TWENTY-THREE
Bastien—four years later
“Padre Castaneda!” The littlest of the Martinez family sped to me, brown arms wrapping around both of my thighs and squealing at the top of his tiny little lungs.
“Morning, Santiago.”
“Santi, ven aqui!”His mother called him to her hip, a container of dried tobacco leaves in one arm. I greeted her in Spanish, setting a basket of food and toiletry items on the kitchen table.
She whispered a few quick orders to the boy, who I knew to be no more than six, before he plucked the basket of leaves from her arms and skipped off out of the door with it. Shirt off and dark skin glistening under the Caribbean sun, Santiago shrieked with a laugh before kicking pebbles at the small flock of chickens hovering around the front porch, one squeaking as it deflected the terror of a tiny boy.
Chipped lime-green walls and rickety wooden tabletops painted a vibrant shade of aqua opened up the small room, thin wispy curtains hung at the window and danced on the breeze, the sound of tropical birds and a child’s laughter a beautiful soundtrack to life in this tiny rural hamlet.
I remembered when I was new at Iglesia de Santa Maria. As I was doing rounds the first week I was reassigned, my heart heavy and growing heavier at the sight of the abject poverty of my new parishioners, I came upon Ms. Carmelita Dion y Martinez’s home. When all the others scattered around the tiny village and surrounding tobacco fields came across their new priest, they’d reacted with quiet reserve, politely taking their care baskets before nodding me on.
Or maybe it was that I hadn’t slept a full night in months, memories of my last hours at St. Michael’s rattling my brain to distraction.
But when Ms. Carmelita, as she insisted everyone call her, saw the pathetic sallow tint of my skin, she’d invited me in to sit at her table, fussing over me with herbs and tinctures before sliding a bundle of ground powder into my pocket and instructing me to take it in my tea each night before bed.
“Dos semanas.”She’d held up two fingers with a toothy grin before whisking the basket of provisions out of my arms and settling at the table next to me. She perched tiny Santiago on her knee as she peeled yucca, peppering me with questions about where I’d come from, why I’d left, and why my Spanish was so good.
A native son, she’d smiled deeply when she found out I’d spent my first nineteen years within thirty minutes of where we sat.
It was the first of many long conversations with the older lady as she tended one of her six children. She always made the sign of the cross and winked when she spoke of the ones no longer with her.
The Martinez family were my first warm welcome back to the island of my childhood.
It’d been a steady four years of serving God’s children every daylight hour since then.
And serving them served me.
Just as it always had.
Never had I been a martyr to this life. From the moment I was old enough to pay attention, I’d been drawn to all things steeped in the spiritual. In truth, as unorthodox as Ms. Carmelita’s rituals were, I soaked them up like a sponge. I cared not for what dogma instructed, but instead, how best to identify with my parishioners.
Perhaps that’d been the thing to get me into trouble in the past—becoming too close.
But I’d learned what lessons needed learning, and if I had to do it again, while I couldn’t promise I’d do it differently, I knew I could do better.
Not that I’d be given that chance.
I’d grown adept at adding color to the dull shades of life without Tressa.
It was foolish to rely on one person for all your sunshine anyway, I reminded myself ceaselessly.
While so much of what had happened at St. Michael’s was beyond our control, there had been situations in which it was only I who was culpable.
I should have known better.
I should have established better boundaries.
It was my responsibility to protect her, holy man that I fancied myself.
But another truth I’d had to come to grips with was that I didn’t feel so very holy, not in the moments leading up to our indiscretion, and in none of the moments following. I’d played the role, the collar at my throat like a lock and key reminding me of my place. I’d even had the brief thought that maybe whatever had been between us had stemmed from a rebellion against the rules I’d been so accustomed to.
It hadn’t taken me long to scrap that idea, though, the ache of our love still twisting my heart most hours of the day.
My only distraction was serving those who needed me to show up in an entirely new way.
