“Would you? Please?” Grace asked. “Tomorrow’s his first birthday. I can’t believe my baby is already a year old.”
“I still can’t believe he’s even here,” Kingsley said, holding Fionn a little tighter. The boy didn’t seem to mind. He’d fallen back asleep and was quietly drooling on Kingsley’s shirt. Nothing he wasn’t used to by now. “I never imagined… But who would? He’s a priest.”
Grace smiled, and a soft blush appeared on her face.
“I don’t know what came over me when I asked him,” Grace said.
“You don’t have to tell me what happened,” Kingsley said. “It’s between you and him.”
“But I need to tell someone. I didn’t cheat on my husband. He gave me permission to go have fun, as he said. No rules. Anything I wanted or needed. I’d been depressed and he knew it. Nora helped him. He thought she could help me.”
“Nora has unusual methods for helping people in need. But they do work.”
“They do. In that moment…” Grace began again, “I felt the rightness of it. And I knew if I didn’t say something, if I didn’t ask, I’d regret it the rest of my life. Now? I have a son. We have a son.”
“We’re all…” Kingsley paused and swallowed hard. In a low voice he said, “We were all very happy.”
It was an embarrassing failure of words—we were all very happy. Shell-shocked by elation would have been a better description of how they’d all felt when they heard S?ren had a son. The news was like a bomb going off, and the blast of joy had felled them all.
Kingsley bent his head and whispered to Fionn.
“I know your father,” Kingsley said in French, a private message between him and Fionn. “He’s everything to me. You are blessed to be a part of him. If the day ever comes you don’t feel blessed to be his, you come see me, and I’ll tell you why you are.”
Kingsley kissed the top of Fionn’s head. His heart clenched so tightly, his chest hurt. No wonder he’d sought after pain all his life. It felt just like love.
“Did he really tell you that? That his friend Magdalena had said he’d have a child by the grace of God?”
“He did. And she did tell me he and I would be lovers again. Real prophecy? Or self-fulfilling? It happened. That’s what matters.”
“That morning…” Grace began and paused. “Can I talk about it?”
“Please,” Kingsley said. “You can tell me anything.”
“The morning I walked with him to his sister’s house, the morning he thought he would die,” Grace said, picking up a blanket and folding it neatly. “He and I talked. He told me about Magdalena and something she’d said to him. Something about Nora and how it had come true.”
“It all came true,” Kingsley said. “Even Fionn.”
“I wonder if he was thinking of it then, what Magdalena had said about him having a son. I wonder if it gave him hope that morning. I want to believe it did.”
“You gave us hope that morning,” Kingsley said. “If you hadn’t gotten to me in time… I can’t think about it. Destiny or not, you earned your son.”
“As soon as I came home to Zachary I told him what had happened, what I’d done. And when I found I was pregnant, I had a feeling. A few months after he was born, I looked at him, and I knew and so did Zachary.”
Kingsley looked at a photograph sitting on a side table— one of Zachary holding Fionn in his arms and looking utterly contented.
“Zachary loves Fionn. Fionn is his son in every way that matters,” Grace said.
“My son, Nico, had a good father. It hurts to say, and I’ll only say it to you—but as much as it hurts, I’m glad I didn’t know about him until he was grown. Nico’s perfect. I couldn’t have done a better job raising him than his father did.”