With the Father (7 page)

If I were honest, I
also wanted to spend a little more time with him. I’d thoroughly enjoyed our
banter the night before. He was smart and funny in a quiet
,
 
unobvious
way. There was
something about the man that made me want to get to know him better.

I followed him to
the nearest open table and watched him spoon a couple of bites of stew into his
mouth, noticing something that I’d missed the day before. He ate deliberately,
studying each bite as if he wasn’t sure that it would still be there when he
got it to his mouth.

I’d seen the look
before. Though his mannerisms lacked the desperateness that I’d seen during my
travels to impoverished areas, he ate like a man who knew what it was like not
to know when or where you’d get your next meal.

Strangely, it made
me want to cook for him. “How long have you been volunteering at Karen’s
Kitchen?” I asked.

“A little more than
a year.”

“Did you know my
mom?”

“I knew her from
the church. And I volunteered here a few times during my first months in town,
but regretfully I didn’t start helping out regularly until after she died. I
wish I’d known her better.”

Everyone had loved
my mother. She’d had a heart of gold that she freely gave to anyone who’d
accept it. A lot like Grace.

I nodded as another
piece of the puzzle slipped into place. “So, you didn’t become a regular until
after Grace took over?”

He looked
thoughtful for a moment. But there was something about the way he watched me
that made me wonder if the delay of his answer was more for my benefit than
his. “Yeah, I guess that’s right.”

“So where did you
grow up?”

He laughed. “You’re
full of questions tonight.”

“Those that have no
answers ask questions.”

A genuine smile
spread across his face. “I doubt you’re lacking in questions or answers.” His eyes
sparkled in the dim fluorescent lighting of the dining room. “I grew up in
Boston, but I suspect you have already figured that out.”

“Your accent kind
of gives it away.”

“I thought moving
to Texas would soften it up a bit, but I guess some things are so ingrained
that they can’t be unlearned.”

“Don’t try to
unlearn it,” I begged. I loved listening to him talk. His cadence, so much
quicker than everyone else around here, reminded me of New York, which I missed
dearly.

“Tell you what.
I’ll make a deal with you. I’ll stay a Yankee if you will.”

“You’re on.”
 
Since we were bonding, I thought it was
as good a time as any to bring up the subject of Jonathan.

“Okay, so tell me
something,” I said, trying to sound as light and carefree as I had the night
before. “Let’s talk about a different sin tonight.”

“What do you have
in mind?”

“Adultery.”

“Oh, whoa,” he
said, grinning. “This isn’t related to your neighbor’s rose garden, is it?” He
eyed me curiously.

“No!” I said,
realizing that he thought I was talking about myself again.

 
“Oh, good. Is she having trouble keeping
the other varmints out?” He smiled and the lines around his eyes crinkled. The
dimple in his left cheek popped out to say hello.

“Varmints?” I
asked, trying to ignore the impure thoughts running through my head. I couldn’t
help myself. He was too good looking. When he smiled, it was shocking. The
accent, the eyes,
the
dimple – they were too
much. As inappropriate as it was, I wanted to take him home – and not to
pick his brain about the moral ramifications of adultery. I made a mental note
to put lust on the list for a future discussion.

“Yes. Varmints.
Spoken like a true Texan, right?” he asked lightly.

I laughed. “Sort
of, but your Boston-
ese
is kind of killing the Texas
vibe.”

He chuckled again.
“I’ll work on my Texan-
ese
.”
 
His face turned faux solemn. “Okay, so
let’s talk about adultery then.”

I took a deep
breath and framed my question. “Let’s say you learned something about someone.
Something that would hurt people you love. Do you tell them?”

“I guess that
depends on the circumstances. Do you want Father Paul or Friend Paul’s
opinion?”

“Are they
different?”

He arched an
eyebrow as he thought about that. “No. I just wondered who you wanted to talk
to."

“Friend Paul,” I
said. “Definitely Friend Paul.”

“Okay. And this
isn’t about your neighbor’s garden?”

I shook my head.
“No … well … let’s say that it is – hypothetically, of course.”

“Of course,” he
said.

In a burst of
honesty, I continued, “Let’s say that it
is
my best friend’s garden, and
let’s say that I know that someone had been sneaking in and picking all the
best flowers. Do I say anything?”

“Wow. That is the
million dollar Maury
Povich
question, isn’t it?”

“It is?”

“Sure. Do you tell
your friend? Or do you keep it to yourself? Maury would answer the first one
with an unequivocal ‘yes’ and the second with a resounding ‘no.’”

“And here I thought
his specialty was ‘Who’s my baby’s daddy?’” I said, forcing a smile.

“Those two seem to
go together, now, don’t they?” he asked.

I was having a hard
time grasping the fact that my local Catholic priest was a Maury
Povich
watcher.

“I think you need
to ask yourself what you hope to gain from telling her,” he continued.

“I don’t know. It’s
over now, and my friend can’t be hurt any more. For me, it’s not even about her
now. Well, it is a little bit, but it’s more about the fact that everyone
thinks that he was this upstanding guy. The pedestal he sat on was pretty high.
It will be a long fall, but I can’t stand to see him idolized any more.”

Paul’s eyes
narrowed and burned a hole through me. “Was?”

My stomach twisted,
making me want to spill my guts to this man. “How well did you know Jonathan?”
I blurted.

His expression
turned impassive.
Completely unreadable.
“I can’t
really say that I knew him very well at all. Why?”

“He was
with
the
flower thief.”

He looked down at
his bowl and sat his spoon down on the table beside it. When he looked up, the
smile, the dimple, and the laugh lines that had graced his stunning face
earlier were gone. “Jonathan cheated on Grace? Are you sure?”

I nodded,
broken-hearted for my sister. “I’m sure. Shouldn’t you already know this? Isn’t
it your job to know the dirt on everyone?”

“Grace never said
anything.”

“I wouldn’t expect
that she would. There’s no way that she knew that it was happening. She
would’ve told me immediately. So he never said anything to you? In confession
or something?”

He lowered his head
and exhaled heavily.

“Right. You can’t
tell me that.” I shook my head, exasperated.

“People don’t come
to confession like they should. The people who need it most are the ones I
never see.”

My head snapped up.
“But you’ve been here for almost two and a half years.”

“I have.”

“And he never came?
Not even once?”

“Had it been going
on that long?”

I raised my
eyebrows in answer. “For at least a year that I know of.”

He shook his head
sadly. “It’s hard, but it’s not our place to judge. Even now.”

I knew he was
right, that I had no business sticking my nose in this mess, but I didn’t care.
Besides, though he was saying one thing, his guarded and murky eyes told me he
was thinking something entirely different. “I didn’t view their marriage
through her rose-colored glasses, but I’m still incredibly disappointed. And
angry.”

Paul
steepled
his fingers over his bowl.
“Marriages are rarely what they seem, Kate. They all
have their ups and downs, and what goes on behind closed doors is usually
pretty surprising.”

“If something had
been wrong, she would have told
me
. They were happy. She was happy.”

He was quiet for a few
seconds. A few seconds too long. “I thought so, too.”

“I’ve known
Jonathan for more than ten years.
A third of my life.
And I didn’t always like him, but I never thought he’d do something like this.”
Paul remained silent.
 
“And now I
can’t help but wonder what other secrets he was keeping. I’m doubting
everything he ever did.”

“You think there
was more going on than an affair?” he asked.

“I don’t know. I
can’t really put my finger on it, but I’ve been going through the stuff in his
office and things don’t smell right. Something makes me think that this is just
the beginning.”

He
unsteepled
his fingers and leaned back in his seat. Staring
at his lap, he said nothing. I would’ve thought that seeing someone else take the
news as hard as I had would make me feel better, as if I weren’t alone in all
of this. However, when Paul looked up, the misery and anguish on his face
shocked me. It compounded everything I was feeling. It was almost as bad as if
I’d just told Grace the news about her husband.

Paul wasn’t taking
the news
as
hard as I had. He was taking it harder. It was more than the
reaction of a priest who was worried for a member of his congregation. It was
more than the reaction of a concerned friend. This was the reaction of a man
who had a vested interest in at least one of the parties involved.

He pushed away from
the table and stood to leave. “I’m sorry, Kate, but I need to go.” His words
were broken and labored.
His green eyes, no longer sparkling.

He turned away and
took several steps before I found the courage to say it. “When did you realize
that you were in love with her?”

He paused but
didn’t turn back to deny it, effectively confessing his own sin. Father Paul
was in love with my sister.

It was just one
more secret in a town full of them.

Grace

I pushed the eggs around the pan, waiting for them to harden. For me,
they were perfect, but my dad didn’t like runny eggs. I checked the foam carton
to see if there were two more to make for myself.

“What’s on your
agenda today?” my dad asked from the table.

I laughed because,
after the past five months, the thought of me having any kind of agenda was
exactly that – laughable.

“Could you put some
flowers on your mom’s grave while you’re at the cemetery?”

I froze where I
stood at the stove as it dawned on me that I hadn’t gone to the cemetery
yesterday. For the first time in months, I hadn’t gone. What’s more, I hadn’t
even thought to go. Guilt washed over me. How could I have forgotten? I scooped
the eggs onto a plate and mentally ran through what I’d done the day before.

Flowers.

Coming back from
the dog park, I’d stopped mid-step in the backyard. My mother’s
flower beds
were overgrown after an entire spring and summer
without any attention. I’d gone into the house, put on some work clothes and
then spent the afternoon eradicating weeds. When I stepped back to admire my
handiwork, I realized that I’d pulled out every living thing, creating an
expanse of dreary nothingness. Something my mother would have hated. She would
have preferred the weeds to nothing.

Determined to do
something about it, I grabbed my keys and my wallet and drove to the nearest
nursery where I bought ten pallets of flowers. I’d spent the rest of the day
planting. Afterwards, I was tired and dirty, but I fell into bed feeling like
I’d actually accomplished something. I’d been so busy all day that I never even
thought about what I hadn’t accomplished.

I would go today.
“Sure Dad. No problem.” I
slid
 
a
flowered plate of dry eggs in
front of him.

“Are you going to
eat with me?” he asked, concern etched in the deep wrinkles across his
forehead.

“Yes. I’m making
mine next.”

As he brought the
first bite to his mouth, he looked like he was questioning whether I was
telling the truth. “You don’t eat enough,” he said after swallowing. “You’re
wasting away.”

I was actually
quite hungry. “You don’t need to worry about me.”

“Oh, but I do. All
I do is worry.
About you.
About your sister.”

“What’s for
breakfast?” Kate asked, whirling through the kitchen as if on cue. She was
dressed in a pencil skirt and a fitted button-down. She looked as if she had a
real job to go to and not an office to clean out.

I looked down at my
t-shirt and nylon running shorts. Maybe I would put on real clothes today. “I
take it that you are going in today,” I said, turning back to the stove.

“Yes. Just for a
couple of hours. I’m having dinner with Maddox tonight. Just friends,” she
said, rolling her eyes.

“I’ll believe that
when I see it,” I said.

My dad huffed and
stood from the table. “Thanks for breakfast, Grace. It was delicious, but I’m
getting out of here before this conversation turns south.” He walked to the
sink and placed his plate inside, having already inhaled his breakfast.

“What do you have
planned for today?” I asked. I was never really sure what he did during the
day, but I’d noticed that he was around less and less. I hadn’t pressed him
about it. I was just glad that he wasn’t hanging around the house in his
bathrobe until noon. I was happy to take over that job.

“I’m headed to the
coffee shop to meet the old guys.” He grabbed his keys from the counter, and
the backdoor slammed behind him a few seconds later.

“What do you think
they talk about?” Kate asked, sliding into his vacant chair with a full cup of
coffee.

“The old guys? Who
knows.
The weather.
 
The price of gas.
Their ailing body parts.”

“That’s the truth,”
she said, taking a sip. “How was the park yesterday?”

“Fine. Why?”

“Paul said he saw
you there.”

“Father Paul?” I
asked.

“Yes, I worked at
the kitchen last night, remember?”

“Oh. Right. Yeah,
he was there with Chubs.”

“Chubs?” she said,
laughing

“He has the biggest
basset hound I’ve ever seen.”

“And that’s his
name? Chubs?” she asked, laughing. “That’s funny. He continues to surprise me.”

“What? That he has
a sense of humor?” I asked, though I hadn’t found him to be all that funny
yesterday. Of course, it was hard to make a conversation about lost soul mates
funny.

“I’m meeting him
again today. Aurora and I are going to head over there in a few minutes. Do you
want to go?”
 

She shook her head
and looked out the window into the backyard. “The flowers look good. Dad said
you did that.”

I followed her gaze
to the beds full of pink and purple impatiens. Larger hydrangeas of the same
colors stood in the shadier corners of the beds. My eyes traveled to the pool.
The bright morning sun glinted off of its glassy water. “It was depressing. I
didn’t want to go out there.” I took a breath before I made the commitment. “I’m
thinking about swimming again.”

Her eyes were wide
and questioning. “Tanning or training?”

“Training.” Not
that I couldn’t use a tan, but I needed to fix the inside before I fixed the
outside. “I think I might try to get in shape for a fall triathlon.
 
There’s a big one in Austin. I was
thinking that I might sign up.”

 
Kate’s eyes lit up. She probably saw this
as progress. “You need to start running again, too, then. I’m going to go later
this afternoon. Come with me.” She leaned in closer to the table, wiggling and
squirming in her seat.

Her energy was
infectious and impossible to resist, and I wondered if maybe there was hope for
me yet. This was definitely an improvement over feeling like I was dead weight
and that I was dragging Kate down. She deserved a real life. One that didn’t
involve hanging out in a house of fading memories with a sixty year old widower
and a thirty-two year old widow.

 
“The triathlon isn’t until October, but I
think Jonathan would be proud of me if I did it. He always said that he missed
being able to go away, just the two of us, on race weekends.”

“I’ll bet he did.”
The sparkle in her eyes was replaced with a glower. Her hands gripped her
coffee mug so tightly I thought she might break it.

The change in her
demeanor was unmistakable. “What’s that about?” I asked sweeping my hand in
front of her.

“Everything is
always about Jonathan. Jonathan, Jonathan, Jonathan. I can’t remember the last
time you did something for yourself
.
”

I narrowed my eyes.
“Are you kidding? Of course, everything is about Jonathan. He was my life, and
now he’s gone.” She sighed heavily and looked away unable to argue with me.
“Can we please stop fighting over him now?”

She leaned closer,
pressing her hands flat on the table. “Fighting over him? What are you talking
about?”

“You were always
jealous.” Apparently, fighting over him was exactly what I wanted to do. I
wasn’t sure where the anger was coming from, but my blood was boiling. Heat
flushed through my body.

She squared her
shoulders and stared at me. “Is that what you think? You think I was jealous of
you and Jonathan?”

 
“You wanted him but he picked me. For
once in our lives, someone picked me.” The hurtful words spewed out of me as if
I had no control over them.

Jonathan
had
picked me. He could have had either one of us, and he’d picked me.

We were floating
the Guadalupe
river
with some of my sorority sisters
when we met him during the summer before my sophomore year. Kate was a year
behind me, and I’d brought her along so she could get to know my friends. I
shouldn’t have worried about her. She’d always had more friends than she knew
what to do with. She was the funny, pretty one.
Everyone was
always spellbound by her
.

However, Jonathan
hadn’t been spellbound. When we’d stopped in Horseshoe Loop, we tied up to a
group of guys that one of the girls recognized from school. Kate had
immediately set her sights on the best looking guy there. He was funny and just
as captivating as she was. They would have made a perfect couple. But,
surprisingly, he wasn’t interested in her. He maneuvered his tube over to mine
instead. ‘I think you were in my history class,’ he’d said. And just like that,
history was made.

We moved in
together a year later.
 
Three years
after that, we were married. Twelve years later, I was alone again.

“That’s ridiculous,
Grace. I wasn’t
jealous
of you,” she said, whipping me back from my
memories. Her face was flushed, and her eyes were wide. “I was
worried
about you. You settled down with the first guy that came along. I thought you
could do better then.
Now
I know you could have.”

I was incredulous.
“Jonathan was perfect.
We
were perfect together.”

“Nobody’s perfect.
You put him on a pedestal. He could do no wrong in your eyes, but he was far
from perfect.” She stood and stomped across the kitchen. Digging through her
purse on the counter, she pulled out a stack of paper. She slapped it down on
the table in front of me.

She looked away,
refusing to meet my eyes. Her shoulders sagged, and she slumped into the chair
across from me again. “I’m sorry.” Her voice was soft. The anger from before
was gone, replaced with sad resignation.

I scanned the first
page. The words swam before my eyes. It was a conversation beginning more than
a year ago. The very first message was from Jonathan.
When can I see you
again?

Not soon enough
, she’d answered.

“What is this?” I
asked
,
my voice laced with disdain.
Disdain
for Kate.
Disdain for what she was forcing on me.

“Something I found
on his computer.”

I focused on the
name at the top of the page and then silently scanned it from top to bottom. My
already broken heart crumpled in my chest.
 

I looked at her,
blinking back the tears. “Who’s Hope? Are
you
Hope, Kate?”

 
“I can’t believe you’d think that I’d do
that to you,” she said, indignant and hurt.

 
“Why
are
you doing this to me now?
He’s gone. Can’t you just leave him be? Leave me be.”

“I’m not trying to
hurt you,” she whispered. “I just want you back, not the
Stepford
Wife that Jonathan turned you into. If you want to race again, do it for you.
Do it because you want to feel alive again. If you can’t do it for you, then do
it for Dad. Do it because he loves watching you cross the finish line. But
don’t do it for
Jonathan
.” She spat his name out angrily though she
didn’t look mad any more. Instead, she looked defeated and broken.

I, on the other
hand, was angrier than I’d ever been in my life. I got in one last jab.
“They’re not even your parents.”

She breathed a
heavy sigh and looked away. “That’s not fair, Grace.”

“Life’s not fair,
Kate.”

She shook her head
and stood. After grabbing her purse from the counter, she walked to the
door.
 
She paused with her hand on
the knob. “Don’t I know it?” she said. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have told you,
but I’ll be here for you when you want to talk.”

As the door closed
behind her, I gathered up the stack of papers and walked upstairs to my room.
My eyes fell on Kate’s door, and I felt the first stab of regret. I’d been
unfair. She was my sister in every sense that mattered. The sibling rivalry
that had torn us apart this morning was real even if our DNA was different.

I tossed the papers
under my bed and opened the drawer in the table beside it. I pulled out
Jonathan’s phone and pushed the button to wake it. The screen flashed and I
stared at a five-year-old version of Jonathan’s face.

There was no way
he’d had an affair. His parents had been divorced. He’d sworn that he would
never do that to his kids. There was no way that he would let us down like
that. I rolled onto my side and sobbed into my pillow. The bed shifted slightly
when Aurora placed her front feet on it. She barked once to get my attention.

“Go away, Aurora,”
I wailed, swatting at her.

I laid there for
what seemed like hours, heaving into my pillow. My chest ached for the man I’d
lost and all of the memories that Kate had just destroyed. I wrapped my arms
around myself and sobbed until my body gave out.

When I woke, the
morning sun was no longer streaming in through the window. I blinked the grit
from my eyes and focused on the large magnolia tree outside. The summer heat
was taking a toll on the white blooms. Soon the edges would be brown and the
thick petals loose.