I bit down on my lip, still working the foot out of my mouth.
“How many times are you gonna take me by surprise, Tressa Torrado?”
And with his velvety Cuban accent wrapped around the letters of my name, I buried myself deeper into the scratchy blanket at his side and quietly died.
FOUR
Tressa
Lucy tried to tell us she was leaving that first morning, but we’d both adamantly refused. Bastien explained the church was set up to help those in need, and I could already see the wheels turning as he thought of more ways we could be of help.
We.
So odd. At some point, I’d started thinking of Bastien and myself as a “we.”
But we had become a we. Hunkering down through the Northeast’s worst blizzard in a decade had connected us in some small way.
Worrying over Lucy, even more so.
She’d kept mum, even when I’d gently tried to probe her with leading questions. Whatever she’d been through had been dramatic; that much was written all over her face.
When Bastien had explained the church had a small fund set up to hire for odd jobs, tears had slowly begun to stream down her cheeks. Her shoulders shuddered as I pulled her into a hug.
“No one’s ever been this…kind to me,” she’d choked out.
That statement alone had sent me crying along with her before wrapping her in a giant hug. “People are in our lives for a reason—I’m so happy you find your way to mine.”
Now we stood shoulder to shoulder at Sunday morning mass, the pews only staggered with people as the storm had kept many home.
Bastien sat to one side, looking as calm as ever as the small choir ended on a high note. Then he stood slowly, nodding in appreciation to the loft, before we all sat and he stepped to the lectern to deliver his homily.
“Hardship, according to Saint Mary Magdalen, forges our souls in fire.” His heavenly accented words spiraled through me, rich in their tone and cadence. “For how can we know happiness without great sorrow?”
I followed the way his throat contracted with his wisdom, the way his broad chest flexed and moved with such calm resourcefulness. He was made to lead people, there was no doubt about that, but what’d struck me more with every day was the deep compassion with which he approached life. He lived and breathed God’s word.
It made tasting the forbidden fruit so much sweeter.
Or so I assumed.
The way his serene presence almost floated through the nave, honoring the Stations of the Cross or blessing a parishioner. I was enamored of Father Bastien.
My mind raced with thoughts of him at night.
It’d begun to feel like the word SIN was stamped across my forehead all day my thoughts had become so traitorous.
My cheeks heated instantly when Bastien’s eyes slid across the room and caught me watching him then. I bit down on my bottom lip and glanced away, and the tiniest twitch of a grin lifted the delicate bow of his mouth.
“Are you okay?” Lucy asked me at my side.
I cleared my throat softly, nodding and willing my thoughts to linger on anything but the man who stood liturgizing behind a pulpit at that very moment.
“God would ask that we remember our neighbor in times like these—let no man or woman be a stranger, but another one of God’s divine souls in need. It is in these times that we call on our faith most ardently. With free will and passion and wholeheartedness, we strike down sin and cast ourselves in His noble light. His light here on earth.”
Father Bastien paused, gaze traveling over the small group of parishioners one last time before he turned, closing his Bible, and returned to the small chair provided him. He settled the crimson filigreed book in his lap before heavy, hooded eyes picked across the pews, then landed on mine.
Without expression, our dark irises tangled together in some unspoken dance.
It wasn’t often that I caught him looking at me, but I had.
