On the way home, he had a moment of remorse. God knows, he’d never done retail and didn’t have a clue. But how hard could it be? Ring a sale, take a little money, make change—if that’s all there was to it, no problem. And definitely no gift wrap.
But that was the small stuff. What could be so very wrong with Hope’s pregnancy?
• • •
HE DUMPED THE MOUNTAIN WINESAPS into a bowl in the kitchen, stacked their new books on the table in the study, and went looking for his wife.
She was at her drawing board—pale, oblivious to his presence in the doorway, squinting. Her eyesight had been diminishing over the last couple of years. She didn’t need to be baking pies tonight; he needed to take this woman to dinner. But first things first.
‘I have a job,’ he said.
She looked up, mildly startled. ‘You also have a message from the bishop.’
‘You go first.’
‘He’s very apologetic for leaving you hanging.’
They probably wanted him to approach Edith Mallory and ask her to remember the diocese in her will—but what was so grave about that?
‘He’s a very nice man and eager to meet you.’
‘Good, good.’
‘He would have canceled his trip to the Bahamas, but the family was coming—they have three children and nine grandchildren. The airfare was nonrefundable and he hadn’t gone on vacation with his wife in two years. His wife’s name is Eleanor.
‘He’d like you to be at the cathedral Monday morning at nine. A cold front is moving in tonight for two days, and unlike the Mustang, the heater in my car actually works.’
His deacon had it covered. ‘No clues as to . . .’
‘None. We’ll take coffee in a thermos.’
He went to her and massaged her neck. ‘You need a break.’
‘We just had a break.’
‘Ireland was no break. How about a week at Whitecap?’
‘I’d love a week at Whitecap. But not right now, sweetheart.’
‘How about dinner tonight at Lucera?’
‘I’d love dinner tonight at Lucera.’
‘What don’t you love, Kav’na?’
She turned and looked up at him. She Who Never Hesitates looked hesitant. ‘I’ll tell you over dinner,’ she said, smiling now. ‘What kind of job?’
‘Selling books. Thursdays ten to five. I’ll pack a lunch and take Barnabas with me.’ He was excited; he was twelve years old.
• • •
THANK HEAVEN it was Saturday and she would have tomorrow to try and find someone to come in for a day, any day, she could not be choosy now. Together with Father Tim’s day, perhaps they could cobble things together and she could keep the business.
She had tidied the reading area, thrown out old newspapers, dusted the bookshelves. It was all she could do; the pain was there again. Now she must lock the door and turn the sign around to say CLOSED, and Scott would park at the curb and open the car door for her and she would see the love in his eyes and the alarm, and beyond that, they would know nothing more until she saw the specialist in Charlotte next week.
She was afraid of being afraid. And yet she could not, even with prayer, hold it in check.
She looked at her yellow cat lying contented on the sales counter. Margaret Ann had always lived at the bookstore, but things were different now. ‘Let’s go home,’ she said. She coaxed the bewildered feline into the book bag, the book bag that read HAPPY ENDINGS.
Dr. Wilson had not been able to make that promise.
• • •
‘I DREAMED OF OUR FATHER LAST NIGHT.’
He heard a kind of elation in Henry’s voice.
‘He was real, Timothy. So real. How can this happen when I never met or knew him? Surely it’s the picture you gave me, I’ve studied it many hours these last months.’
He, too, had studied photographs of his father, searching for clues.
‘His presence was real, it had bone and marrow,’ said Henry. ‘Have you ever experienced this?’
‘There was a parishioner at Lord’s Chapel, whom I knew for many years. She was a type of mother to me—or aunt or grandmother—and a tender friend. Sadie Baxter. I’ve dreamed of her several times. It’s always very real, even one in which she was sitting in a tree and calling down to me.’
‘The one who remembered Dooley in her will.’
‘Yes, because she saw something exceptional in him. She also gave the town a state-of-the-art nursing facility and other gifts we seem to take for granted these days. In any case, I count such dreams a benediction.’
‘We didn’t talk,’ said Henry. ‘It seemed he’d come just to let me look at him. He was sitting on the bench in my little patch where you and I sat, and was gazing at me in a steady sort of way. I was afraid I wouldn’t measure up, and then I felt joy that he would come at all.’
He completely got the power of Henry’s encounter, felt his own tears rise.
‘He was solemn.’ Henry’s voice broke.
‘Solemn,’ he said. ‘That would be our father.’
‘And then he nodded. Just . . . nodded. And I sensed he was giving me his approval. There was beauty in his face, and I had the feeling it was my turn to study him, that he was offering that privilege to me. And then I woke up, dumb as a stone. I had no desire to make a sound or to be real to myself—I wanted the dream of our father to be the reality.’
This was his very first taste of what sibling rivalry might feel like. He was honestly happy for Henry, for this fragile mite of contact, but he wished his father would also appear to him, Timothy, and give a nod of approval. Would he never rid himself of this damnable neurosis? Perhaps diabetes wasn’t his Pauline thorn.
For some reason, they didn’t talk about the rashes or the weight loss or the alarming battle raging in Henry’s blood.
• • •
OPERA, great smells from the kitchen, and a bottle of Madame Cliquot’s midrange brut in an ice bucket by their table.
Tonight, they would dine on Tony’s Pollo alla Griglia in the room where they’d savored Louella’s fried chicken and biscuits. Then they would visit the ballroom with the painted ceiling where he and Cynthia had danced beneath a heaven brimming with angels.
By Mitford standards, not a bad night out.
‘Just under the wire,’ he said, handing over his letter.
‘Bedtime reading.’ She smiled, happy, and slipped the envelope into her purse.
‘How about a toast?’ he said. ‘To Miss Sadie, who helped make us all better than we might have been.’
‘To Miss Sadie.’
They clinked, they drank.
‘I love toasts,’ she said.
‘You were going to tell me what you don’t love.’
‘Retirement in all its forms, wrinkle cream that makes nothing disappear but misguided hope, and, of course, age spots.’
This had been his cue for years; he took her hand, examined the back of it with absorption. ‘These aren’t age spots, Kav’na. They’re freckles.’
She laughed, one of her real letting-go laughs. While he was at it, he kissed her hand.
‘Great to see y’all havin’ such a good time,’ said their server.
Chapter Eight
Out there, the gray stain of first light and the stinging cold. In here, the toasting heater, his favorite sweater, his favorite wife.
In the coffee-scented car on the open parkway, they were children on a field trip, owning the light that grew and changed and made luminous a nascent gold on early autumn hills. The mist steaming along the ridges was theirs, and granite cliffs, and stark silhouettes of wind-shaven trees, and then the sun rising full-bore, to have its way with all that crept and crawled and walked upright.
He had to wonder—why travel across oceans when this vast and sublime world lived at their very door?
• • •
JACK MARTIN WAS GOOD-LOOKING, or perhaps striking would be the word.
Medium build, blue eyes, silvering hair. Even the magenta of the clerical shirt, which flattered very few, suited the bishop’s coloring.