“I can imagine.”
“When I was 17, I decided what sort of life I wanted and that life didn’t include having children. But if that’s what he wanted, if what’s in that photograph was something he dreamed of, something he desired, he should have told me. He had a thousand chances to tell me, to ask me, to share his heart with me. You know what it is? It’s not jealousy right here.” She tapped her breast again. “It’s anger. I am angry at him for not telling me how much he wanted that. He should have told me. Even if it meant putting our relationship through another trial, he should have told me. I’m furious at him for not trusting that our love was strong enough to go through that together. That’s what hurts. That’s why it stings. Because I wanted to know that. Because that’s a beautiful thing, isn’t it? That there’s this part of him that desires fatherhood and to sit in a chair in front of the mother of his child and watch while she nurses their son? That’s nothing to be ashamed of, nothing to be embarrassed about. That’s something special, something beautiful. It’s a diamond in his heart, and he kept that diamond hidden from me. And he shouldn’t have kept it hidden. He didn’t have to give me that diamond. He just had to show it to me. Because it’s so…fucking…sweet. Isn’t it?”
Her tears came then, big ones to wet the shoulder of his cassock all the way to his skin. Stuart held her against him, her arms around his neck and her head on his arm. And she cried like a baby and he rocked her like a baby because she was a baby. God’s child, right here in his arms. God’s little girl. “The Lord is close to the brokenhearted.” Psalm 38. And here was a brokenhearted child of God right in his arms. What a blessing to be a priest with tenderhearted sinners like this in the world.
“It’s very sweet,” he whispered. “Maybe that’s why he didn’t tell you about it. He’s not a very sweet man, is he? A real arsehole most of the time.”
She shuddered in his arms with tears and laughter.
“Can’t stand him myself,” Stuart continued. “Big blond brute strutting around with all his height and his massive brain and his handsome face—and he’s getting too old to still be that handsome. You better believe I resent the hell out of it.”
“Tell me about it,” she groaned. “He’s prettier now than he was twenty years ago. I hate him.”
“Oh, and there’s that look he gives you. You know the look. The magnifying glass in the sunlight look, and you’re there on the sidewalk like an ant burnt to a crisp.”
“I know that look,” she said between ragged breaths. “I’ve been that toasted ant more than once.”
“He gets off on it, you know,” Ballard said. “Gets off on seeming scary and tough. And all this time he had a gooey secret marshmallow in his heart. He was probably too embarrassed to tell you about it. You might think he’d gone soft. No man wants to go soft in front of his lover.”
“Oh no, not soft. Anything but that.”
“You’re allowed to be hurt that he kept a side of himself from you. So many men keep secrets from their wives and lovers—drinking habits, drugs, gambling, cheating. That makes sense, keeping the bad stuff a secret. But he kept the good stuff a secret from you. I think that would hurt worse. I think that would hurt the most.”
“It does hurt the most. I know all his darkness. I could carry that. I could handle all the bad stuff and the hard stuff and the scary stuff he’s told me. And here was this one beautiful shining secret part of him, and that’s the part he kept from me? It’s not fair. We aren’t sweet people, Father. Not me, not Kingsley, not S?ren. We’re a lot of things but we aren’t sweet. And all along he had this sweet fantasy, this lovely longing for something like a teenage girl imagining her wedding day, and he never shared that with me.”
“Even when he’s sweet he still manages to be a bastard somehow. You ought to cane him. I hear you’re good at it.”
“The best in the business.”
“You know there are two things you have to consider here, Eleanor,” he said, patting the back of her head. “First of all, maybe he didn’t know he had that diamond, as you call it, until he had his son. I’ve known many a man who swore up and down he didn’t want children until he became a father. Then overnight he becomes a new man. You’re imagining he kept a secret from you. You have to admit he might not have known the secret himself. The heart’s a labyrinth, even our own hearts, even to us.”
“I hadn’t considered that.”
“You also have to consider that the reason Marcus never told you about his desire to have children wasn’t because he knew you’d say no. There’s a good chance he didn’t ask you because he thought maybe…maybe you would say yes.”
She sat up and looked at him. “He thought I might say yes?”