Had I brought the damn portfolio?
I’d spent time poring over the working sketches from those I’d completed, hoping they would reveal to Sophie what I didn’t trust words to convey. I had limited the selection to no more than a few, drawings I hoped she would be moved by. Elaine Neal as Monica, Leon Newell as Brendan, Harold Weaver as Simon, Payton Hayes as Vincent de Paul. I had included Mary Silveria, the young mother from the grocery store, the one I thought of as my first saint, sketching her even before I had known I would accept the commission. And there had been no question but that Duane LaBrea, my Saint Sebastian, would be in the folder. Thinking of the teenager, I wondered if Sophie would see the same haunting quality in the boy that I had. In the short time Duane had posed, I continued to feel protective of him, a pull to help the boy. Suddenly everything hinged on having the sketches to show Sophie. I pulled over onto the breakdown lane, clicked on the emergency flashers, and got out to open the trunk of the Prius. And yes, there it was, right next to my overnight bag.
A half hour later, I left the highway for a secondary road and recalled directions Sophie had recited the night before. “You’ll pass a vegetable stand on your left and then a gas station,” she’d instructed. “Shortly after that, look for a used furniture shop on the right. If it isn’t raining, there will be some old chairs and bureaus lined up in front.” I passed the farm stand, the gas station, and smiled, remembering a conversation we had once had about the difference women and men had about giving directions. “Men give it in miles, women in landmarks,” she’d told me. I watched for the wooden sign that marked the lane leading to the cottage, and still I was almost past before I caught sight of it. “End of the Road.” I backed up and made the turn. The lane was not paved, and tire ruts ran deep in the gravel. The Prius bounced over them, occasionally scraping the undercarriage. At least the roadbed was dry, and I thought that it had to be near impassible in winter and during the spring thaw. I rounded a curve, and as the lane descended toward the water, I saw first the one car—Sophie’s green VW—and then the house. Just as she had described. White shingles with French-blue shutters, sharp peaked roof with narrow windows in the gable. Overgrown foundations plantings. A two-story farmhouse with a wing off to one side, but in the manner of many homeowners of places along the coast, it was referred to it as a cottage. Two Adirondack chairs sat on the lawn that sloped down to the cove that opened to the Atlantic, and even from afar I recognized the single figure seated in one. I scanned the yard, the columned porch that fronted the house, and was relieved to see that Joan Laurant was nowhere in sight. As I pulled up the seashell drive, Sophie rose and walked toward me, her movements full of grace. Her hair had grown longer and was pulled back, gathered in a low ponytail. She was wearing a blue halter top and a skirt of some gauzy fabric that traced the line of her legs as she walked. Longing thickened my throat.
I should have stopped for a bottle of French Chardonnay or a bouquet. Sunflowers, the blossom Sophie had chosen to carry at our wedding because, she’d said, they represented hope. Yes, sunflowers would have been perfect. But I had not brought her flowers. Or her favorite wine. I had brought her the only thing I could think to give. I was bringing her the saints.
I hoped I was not mistaken; I hoped it was enough.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
There was something wrong. A mistake.
Father Gervase roused to hear two voices breaking through the mist. His father’s? His mother’s? A dream? He was still clothed in his vestments and lying on the sofa in the rectory with Father Burns bending over him. He attempted to orient himself, and this was when he saw, standing next to Father Burns—and he had to close his eyes again against the indignity of this—Lena MacDougall, her face no more than a foot or two from his, close enough for him to see a mole on the underside of her chin. He attempted to swing his feet to the floor, but Lena stopped him with a firm palm against his shoulder. “It’s best you stay there for a bit. Get your bearings before you get up.”
“Lena’s right,” Father Burns said. Father Burns. In a golfing shirt. And a pair of those silly shorts with all the pockets. As if he were planning to hike, for heaven’s sake. “You need to rest.”
Father Gervase looked around to see if there were others to witness his humiliation, but mercifully he was alone with just these two. Which was bad enough. Lena MacDougall, he thought again. Her of all people.
“Well,” she said. “You gave everyone a bit of a fright.”
Slowly, it came back to him. The Mass, the heat, his light-headedness. But to faint like this. He’d never passed out in his life.
“I wanted to call the EMTs,” Father Burns said, “but Lena didn’t think it necessary.”
“My nurse’s training,” she explained.
Nurse’s training? Lena? He absorbed this information. He’d known her for what—twelve years—and had never known this central fact. A failure on his part to see her only as a bossy, meddling busybody.
“Your pulse was steady and your breathing strong.” She dropped her hand to his wrist, again checking his pulse with a competence he hadn’t bargained for, though he should have expected it given the way she ran the Rosary Society. He was struck by the surprising coolness of her fingers against his skin, as if she had dipped them in cold water. “There you go. Nice and steady,” she said, as if she was personally responsible for his normal pulse. “It was just the heat.”
“Yes,” he said. “The heat.” Again he attempted to sit up, and this time she allowed it. He stood, hoping he was successful in concealing from them the wave of unsteadiness. To his relief, this passed after a moment. “No need to make a fuss. I’ll just go change and perhaps lie down for a bit.”