“Feeling good, mama?” Bastien walked through the rounded archway of my small office, light cutting across all of the right angles of his face and drawing me to him, a moth to a flame, just like always.
“Feeling amazing,” I whispered when he kissed me on the forehead, both palms cradling my tummy tenderly.
And because life had a way of taking me by storm like that, my life’s greatest work and born from the hardest rain appeared out of the clear blue sky.
“Did you know Spain is called the land of the setting sun?” Our oldest son, Javi, walked in behind Bastien, thick book of Spanish history propped open in his palms.
“Really?” I tipped my head, admiring the way the dark slash of eyebrows and the wild waves of uncontrollable brown hair reminded me so much of his dad.
It was funny how many times I’d thought of my own father in the decade since I’d last seen him. I still kept the stubbed-out cigar, thinking maybe I could send it in for a DNA test, or perhaps give it to Luce for Luca someday. It could provide closure and answer questions about his—and his father’s—paternity.
Casey Maniscalco. The boy with the backpack. The St. Mike's Bomber.My brother.
Knowing that I likely shared blood with Casey softened my opinion of him, though to this day, I couldn’t understand or excuse his actions, no matter how unfair the hand he felt life dealt him. I wondered if Father Martin had stayed, if Casey’s life would have been better. If the Church had been open about priests who dealt with these issues, maybe there would be fewer broken homes and fewer…well,I wasn’t sure what. Bastien was fond of reminding me that the more answers I got, the more questions I had, and that sometimes instead of answers, maybe a better aim was peace.
But from time to time, I still pulled the stub out of the little cigar box I’d tucked it into before we left Cuba for the Canarys.
I wasn’t sure why I even took the time to open the box and inhale the stale tobacco scent. I never even saw Padre Juan smoke, but somehow, all the potential of what my father could have been was locked in the years of old smoke and memories tucked inside of its four corners.
Bastien’s soothing palms worked at my shoulders then, pulling me back into my very beautiful reality.
“We should go to Spain for a weekend. Did you know the Nazis had an escape route through the mountains, hiding out at rural churches and protected buildings until they could make it to the coast and sail to Argentina? And there’s a cathedral just over the border that might have some Templar art. Worth checking out, I think,” Javi rattled off, as if it were normal for a nine-year-old to care about those sorts of things.
“Oh?” Bastien’s amused eyebrows rose, suddenly intrigued.
I had to stifle my laugh. “Can you go call your little brothers in to wash up for lunch?”
“Sure, Mamá.” Javi nodded, turning dutifully, eyes trailing the sentences in his book as he walked away.
“He’s fearless.” Bastien shook his head in awe.
“And he couldn’t be more like you.” I grinned. “Anyway, someone sort of wise told me once that fear is the feeling of trusting in your own power, it’s only up to you to get out of the way.”Hehad told me that once, when I’d expressed reservation about expanding humanitarian missions across international borders.
If it weren’t for Bastien pushing me then, we wouldn’t be here now.
And here wassogood.
“The gospel of Thomas says that if you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.” Bastien might not quote scripture by vocation anymore, but my knees still went weak when he did.
“Mm, my favorite apostle.” I straightened the raven collar of Bastien’s button-down shirt. He’d never quite dropped the habit of wearing clerical blacks, his shirt and slacks always the same shade of midnight. The only thing missing from his former holy ensemble was the dove-white collar at his throat.
His collar, the visual reminder of the doomed trajectory of our love story.
The noose that choked out love.
“Sweet Bastien, still my rebel saint.”
His forehead grazed mine, gentle sigh igniting my bloodstream. Our heartbeats crushed together, he breathed, “I hope you don’t think I’ve let you off the hook for confession just because I’m not a practicing seminarian anymore.” Warmth seeped from the deep, dark depths of his eyes. “I’ve got your number, sweet dove, even after all these years. Vow or no vow.”
I laughed, placing a kiss on his upturned lips. “Nice try—every day is like confession with you.”
His barrel laugh radiated through my chest, shaking my belly, firing me up down to the tips of my toes. Pulling me into his arms, he cradled me against the safe haven of his body. “Do you think that we were always meant to be right here, right now, with each other?”
He cupped my cheeks in his hands and whispered like a prayer, “I believelove is preordained. I believe it’s destined to find each of us—no matter what it looks like and, sometimes, whether we want it to or not.” He caressed my lips with his. “I know I cannot live without my soul.” He dusted a kiss on my eyelids. “It has been homesick and searching for you since the day I was born, sweet dove.” Another slow kiss. “For your kiss, I would cross every continent over a thousand lifetimes, happily defy the laws of gravity and space and time. For this bliss, I would risk a bullet. For you, my dove, I would take a bullet.”
THE END
