“Yup. Don’t you remember?”
“Maybe.”
“Well, lucky for you, I’ve been bringing Ms. Watson dinner a few Sundays a month since you left, and that woman is a St. Mike’s fangirl of the first degree.”
“A fangirl?”
“Ofyou, for starters.” Her eyes twinkled as they met mine. “But who isn’t?”
I slapped her ass through the thin sheet.
“But she’s also been going to St. Mike’s since she was a girl, and I bet you didn’t know she’s kept every single weekly parish newsletter since she started attending with her first husband in 1965?”
I couldn’t contain my laugh. “You don’t say?”
“She’s a charmer, that one, and loves to talk. Even remembers when Casey was a little boy going to St. Mike’s with his mom, Eve.”
“Well, how about that.”
“And she has the series of weekly missals showing Casey’s name as an altar boy under Father Martin.”
My throat cracked.
Heart hammering, I planted both of my hands on the stone alongside Tressa’s head, requiring it and her to support me.
“Fuck, I never should have left.”
“Bastien, no, that’s not why I told you this.”
“Never. I was such a coward. I left so much open-ended.” I’d walked away from what was my true calling at that moment, blind to its very existence.
Regret ravaged me like a hungry demon, sending bile into my throat and adrenaline into my muscles.
“So many secrets.” I shook my head. “And the cardinal knew everything. He left me in the dark, transferred me out of his life, sweeping me under the damn rug just as he must have done all those years ago with Father Martin.”
“But that’s the thing. We don’t even know what happened with Father Martin. And the main person who could is gone and, really, wasn’t very trustworthy to begin with.” Tressa breathed, fingers at the muscles of my neck, working me down from the cliff.
I allowed her calm to seep into me, urging me back to the bed. “There isn’t anything we can do about any of it. I had to tell myself the one thing that mattered was that Luce and the baby were safe.”
“And you.” I cradled her head in my hands, sighing deeply as I considered all that’d come to pass between us.
“You know what it took for me to come here? To come to you?” She settled beside me, tucking herself into the crook of my arm. “It took me realizing that my life was of my own making. That even when I was in college and working for the head of the department and he was locking the door and pressing himself against me and threatening to take away my scholarship if I didn’t let him jerk off in front of me…” Her eyes sparked with fresh anger.
“I never understood why shitty things kept happening to me. One asshole I dated even told me girls with daddy issues fuck better. So that was it, I was just destined to attract the losers. And I let that professor play his mind games for months, thinking deep down, I must deserve it. That I wasn’t worth anything in my own right. I was surrounded by people reinforcing to me that my worst was my very best, so it was better to give up any dreams now.” She wiped a tear across her cheek.
“Sometimes the person you’d take the bullet for is the person behind the trigger, ya know? But then one day, it just clicked. I was a victim because I hadn’t set that horrible monster straight yet. Because I thought I deserved what he was doing. And finally, the night I stood up to him and leveled that first edition ofThe Alchemistat his head, that was the moment I decided no longer to see myself from the perspective of a victim, but a badass. I found my backbone. I came to terms with the slow unraveling of my life when I wasn’t looking. I’d been a passive participant, letting life happen to me for so long instead of making itmine. I’ll never do that again. It took me a minute, but I finally found myself. Now, authenticity is my rebellion.”
With the mountains splitting the sun’s rays in a rainbow of light, Tressa and I found each other again, saying all the things we’d never said aloud to another soul. “You know, I went to seminary to find God. It took that experience for me to realize that God isn’t a voice so much as a feeling. So many people forget, or worse,don’t allowthemselves tofeelHim working in their lives already.”
An amused tone tickled her voice when she said, “Bastien. My wise saint. With—or without—the white collar.”
