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.
A way that reminded me that things like stolen touches and forbidden tangles between the sheets weren’t the real world.
This was.
The world where kids went hungry and politicians worked for the greater good of themselves, not their citizens.
Ms. Carmelita and Santiago and all the people of Iglesia de Santa Maria had been my port in a stormy sea, the only thing left when my world was pulled out from beneath my feet.
The memory of my last few months at St. Mike’s had grown hazy at best, and by choice.
My time as a young seminarian with the Jesuits had taught me much, one of the most significant gifts, an unmatched ability for aloneness.
All that solitary time left my brain well versed in cataloging and compartmentalizing the details of my past.
If it was something that served me, which usually meant the greater good of those around me, it was worthy of my time.
If it left me feeling worse—sad or angry or resentful or with a pressing ache I felt like I might never relieve as long as I existed without her—then it was shoved into the back corner. It would be a terribly long and lonely life if I let missing her haunt me all my days, and even with all memories of her locked away, she still stole most of my sleepless nights.
The media onslaught following the day Casey Maniscalco left three backpacks on the steps of St. Mike’s was like nothing I’d seen with my own eyes before. I suspected he’d been the one sneaking around Lucy and Tressa’s cottage at night—but I didn’t have proof. Media crews flew in from not only other cities, but around the world, camping out on the steps and begging for any reaction at all. By the time the cardinal walked into my rectory two days later to inform me of my reassignment, effective immediately, the burden had grown greater.
But I still wasn’t sure if it was worse than opening morning Mass every day to throngs of rubbernecking newcomers.
The diocese had no doubt known what he was doing when he assigned me to this tiny parish, two hours outside of Havana and a million miles away from modern technology. When they’d discovered I’d had a security system installed without their prior approval—the very thing that’d helped police arrive sooner that day—they’d chastised me greatly. But it was worth it, and I’d do it again. Even with some preliminary digging I hadn’t been able to shake the idea that something was being covered up in St. Mike’s past. The inflated yearly stipend alone had raised alarm bells, and for that reason, I was determined to protect all of the souls of my parish, diocese be damned.
Rural living had proven itself more fruitful than my life after that day in Philadelphia ever could have been.
I’d found deeper meaning in my calling in Cuba, a place where I could be of more use.
A place that needed me as much as I needed it.
A place where Tressa didn’t exist.
TWENTY-ONE
Bastien
“You one of those pretend priests like the rest of them up at the monastery?” An old man eagle-eyed me from his seat at Ms. Carmelita’s table, back hunched over like he’d plowed a few too many fields in his very long lifetime.
“Shh, Padre.” Carmelita set a cracked bowl of arroz con pollo in front of him and continued to chastise as he took his first bite. “Never you mind about the boys up at the monastery. They do good things for this area, all of them.”
I chuckled to myself, thinking how he wasn’t wrong in his assumption. Secretive societies attracted people with secrets, and he was right to question me, at least in his world. Carmelita was still poking at the old man, but he wasn’t even listening to her anymore, his focus on the first heaping spoonful of rice and chicken. “Liberal bastards.”
She clucked at him once before scooping another heaping spoonful out of the pot on the rusted double-burner stovetop.
