“Forgive me for what is probably a foolish or insensitive question, butwhy?”
“I know it sounds absurd to feel ... called, I suppose, to so small a life, and yet I do.” He managed the faintest of smiles, for the wretched absurdity of it all, if nothing else. “I thought it was one father who demanded this of me, but it turned out to be another who truly drew me.”
“How can you be sure?” she asked, her tone more curious than it was sceptical, though it was not devoid of scepticism either.
“I wish I could tell you. Like all love, it’s simply there. And it will be until the day I die.”
There was another long silence. It swept through the little church, heavy as a peacock’s tail. “I’m sorry,” said Sheba finally. “I came to comfort you, but I don’t know how.”
“I’m sorry too. I’m afraid I don’t know how to be comforted.” Thomas half-turned on the pew so he could look at her directly. “And it’s not that I don’t appreciate the effort, but why do you speak on Micha’s behalf?”
Her eyes widened, flashing silver. “On Micha’s behalf?”
“It seems as though you would have me be with him.”
“I speak onyourbehalf. Because you want to be with him.”
“I’m not quite free to want as others are. I have been given other gifts.”
“Your vocation?”
He nodded.
“Well,” she said, and he could tell he had left her at a loss, “it’s your life.”
“In many ways, it has been a very fortunate one. I’ve never been hungry or impoverished or desperate. And the losses I have suffered ...”
“Perhaps need not have been suffered,” she suggested, “had circumstances been otherwise.”
“That’s a road to madness, Sheba. We live with what is, and what has been, not with what could be. And besides”—he did his best to reassure her—“while some futures are impossible for me, there may be others I am now at liberty to offer.”
Her expression grew, if anything, more perplexed. “You think you could fall in love again? With a woman, perhaps?”
“No, nor with another man. But not everyone wants that.”
“You ... you think not everyone wants to be loved?”
“I think a home of one’s own is not to be undervalued. Security. A safe environment to raise a chi—”
“Do you speak of me?” Sheba’s voice cut over him, too loud for the quiet church, sharp as ice.
Thomas flushed, realising he’d said far too much, far too soon. “Am I wrong?”
“Not wholly and yet nevertheless completely.”
“I’m confused.”
“What on earth”—there was a note of betrayal in her voice that startled him—“suggested to you that I might be willing to marry a grieving man for ‘security’ and a ‘safe environment.’”
“I didn’t mean immediately,” he tried, as if that would somehow make the situation better. “I will not always be grieving.”
“Grief is like love, Thomas. Like your faith. It is simply there.”
“But unlike love and faith, it will loosen its grip on me.” At this point, he could no longer tell if it was Sheba he was trying to convince, or himself.
“I’m still not going to marry you,” she snapped.
“Do you think I would make so poor a father? So poor a husband?”
