But taking money out of the precious emergency fund Luce and I had worked to build felt like the most selfish move I could make, and what was I complaining about anyway? I had a great job. The truth was, I was under-qualified, but something in the one-on-one interview had convinced them I was the right girl. And I wanted to make them proud, which did not include leaving exactly four months after being hired because I was justmissingsomething.
And it didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out it wasn’t even what I was missing, but what I was craving.
An escape from the heartbreak.
His heartbreak.
His leaving.
A faint voice whispered in the quiet moments that chasing Bastien was weak, disrespectful of the calling he’d chosen. But the longer time wore on, the wider the crack in my heart grew, cleaving me open and leaving me raw and exposed. That was the thing about heartbreak—left untended, it bloomed like a black dahlia, crushing out the sunlight with all its darkness.
Something Bastien had said once in Mass clung to the edges of my psyche, fighting for dominance with my logical mind.
Love is war for some; it’s only in fighting for it that we can be sure we truly love something.
TWENTY
Bastien—one year 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 stream 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.
