“Can I ask you a question?” I asked.
“You may.”
“Do you drink?”
He shrugged and looked at me. “Sure. I mean, I’m not staggering around the bar or anything, but a couple of beers or a glass of wine with a good meal.”
“So why is it that some Christians don’t drink? I mean, Jesus turned the water into wine, people.”
Rob laughed. “Do you want to talk about what’s really bothering you?”
He was so good at reading people—especially me. I sighed. “My D-daddy isn’t my D-daddy.”
His face turned somber, and he reached to pat my arm supportively. “Oh, Annie, this must have been so difficult for you. For his body to be here, but his mind, the thing you loved about him most...”
He was so sincere that I felt terrible when I couldn’t control the laugh escaping from my throat.
Rob looked puzzled.
I shook my head. “No, no. You’re right. It sucks so bad that he’s living like this, but, to be honest, I came to terms with that a long time ago. His mind has been gone for years, and there isn’t a thing I can do to change that. So I have chosen to love him for who he is now, accept the good days and the bad and move on.” I inhaleddeeply. “I mean literally, biologically, my D-daddy isn’t my D-daddy, and, so far worse than that, he isn’t my mom’s dad.”
Though I had promised to keep it buried tightly inside without so much as an “X” to mark the spot, I could hear the whole story rushing out of my mouth like an overzealous bride into the Kleinfeld sale. I had lived with all of these terrible secrets for days and had no one to turn to. I certainly couldn’t confide in Lovey or Mom when I was so confused about them, and I was making excuses to scarcely even look at Ben much less tell him about the sordid past I had possibly discovered.
“Now wait just a minute,” Rob interjected. “So what you’re saying is that Lovey had an affair and that affair became your mom and no one else knows?”
“All I’m saying is that Mom’s blood type couldn’t possibly have originated from two A positive people, and she seemed pretty darn shocked about the whole thing. I found some paperwork Lovey filled out for the adoption of my mom. And I can’t think of another possible explanation.”
“Maybe she was adopted and they didn’t want to tell her.”
I pursed my lips and shook my head. “She looks exactly, to a T, like her other four sisters. There’s no way they aren’t related.”
Rob turned down the radio and said, “Let’s not jump to conclusions. I mean, remember that black baby that was born to two white parents a few years ago and they determined that it was some sort of bizarre genetic mutation?”
“Yeah,” I said out of the side of my mouth, “a genetic mutation that that mother paid a whole lot of people to create.”
Rob laughed, and, as comfortable as I was with him in that moment, I decided to finally ask him a question that had always crossed my mind. “Don’t be mad when I say this.”
“I won’t.”
“And don’t question my faith because you know that I know that I couldn’t tie my shoes without Jesus.”
“I know.” He grinned at me.
“But what if, I mean, seriously, what if Mary was just an unbelievably impressive liar? I mean, what if she was so convincing and convicted about the Immaculate Conception thing that everyone just believed her, and our entire faith is based around a beautiful teenaged girl who didn’t want the whole town thinking she was a slut.”
Now that I was pregnant myself, I felt very close to Mary. And we were kind of in the same boat when we got pregnant. We could be as excited as we wanted, but the popular opinion wasn’t going to be so good. Father Rob paused for a minute and then burst out laughing. I could tell he was just trying to appease me when he said, “You know there, Ann, you make a good point. But I tell you what. Even if Mary is just the best liar in history, I’m going to love her anyway. Because she gave the world the greatest gift it has ever known.” He cleared his throat and took his eyes off the road for a beat too long as he said, “Same with Lovey.”
I looked him in the eye, and it was a moment that will linger in my memory forever. Because, in that instant, I knew that no one would ever see me as clearly as Priest Charming.
•••
Some things in life are better left unsaid. And I’m pretty good at figuring out which things those are. But the blood-typing incident was generally all I could think about. It was a trick my mind was playing, obsessing over my mother’s DNA, when, in reality, I should have been obsessing about my husband’s infidelity and how on earth I was going to attempt to raise a baby on my own.
I had told Rob to go back to Salisbury after our visit with Lovey. I would get my mom to bring me back in a few days. It was a great excuse to stay away from Ben. But I underestimated how oddly alone I would feel watching Rob pull out of the driveway.
I wasn’t ready yet. Not to face Ben, not to admit that I had been wrong, not to disgrace my family, and, most of all, not to consider what being a single mother was going to be like. So I stuffed the pain away, hid it under my pseudo-detective skills and bandaged it up by finally responding to Holden’s messages.
How’s Lovey?he had texted me while I was sitting in the nursing home that day, trying to seem normal and nice while Rob was joking with Lovey and D-daddy and being generally adorable. I was about to burst wide open to say something to Lovey. But it was pretty clear that, though there would probably never be a perfect moment, this one was about as far from right as you could get.
