Dree ate it all. She was a carbs girl, and those were some freakin’ amazing carbs. Carbohydrates were necessary for the brain to produce serotonin, and humans have an essential carbohydrate requirement. Evencatsrequired some carbohydrates, and cats were nature’s perfect carnivore. Dree could rationalize carbs from a medical and biochemical perspective all day long. She cleaned her plate and only tenuously refrained from licking the last few pale smears across the stoneware.
When Disanka saw her plate was empty, she motioned Dree toward the kitchen and told her to help herself.
Dree skedaddled to the kitchen and dished up just a little more of everything. A lot of the food in Monaco was derived from French or Italian, but Dree had grown up in New Mexico, land of scorching hot green chile peppers. She probably had an essential capsaicin requirement.
The little girls, Majambu Milandu and Mpata Majambu, ate their lunch and prettily asked to be excused, and then they scampered out to the convent’s playground with the other little kids who attended the convent’s nursery school, happily babbling with them.
About halfway through the meal, during one of the seven-minute lulls between the laughing and talking about France and Monaco, Maxence laid down his utensils and folded his hands. “I will not be returning to the Congo,” Maxence told them.
Dree heard the strain in his voice because they were speaking English at that point. Maxence and the two religious sisters had switched back and forth between the two languages during the meal, expressing anything they could in English for Dree and, when the concepts became too complicated, in French.
He told the religious sisters, “I am sorry. I feel I have betrayed you.”
Ndaya and Disanka leaned their heads toward each other, and an amused glint crept into their dark eyes. Ndaya asked him, “And why is this?”
Disanka glanced at Dree and pursed her full lips with merriment.
He said, “I have accepted a position here. I will continue to support the convent and mission in the Congo financially, but I will not be able to be there. I would like the two of you and Majambu Milandu and Mpata Majambu to live here if you would want to. If you want to go back to the DRC, I will visit when I can, but I will be busy with this new position.”
Ndaya turned her eyes toward Dree and then back to Maxence. “Is that the only reason?”
Dree’s mouth almost fell open.Wait,did theyknow?
Maxence toyed with his potatoes with his fork. His voice was lower as he admitted, “I am leaving the priesthood. I will not be ordained. My commitment to the church to be a presbyter is at an end. His Holiness Pope Vincent de Paul released me from the clergy and gave me permission to marry.”
At that point, both Ndaya and Disanka looked pointedly at Dree, their mouths and eyes smiling, and Disanka asked him, “And who are you going to marry?”
They knew!They were totally torturing him for the fun of it.
The good sisters were stringing him along, but this was the man Dree was going to marry, to hopefully have children with, and to spend her life with. She shouldn’t let this go on. As his fiancée and with his honkin’ ring on her finger, she should stand with her man.
But she was also an older sister in a large family.
Dree stuffed another bite of the fall-off-the-bone-tender chicken in her mouth and chewed, sitting back in her chair to watch the shenanigans.
Maxence still hadn’t looked up and noticed they were laughing at him. “Yes,” he said. “Dree and I plan to marry as soon as we can.”
Disanka giggled one tiny laugh that could have been confused for a hiccup, and Ndaya backhanded her lightly on the arm, staring at Maxence the whole time. “But what will you do, here in Monaco, for a profession? After all, you are a priest, trained only in religion.”
Maxence still hadn’t looked up from his plate of food, which he had barely touched during the meal, which was a remarkable event that Dree had never seen happen before. “It seems I have been elected the leader of this country.”
At that, Ndaya and Disanka burst into laughter, the chimes of their mirth ringing from the dark, exposed wooden beams and white plaster of the convent.
Maxence finally looked up at them and realized they’d been stringing him along. His dark glance at Dree was an embarrassed pout that he would get over in two minutes. He asked the religious sisters, “How long have you known?”
“We are living here in a convent with many other religious sisters who are native to this place. Do you think we don’t know everything about your life here?” Ndaya asked him. “It is amusing that you did not tell us you were of a royal family when we lived in the Congo and let us believe that you were merely a poor Jesuit helping out in the world, but you cannot expect that you could bring ushereand not have us find out.” She pushed her phone across the table toward him.
The phone’s browser was open to a news website. The headline wasMonaco’s New Prince: Playboy or Priest?
Maxence winced and pushed the phone back at her. “How mortifying.”
Disanka asked him, “You want our blessing? Of course, you have our blessing. Go, and do your good in the world with this, Brother Maxence, because you will always be a Brother in Christ to me.”
They chatted for a while longer, Ndaya and Disanka teasing Maxence about thinking they didn’t watch television, until Max asked them again, “You didn’t tell me where you want to live. Do you want to stay here, in France and Monaco, or do you want to go back to the DRC?”
Ndaya and Disanka smiled kindly at him, glanced at each other to check in, and then Ndaya said, “It is pleasant to pass the time in another country to visit, but this is not our home here, Brother Maxence. We will go back home.”
Maxence nodded. “I will visit when I can.”
