Father Rob pushed my head back off his chest, brushed my hair back behind my ears and studied my face. I thought he was going to say something, but, instead, he pulled me into him with just enough force that I knew he was in charge. And he leaned his head into mine. I gasped and pushed him away. “You can’t kiss me! We’re in church.”
He smiled and before I could argue again, I realized that my mouth was on his—and I might have been the one to put it there.
“Rob,” I said, pushing him back and gasping. I had never been so shocked.
“I’m sorry—” he started.
I laughed. “Are you completely insane? I’m married.”
He cocked his head to the side. “Well... married-ish.”
I scrunched my nose. “I have been separated for three months. That’s pretty long, right?”
I had tasted a bite of something so delicious I didn’t care that it was wrong. Like an oversized brownie, I knew I shouldn’t have any more, but, all of a sudden, I couldn’t care about the calories. So I kissed him again, longer, harder and with more intention this time. Then I leaned back in the pew, fanning myself with my hands, and wiped the sweat off of his blond brow. I looked around, remembering where I was, and said, “This is massively inappropriate.” I sighed and said, “I left Ben three months ago, and I haven’t told a soul.”
He kissed one cheek, then the other, and said, “I have been holding my breath since I met you, just hoping that something like this would happen. I can’t explain it, but, from the first time I met you, I just felt like I had known you forever, like you were this part that my life was missing and, suddenly, when you appeared, everything was just better.” He looked over his shoulder and said, “I have been counting the minutes until you found out about Ben and Laura Anne so I could tell you how crazy I am about you.”
My body clenched and felt frozen to the pew. He leaned toward me, and I put my arm out to keep him from coming any closer. “Wait. You knew about this?”
He paused, and you could see in his face that he realized he had just made the biggest mistake of his life. He scratched his head. “Well, I guess technically I knew.”
I could feel the tears of humiliation in my eyes when I whispered, “You knew, and you didn’t tell me?”
“I couldn’t just come out and tell you, Annabelle. I’m a priest. People tell me their secrets because I’m not allowed to spread them. It’s part of the gig.”
I stood up, and, though he tried to grab my arm, I scooted past him out of the pew. Before I got to the door, I turned and said, “I can’t believe that the person I thought was my best friend would let me walk around all this time looking like a complete idiot, knowing something this huge and not telling me.”
“But, Annabelle—”
“You should have figured out a way.” I shook my head. “I’m surrounded by people telling me they love me, yet I’m drowning in lies.”
“But I tried—”
He never got to finish the sentence. Because, with that, I was stomping out of the church, realizing that slamming the several-hundred-pound door to the chapel was more than a little out of the question.
Lovey
All of Our Prayers
My momma always said that it isn’t accurate to say that the death of your partner, who has been by your side for more than three-quarters of your life, is devastating. And, yet, it isn’t tragic either, as no one could argue that eighty-nine isn’t a life well lived. It is, most of all, a death of the self. I knew how he liked his toast and what his favorite TV shows were better than I knew my own. His social security number came to mind even before mine when filling out tax statements. And then, with no warning whatsoever, where there had been two social security numbers on those federal returns, there was one.
To say that his death was shocking isn’t quite correct. I’m sure to the outside world a man who had been in a chair for years was a prime candidate for death, the Grim Reaper surely lurking in those odd hours of the night. I could almost hear friends saying, “Well, it was a blessing. He had been sick for a long time.”
But, to me, one minute he was there, breathing, and the next hewasn’t. No cancer. No pneumonia. No heart disease. He was simply tired, and his frail and cumbersome body, which had failed him years earlier, decided to throw in the towel.
And, without even a moment’s notice, the other part of my soul drifted away on the wings of a shooting star.
And someone had to tell my girls.
This is the worst part of being a parent: the honesty. I waited for a while before I called any of them. I made arrangements at the funeral home, scheduled a time for the church service, gathered the sheet music for the songs that Dan wanted played, submitted the obituary that had been prepared for years to the paper, even wrote a part of a eulogy that I knew I would never have the composure to deliver.
I wanted Louise to enjoy a few more sun salutations in the knowledge that her daddy was right where she left him. I wanted Sally to wallow in the decision between Doug and Kyle a little longer, imagining that her choice would be the hardest thing she would face that day. I wanted Martha to practice consonant sounds with her throng of kindergarteners, that cheerful smile that came from a place of true enthusiasm on her face. I wanted Lauren to fret a little longer over the perfect flowers for the pews of the Presbyterian church at the mercy of her latest bride. And I wanted Jean to feel the strength and support of her father—yes, her father, always her father—behind her on this last day of her campaign.
But death, as in birth, never comes at a convenient time. No matter how prepared you are that the moment is nigh, no matter how anticipatory you have been, there is never a moment where the realization that this is it, my life is changed forever, doesn’t come as a bit of a shock.
And then, that’s the thing about having five children. Whom doyou tell first? Do you roll the die and see where it lands? Do you go in order of birth? Alphabetically by last name? This time, I decided to start with geography.
Jean.
