With the Father (16 page)

Right or wrong, I wanted that as well. I wanted him to take care of me.
I wanted more than watering trucks and platonic coffee dates. I wanted his arms
around me. In moments like this one, I wanted to lean my head against his chest
and wait for the panic to subside. “But how is that going to work?” I asked
aloud.

“When we’re ready, we’ll talk about that. But you’re not ready yet. I
don’t want to be another thing you have to go through.”

Was it too soon?
Probably.
I didn’t want to be the crazy woman who pushed too
hard because she only thought she knew what she wanted. However, I didn’t
believe for one second that Paul would ever be something I would have to go through.
“I want to talk about it now.”

The smile that followed lit up his entire face. “Soon. I was kind of
hoping that we could stay in town for a while and have dinner after we drop
Russell at the airport,” he continued. “If you’re not feeling up to the
Riverwalk
, we can go somewhere else. Maybe somewhere
quieter?”

“Have you ever been?” Once again I was feeling like a heavy weight,
pulling everyone around me down.
 

“To the
Riverwalk
? No, but that’s okay. We
can go some other time.”

He’d said ‘we.’ I might be confused about a lot of things, but I wanted
there to be more
we’s
. “I’m okay. Let’s go tonight.
We
will have fun, and I haven’t been in years.”

Wrestling with something, he scratched his chin. “It’s not going to
bring up memories, is it?”

I shook my head. “No. No bad memories there.”

“I didn’t say ‘bad’ memories. Just because they make you sad now
doesn’t mean they are bad memories. Some day you’ll be glad for those memories.
Especially Spiderman.”

“Especially Spiderman,” I repeated, smiling, not because I was thinking
of Spiderman, but because Paul always made me feel like my feelings were
paramount to anything else. “I want to go. Really. I haven’t been since I was a
kid. Jonathan thought it was only for tourists.” I immediately felt awkward and
awful. Here I was thinking about how considerate Paul was, and yet I’d brought
up the one man who hadn’t been. “I’m sorry.”

“For what?” His accent was more pronounced when he was confused. “For
mentioning your husband’s name? Don’t be.” Reaching for my hand, he continued,
“You’ve been talking about Jonathan for as long as I’ve known you. I don’t
expect that to change now.”

I ran my hand through my hair in frustration. “If only the reverse had
been true,” I muttered.

“Remember when you said he was your soul mate?”

“I believe you told me I shouldn’t believe in soul mates.”

He reached over and took my hand in his. Flipping it over, he traced
the lines on my palm with his index finger. “No, I said that
I
don’t
believe in soul mates. I’ll never tell you what you should think or believe. I
want to know what you think, not change it.” I was struck speechless, but
luckily he wasn’t expecting an answer. “My point is simply that learning that
he wasn’t perfect doesn’t lessen the loss. It probably only makes it worse.”

There was a lot of truth in that. I’d grieved for my perfect husband
and wondered how I could live without him. Now I grieved for the memories that
had become tarnished and dull during the past few weeks. “Can we not talk about
him any more?”

“Sure. What would you like to talk about?”

Us
, I wanted
to say. “How about dinner? Let’s talk about where we should eat.”

“What are you hungry for?”

You
, I
wanted to say. “How does Mexican sound?”

“I want what you want.”

I hoped that was really the case.

_________________________

We
didn’t talk about Jonathan again. Paul made it so that he was the last thing on
my mind.
 

At the airport, he double-parked in front of the
terminal,
we all crawled out of the car to say our good-byes. Loaded down with his suitcase
and a plastic bag from the Alamo gift shop, the little round man looked like he
might have trouble making it to the gate. Like a third-wheel, I stood awkwardly
to the side, giving the two some space. After a few hushed words that weren’t
meant for my ears, Father Russell clasped Paul on the back and pulled him in
for a hug.

Finally, Father Russell turned to me. “Come here, Grace.” I’d stepped
in front of him. I didn’t know the man – had just met him that day - but
the way he looked at me made me feel like we were old friends. When he’d
finally joined us in the parking lot after my embarrassing breakdown, I’d been
humiliated and apologized. However, Father Russell just waved it off. ‘When I
am weak, then I am strong,’ he’d said.

Giving me a hug, he
whispered in my ear. “Take good care of my boy. He’s new to this, but his heart
was built to love. You’ll see.” He released me, leaving me standing
there
wondering if he’d just given me his approval. Was he
sanctioning what was happening between us? How could he when it went against
the vow Paul had taken to the church?
 

He stepped toward
the automatic sliding door, and it opened with a whoosh. “Oh, wait!” he said
turning back. “I almost forgot.”
 
He
dug through his plastic tourist bag and pulled out a wad of tissue paper.
 
Handing it to me, he said, “Food for
thought.”

Then he was gone.

Paul looked at me curiously as we got back into the car. I shrugged and
unwrapped the tissue paper to find a coffee mug that he’d purchased in the
Alamo gift shop. ‘Never surrender or retreat,’ was written in big bold letters.

Paul shrugged as he pulled out into traffic. “Crazy old man,” he
muttered under his breath. But he said it with an affectionate smile tugging at
the corners of his mouth.

The closer we got to our destination, the more excited I became. We
were going have dinner by a slowly flowing cesspool of water that probably
carried typhoid and a host of unmentionables beneath its surface, but my body
was humming in anticipation. It was something new. Something different. And I
wanted to share it with Paul. I had new memories to make.

Paul felt it, too. I could tell. His eyes sparkled and a wide grin
spread across his face as he maneuvered into a tiny parking spot that was only
a couple of blocks away from where we could walk down to the river.

“You know,” he said, holding the car door open for me to get out. “No
one knows us here. We don’t have to worry about anyone seeing us together. Do
you think I can hold your hand?”

I stepped out onto the curb and threw my purse over my shoulder. “I’d
be upset if you didn’t try.”

 
“Well, I can’t have you
being upset. That just won’t work for me.” He wrapped his hand around my
smaller one, pulled it to his mouth, and brushed his lips lightly across the
top of it. I had a desire to close my eyes and revel in the feel of his mouth
against my skin.

“Let’s go,” he said, bringing me back to reality.
 
However, reality wasn’t so bad. He
didn’t let go of my hand. Not even on the steps that took us to the below
street level. Not as we walked along the river. Not as we’d stood in line
outside of the cheesy, touristy Mexican restaurant with the bar that was far
too loud for an early Monday night.

It was only as we approached our table that he finally let go. “I want
to sit across from you so I can look at you. Having dinner with a beautiful
woman is still a little surreal,” he said with a wink.

Our waitress greeted us and gave us the rundown on the evening
specials. To her, we were just another couple. Another table. Another tip. We
were normal, and as far as I was concerned, normal felt good.
 

“For someone with no practice, you do this date thing well,” I said
after she’d taken our orders and left.
 
I felt my cheeks flush, and I grimaced in embarrassment, not sure why
I’d just tried to put
a
 
label
on something that couldn’t and shouldn’t be labeled.

He chuckled. “Do I? It doesn’t seem that hard, but maybe that’s because
I’m with you. I honestly can’t imagine doing this with anyone else, but with
you I want to do it all.”

Heat spread across my face, and I blushed even brighter.

He chuckled again. “Well, that’s not what I meant. It’s not untrue, but
that’s definitely not what I meant.”

I wiggled in my seat, having now completely embarrassed myself.
However, he didn’t look flushed at all. “Oh, my gosh. New conversation,” I
stuttered.
 

He smirked mischievously. “I like this conversation just fine. If this
is our first date, don’t you think you should ask about all of my old
girlfriends? Isn’t that what you talk about on first dates?”

My mouth fell open.
Old girlfriends?

Naturally, I’d assumed that Paul had never had a girlfriend, but that
seemed foolish now. After all, he hadn’t found Father Russell until he was
seventeen. On the street or not, seventeen year old boys were far from pure.
Without parental supervision, I could only imagine the kind of trouble a
seventeen year old
boy would find.

“I see I’ve got you thinking now.” He took a sip of his drink and
raised an eyebrow at me.

“Well, yeah,” I said dumbly. “Do you have a lot of old girlfriends?”

“Not during the last twenty years, obviously. I have spent the last two
decades decidedly girlfriendless.” I giggled at his ability to make a joke in
spite of the situation he was now in.
 

“And before that?”

He thought for a second before he spoke, and during that second his
emerald eyes were as murky as the river water outside. “I guess you could say I
dated, though this is a first.”

“What’s a first?”

“Taking a girl to dinner before I try to kiss her.”

Again, my chin dropped. He continued to surprise me. I liked that he
wasn’t shy. I loved that he didn’t hide his emotions or cover up what he was
thinking. After being lied to for so long, Paul’s honesty was a relief. “You
didn’t have to take me to dinner. I would have kissed you again without it.”

“I wanted to take you to dinner. Just like I wanted to hold your hand.
And when we’re done here, I’d like to take one of those cheesy riverboat rides.
And if you just happen to sit really close to me, I’d be okay with that. And I
can guarantee that at some point tonight, I’m going to try to kiss you again.”

“You know, we should probably be careful. It’s not out of the realm of
possibility that we’ll bump into someone we know here. We’re not very far from
home.”

“It’s been a long time since I’ve lived dangerously. I say we go for
it.”

And that was exactly what we did. After dinner we
resumed our stroll along the river, and then we took the boat ride he
requested. I sat so close to him that I couldn’t tell where I ended and he
began. With every touch, electricity zipped through and all around me, igniting
a fire that I thought had been permanently extinguished. And when he’d leaned
in and kissed me as we went through one of the many tunnels, between each
hyperactive and erratic beat of my less wounded heart, I recognized something
I’d been lacking.

A small, but definitely detectable glimmer of hope.

KATE

I
threw the last file into the box I would be taking home and put the lid on
top.
 
“My job here is done,” I said
to the empty office.
I leaned back in the chair and rocked a few times.

I had worked hard for the last two days, doing
pretty much nothing else. I wanted to put this job behind me.
 
However, even though I wouldn’t be back,
I knew that my work was far from finished.

I still wasn’t any closer to figuring out why
Jonathan had done the things he’d done or to finding Hope. I wasn’t giving up
though. I would find her. They say you shouldn’t blame the other woman because
it’s the husband who committed the wrong. There is some validity to that
theory, and I’d once had the same philosophy. I’d slept with my share of men
with girlfriends – even one who’d I’d found out later had been married.
But I’d never knowingly had an affair with a married man.

Hope had known about my brother-in-law’s family.
The messages they’d exchanged made that clear.
 
Though she’d never been given the
opportunity to destroy it completely, I had no doubt that she would have
eventually. She’d been a bomb, just waiting to detonate and tear their family
apart.

I felt the need to find her, shove their pictures
in her face and introduce her to the family that she’d so easily disregarded.
Since she claimed that she didn’t know how she was going to go on without him,
I planned on giving her the option of joining him.

I shoved the chair away from the desk in
frustration. Turning to the window, I stared down at the small
,
 
picturesque
downtown. The sun slipped behind the buildings on the other side of the street
and shadows danced across the
store fronts
. It was
later than I’d intended to stay up here, but I had no reason to rush home.
Everyone had plans tonight, and I had no interest in returning to a dark and
empty house.

I suddenly wished that I hadn’t cut all my ties
with the people in this town when I’d so gleefully run away more than ten years
ago. It would be nice in times like this to have a friend that I could call. I
knew many of Grace’s friends, but they’d always been hers, not mine. I’d never
had much in common with any of them.

I ran through my short list of possibilities for
the evening and realized how limited my options were. There was really only
one. I knew he was still here because I’d heard him banging around in the break
room down the hall a few minutes before and cussing out the coffee maker.

Being with him made sense. Nothing else floating
around in my head made any sense so why couldn’t I give into the one thing that
did?

I stood up and tiptoed down the hall, looking in
the other offices to make sure that we were really alone. I had never been here
this late, but I knew Maddox would be here for several more hours unless I gave
him a reason to leave.

I made up my mind. I was going to give him a
reason to leave early. The man worked too hard anyway. He deserved to be
rewarded. And honestly, I wanted to try one more time to flush Paul from my
system. Maybe this time, Maddox and I would get it right.

I poked my head into his office and cleared my throat.
He looked up, and the irritated expression on his face melted. I smiled, hoping
that he wasn’t going to hold a grudge for my feigning sickness when I’d
cancelled our dinner plans a few days ago.

The flash of his perfectly straightened and
whitened teeth told me he was over it. “Are you calling it a day?” he asked.

“I am, and I was kind of hoping that you were
ready to do the same.”

He tossed the pen in his hand down on the desk and
turned his chair so that he was facing me. He cocked an eyebrow at me and shot
me a sly smile. “I could be persuaded. What do you have in mind?”

“Your place? I thought maybe I could cook you
dinner.”

“Really?” He looked genuinely surprised. Whether
he was surprised because I was offering or surprised because I knew how to cook
was unclear.

“Really.”

“Offer accepted.” He was already out of his chair.
“Though we might have to stop at the store on the way home. I have to confess
that I don’t eat there that often, and when I do, it’s mostly Captain Crunch
and Oreos.”

“Okay, since you clearly never get a home cooked
meal, do you have any requests?”

“Do you have any specialties?” he asked,
retrieving his suit jacket from behind the door. I watched the
muscles
 
as
he
felt in the pockets to make sure he had his keys and wondered if he was lying
about the Captain Crunch and Oreos. He didn’t look like he lived on them.

“I have several.” I paused just long enough for
him to catch the innuendo. “But my culinary specialty is veal
piccata
.”

“I’m game for whatever you’re offering.” He placed
his hand on my back and practically pushed me down the hall. “Do you need to
grab anything before we go?”

“Yes actually. I’ve got the last of Jonathan’s
personal documents boxed up. I need to grab it and close down his computer.”

His face fell, disappointment written all over
it.
 
“So you’re done here then?”

“I guess so,” I said. “There isn’t much left for
me to do. I gave your secretary all of the work-related stuff. I’m taking his
personal stuff home with me.”

“I have to admit I’m going to miss seeing you up
here everyday. I’ve gotten used to having your pretty face around.”

I was also a little apprehensive about it being my
last day. Not because I would miss hanging out in Jonathan’s depressing office
but because I would miss having somewhere to go when I needed to escape. I
would also miss having a purpose. I didn’t think I’d be satisfied just hanging
out around the house. “Me, too. I’ll miss seeing your face, too.”

He picked up the box and waited by the door for me
to gather up my things. I took one last look around and turned out the light
behind us.

Maddox was quiet as we took the back stairs down
to the parking lot. “I can go to the store and then meet you at your house,” I
offered as he placed the box on my passenger seat.

“How about I follow you instead?” he asked. “I’ll
pick out some wine and grab something for dessert while you get whatever you
need.”

“Sounds great.” I pushed the button to start my
car. While the engine came to life, I watched Maddox’s retreating backside as
he jogged back to his car with his suit coat thrown over his arm.

It really was a nice backside.

Twenty minutes later, we were laden with grocery
bags as we walked through the maze of his complex. Voices drifted down the open
stairway that led to Maddox’s second floor apartment. I stopped before rounding
the corner in an effort to avoid the head-on collision that seemed imminent
only to be hit from the backside by Maddox. A grocery sack that had been
hanging precariously from my wrist spilled onto the landing. Right in front of
a pair of very familiar
flip flops
.

I leapt forward to gather it all. “Here let me
help you with that,” Paul said, squatting in front of me.

I reached out to grab whatever I could, as fast as
I could, barely paying attention to what I was picking up.
A
box of pasta.
Chicken breasts because, apparently, the tiny grocery
store in
Merriville
had never heard of veal scallops.
Paul picked up a jar of capers and looked it over to see if it was cracked. Two
sets of eyes landed on the box between his feet at the same time.
Mine and his.

“Oh, man,” I muttered, reaching for the box of
condoms at the same time as he did. He beat me to it, but our hands brushed
before he dropped the box into the sack.
It had to be this sack that spilled
.

Inside, I was dying a long torturous death though
in reality it lasted only seconds – the two long seconds it took for him
to raise his eyes to mine. His gaze was intense.
 
Disappointed? Disheartened? I cringed.

 
“I was
just getting ready to call you girls, but it looks like you have dinner plans.”
The corners of his mouth turned up in a weak smile that didn’t match his eyes.

Paul wasn’t judgmental. Yet, I couldn’t help but
feel like I was being judged. Or maybe I just thought I deserved to be judged.

A chuckle behind me reminded me that we weren’t
alone on the stairs. “Yeah, any chance that you blessed my dinner as you
touched it, Father Paul?” Maddox coughed as he said it, as if to let Paul in on
a joke.

My head spun around as I realized that the dinner
Maddox was referring to
was
me. I glared at him and
swiped his hand off my back to let him know that I was not happy with him.

Paul, who was also standing upright again, ignored
Maddox but shifted from one foot to the other. I hated Maddox for making him
uncomfortable. I hated myself for putting us in this situation. I was here to
try to distract myself. Nothing more. It wasn’t what I really wanted.

“I better get going,” Paul said, completely
ignoring Maddox’ question.

The woman standing just behind Paul spoke for the
first time. “Yes, I need to get back to the office. I have to show another
unit.” She wore high heels, a pencil skirt, and a cardigan sweater despite the
fact that it was hotter than the surface of the sun outside. Or maybe it was
just my cheeks that were that hot.

“Goodnight, Paul.” With sad eyes, I watched the
man I desperately wanted but could never have move past me and continue down
the stairs.

Maddox watched me closely and then pressed his
hand into the small of my back again, urging me to continue up the stairs.
“Stop touching me, Maddox,” I said, swatting his hand away again.

“I’m hungry, and it’s been far too long since I
had you in my apartment.” Thankfully, his voice was quieter and didn’t travel
as far as mine had.

I had news for Maddox. He wasn’t going to
have
me in his apartment. Not the way he wanted. He’d embarrassed and enlightened
me. I no longer had any desire to have dinner or do anything else with him.
Using Maddox to try to forget Paul had been a terrible mistake – one that
I wasn’t going to make again.

I would have to get over my silly infatuation with
Paul on my own.