celibacy thing isn’t even rooted in religious doctrine like you’d think. It
wasn’t even put into place until 900 years after Jesus. One theory is that
priests were required to be celibate so they wouldn’t produce heirs that would
get in the way of the church getting their estates when they died. It was as
much about money as it was about discipline.”

“That is interesting,” I said. “But it’s
immaterial, Kate. The fact is he’s a priest and priests aren’t allowed to kiss
their parishioners.
End of story.
The history of the
church is irrelevant.”

“Okay, but –,” Kate pressed on.

“But nothing.” I was starting to get annoyed. We
could kick this dead horse around all night, and nothing would change.

“No, wait. Let’s just say … hypothetically … that
he wasn’t a priest. Just pretend for a second. Do you like him like that?”

“No.” I paused, and she arched her eyebrows at me,
repeating the question I had just answered. “Okay, I don’t know. But we don’t
even need to go there because that’s not the only obstacle in our way.”

“What’s the problem?” she asked.

I wanted to thump her on the head. “Isn’t it
obvious? I’m a freaking mess, Kate. There’s no getting around that. Until this
week, I’ve spent every day either in bed or at the cemetery. I cry myself to
sleep every night, and that hasn’t changed. And on top of everything else, I
just found out that my dead husband was in love with someone else. I’m in no
condition to be kissing anybody.”

“So get yourself straightened out.”

“It’s not that easy.”

“Well, I think you’re making progress,” she said.
“Besides, you can’t schedule love. It happens when it happens.”

“I’m certainly
not
in love with him,” I
scoffed.

“I wasn’t talking about
you
.”

I rolled my eyes at her. Paul and I barely knew
each other. In fact, until this week, we’d never even talked to each other outside
of church or Karen’s Kitchen.

As if she could read my mind, she asked, “Tell me
this.
 
When you were still going,
how often was he at Karen’s Kitchen?”

“Almost every night,” I conceded. “But that’s just
because he cares about the people we were helping. He’s a giver. ”

“He is a giver. I wonder though,” she said,
tapping her chin with her finger, “exactly how much he’s willing to give
up.”
 

“I need to feed Aurora,” I said, rolling off the
bed to end a pointless conversation.

_________________________

I tossed and turned all night and was awake before the alarm went off.
I was anxious about seeing him again. I worried he wouldn’t show up to run with
us. I worried he would.

I opened the door
to my room and glanced down the hallway toward Kate’s cracked door. I tiptoed
across the wood floor, careful not to make any noise that would wake my dad
downstairs. Before I got to her room, the bathroom door opened at the end of
the hall. She shuffled toward me in a tank top and sleep shorts. “You better
get dressed. It’s almost six,” I whispered.

“You’re going to
have to go without me today. I’m not feeling well.” She gripped her stomach and
moaned dramatically.

I eyed her
suspiciously. I was counting on her being with me this morning. It was the only
reason I hadn’t completely lost my mind already. I needed her to be a buffer
between Paul and I.

“I can’t go alone,”
I hissed.

“Sure you can.” She
slipped past me, heading back into her room. “You’ll be fine.” She winked at me
as she shut the door and left me alone in the hall on the brink of an anxiety
attack. I looked at my watch. I didn’t have time for an anxiety attack. He was
probably already outside waiting.
Or not outside because he
wasn’t coming.

I slipped my phone
into the interior pocket of my running shorts and opened the front door. My
heart fell when he wasn’t waiting on the porch. I scanned the yard and found
him stretching near the big magnolia tree. My heart beat furiously in my chest,
and I slipped headfirst into the panic attack that I’d talked myself out of
upstairs. I turned and considered running back into the house. I wasn’t ready
to face him.

“Morning,” he said,
joining me on the sidewalk. His smile was warm and his voice inviting, and just
like that, I was at ease again. All nervousness melted away. “Did you stretch?”

“Yes, I stretched
inside. But I think stretching is going to be the least of my problems. I
haven’t run in months. I won’t be able to keep up with you.”

He laughed. “I’m in
no hurry, Grace. We can take it as slow as you need.”

My tangled mind
wondered if he was just talking about running or if he meant something more. I
had just told Kate the night before that I wasn’t going to allow this to go any
further. But,
now that he was standing in front of me, a part
of me wanted to interpret everything coming out of his mouth as an invitation
.
“I guess we’re going to find out what I’m capable of.” My answer was also laced
with double meaning.