Plus, it offered a great distraction from all things St. Mike’s.
I hadn’t let myself think about that time much. One of the detectives left Lucy with a card for a family counselor if we needed to “work through anything.” I’d had to hold back a wry chuckle then, and I still did now.
Who the hell had time to work through anything? We were barely feeding ourselves.
But thankfully, there’d been no fatalities in the tragedy at St. Michael’s that day.
Ms. Watson had suffered an abdominal wound and lost a lot of blood, but after a transfusion, she teased that she felt as young as the eighteen-year-old whose blood coursed through her old veins.
Even the older gentleman who’d been shaken off his feet whom Bastien had been tending to the last I saw him had recovered, according to Ms. Watson, and was now attending Mass twice a week alongside her.
The only long-lasting fallout in all of this was Bastien and me.
It didn’t matter how many hours I worked a day, how much overtime I burned through each week. Every night when I collapsed into the tiny twin bed I grew up in, he haunted me.
Father Bastien Castaneda.
The holy man who touched my heart and then disappeared from my life like he’d been an apparition.
I’d spent three days at Lucy’s side in the hospital after the explosions as they monitored her and the baby for any issues. While we were there, they also sent in a caseworker to assist in finding affordable housing for Lucy to go home to. They knew she was living with me next to the church right now, but they also knew that was a temporary solution.
By the time Lucy and I went back to the tiny house next to St. Michael’s to clear out our few things, Father Bastien was gone. A new priest had been installed in his place, one who came with a younger seminarian sidekick who looked down on both of us with disapproval in his eyes as we gathered our things before hustling back to the bus stop to head across town to meet the landlord to get the keys for our new one-bedroom.
Now we had a little more breathing room living in Mom’s house, the roof over our head paid for in full, only insurance and living expenses to pay every month. Lucy started working at a coffee shop a few blocks away, and it wasn’t long before we were actually managing to save up a little money and buy some things to spruce up the place.
We threw away the old couch and replaced it with something brand-new and bright from Ikea.
The first new couch for both of us.
I’d be lying if I said we both didn’t tear up a little bit.
It wasn’t that it cost much at all—in fact, we’d lucked out and found it on sale—but both of us had grown up surrounded by such darkness.
That new couch felt like a breath of fresh air.
We even picked up a few things for the nursery, a tiny room off of Luce’s that was just big enough for a crib and changing table. It didn’t have a window, but it looked pretty cute after we put a soft shade of yellow paint on the walls and freshened up the old white trim and door.
But even on the nights I collapsed into bed, exhausted and painted with every color under the rainbow, still, the memory of his hands discovering the contours of my body clung to the edges of my thoughts.
Some nights, I woke breathing in the aroma of incense and leather, convinced he was in the room with me.
Convinced he’d come back.
His arms embracing me, bodies dancing and sweaty, hands crawling between my thighs and begging for release.
And make no mistake about it, I hated that I missed him.
Hated that he still had control over me, even all these months later.
I spun myself into a frenzy, resenting him and lusting after him, chasing his memory and then running from it. Coming to terms with letting him go, though that’d been my plan all along, even if the tragedy at St. Mike’s hadn’t happened.
Still, I’d become so desperate to escape the memories of our time in this place that I’d begun fantasizing about leaving. More than a few times I’d Googled organizations that accepted volunteers in faraway places—worlds with struggling economies or recovering from war or famine. Determined to aim high, for a few weeks I even floated the idea of working at a school for girls in Africa. Surely, they needed teachers at those schools Oprah was opening. I wasn’t exactly a teacher by trade, but I’d be the best damn teaching assistant they’d ever seen.
I only had to get myself there.
But taking money out of the precious emergency fund Luce and I had worked to build felt like the most selfish move I could make, and what was I complaining about anyway? I had a great job. The truth was, I was underqualified, but something in the one-on-one interview had convinced them I was the right girl. And I wanted to make them proud, which did not include leaving exactly four months after being hired because I was just missing something.
And it didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out it wasn’t even what I was missing, but what I was craving.
An escape from the heartbreak.
His heartbreak.
His leaving.
A faint voice whispered in the quiet moments that chasing Bastien was weak, disrespectful of the calling he’d chosen. But the longer time wore on, the wider the crack in my heart grew, cleaving me open and leaving me raw and exposed. That was the thing about heartbreak—left untended, it bloomed like a black dahlia, crushing out the sunlight with all its darkness.
Something Bastien had said once in Mass clung to the edges of my psyche, fighting for dominance with my logical mind.
Love is war for some; it’s only in fighting for it that we can be sure we truly love something.
TWENTY-THREE
Bastien—four years later
“Padre Castaneda!” The littlest of the Martinez family sped to me, brown arms wrapping around both of my thighs and squealing at the top of his tiny little lungs.
“Morning, Santiago.”
“Santi, ven aqui!” His mother called him to her hip, a container of dried tobacco leaves in one arm. I greeted her in Spanish, setting a basket of food and toiletry items on the kitchen table.
She whispered a few quick orders to the boy, who I knew to be no more than six, before he plucked the basket of leaves from her arms and skipped off out of the door with it. Shirt off and dark skin glistening under the Caribbean sun, Santiago shrieked with a laugh before kicking pebbles at the small flock of chickens hovering around the front porch, one squeaking as it deflected the terror of a tiny boy.
Chipped lime-green walls and rickety wooden tabletops painted a vibrant shade of aqua opened up the small room, thin wispy curtains hung at the window and danced on the breeze, the sound of tropical birds and a child’s laughter a beautiful soundtrack to life in this tiny rural hamlet.
I remembered when I was new at Iglesia de Santa Maria. As I was doing rounds the first week I was reassigned, my heart heavy and growing heavier at the sight of the abject poverty of my new parishioners, I came upon Ms. Carmelita Dion y Martinez’s home. When all the others scattered around the tiny village and surrounding tobacco fields came across their new priest, they’d reacted with quiet reserve, politely taking their care baskets before nodding me on.
Or maybe it was that I hadn’t slept a full night in months, memories of my last hours at St. Michael’s rattling my brain to distraction.
But when Ms. Carmelita, as she insisted everyone call her, saw the pathetic sallow tint of my skin, she’d invited me in to sit at her table, fussing over me with herbs and tinctures before sliding a bundle of ground powder into my pocket and instructing me to take it in my tea each night before bed.
“Dos semanas.” She’d held up two fingers with a toothy grin before whisking the basket of provisions out of my arms and settling at the table next to me. She perched tiny Santiago on her knee as she peeled yucca, peppering me with questions about where I’d come from, why I’d left, and why my Spanish was so good.
A native son, she’d smiled deeply when she found out I’d spent my first n
ineteen years within thirty minutes of where we sat.
It was the first of many long conversations with the older lady as she tended one of her six children. She always made the sign of the cross and winked when she spoke of the ones no longer with her.
The Martinez family were my first warm welcome back to the island of my childhood.
It’d been a steady four years of serving God’s children every daylight hour since then.
And serving them served me.
Just as it always had.
Never had I been a martyr to this life. From the moment I was old enough to pay attention, I’d been drawn to all things steeped in the spiritual. In truth, as unorthodox as Ms. Carmelita’s rituals were, I soaked them up like a sponge. I cared not for what dogma instructed, but instead, how best to identify with my parishioners.
Perhaps that’d been the thing to get me into trouble in the past—becoming too close.
But I’d learned what lessons needed learning, and if I had to do it again, while I couldn’t promise I’d do it differently, I knew I could do better.
Not that I’d be given that chance.
I’d grown adept at adding color to the dull shades of life without Tressa.
It was foolish to rely on one person for all your sunshine anyway, I reminded myself ceaselessly.
While so much of what had happened at St. Michael’s was beyond our control, there had been situations in which it was only I who was culpable.
I should have known better.
I should have established better boundaries.
It was my responsibility to protect her, holy man that I fancied myself.
But another truth I’d had to come to grips with was that I didn’t feel so very holy, not in the moments leading up to our indiscretion, and in none of the moments following. I’d played the role, the collar at my throat like a lock and key reminding me of my place. I’d even had the brief thought that maybe whatever had been between us had stemmed from a rebellion against the rules I’d been so accustomed to.
It hadn’t taken me long to scrap that idea, though, the ache of our love still twisting my heart most hours of the day.
My only distraction was serving those who needed me to show up in an entirely new way.
A way that reminded me that things like stolen touches and forbidden tangles between the sheets weren’t the real world.
This was.
The world where kids went hungry and politicians worked for the greater good of themselves, not their citizens.
Ms. Carmelita and Santiago and all the people of Iglesia de Santa Maria had been my port in a stormy sea, the only thing left when my world was pulled out from beneath my feet.
The memory of my last few months at St. Mike’s had grown hazy at best, and by choice.
My time as a young seminarian with the Jesuits had taught me much, one of the most significant gifts, an unmatched ability for aloneness.
All that solitary time left my brain well versed in cataloging and compartmentalizing the details of my past.
If it was something that served me, which usually meant the greater good of those around me, it was worthy of my time.
If it left me feeling worse—sad or angry or resentful or with a pressing ache I felt like I might never relieve as long as I existed without her—then it was shoved into the back corner. It would be a terribly long and lonely life if I let missing her haunt me all my days, and even with all memories of her locked away, she still stole most of my sleepless nights.
The media onslaught following the day Casey Maniscalco left three backpacks on the steps of St. Mike’s was like nothing I’d seen with my own eyes before. Media crews flew in from not only other cities, but around the world, camping out on the steps and begging for any reaction at all. By the time the cardinal walked into my rectory two days later to inform me of my reassignment, effective immediately, the burden had grown greater.
But I still wasn’t sure if it was worse than opening morning Mass every day to throngs of rubbernecking newcomers.
The cardinal had no doubt known what he was doing when he assigned me to this tiny parish, two hours outside of Havana and a million miles away from modern technology.
Rural living had proven itself more fruitful than my life after that day in Philadelphia ever could have been.
I’d found deeper meaning in my calling in Cuba, a place where I could be of more use.
A place that needed me as much as I needed it.
A place where Tressa didn’t exist.
TWENTY-FOUR
Bastien
“You one of those pretend priests like the rest of them up at the monastery?” An old man eagle-eyed me from his seat at Ms. Carmelita’s table, back hunched over like he’d plowed a few too many fields in his very long lifetime.
“Shh, Padre.” Carmelita set a cracked bowl of arroz con pollo in front of him and continued to chastise as he took his first bite. “Never you mind about the boys up at the monastery. They do good things for this area, all of them.”
I chuckled to myself, thinking how he wasn’t wrong in his assumption. Secretive societies attracted people with secrets, and he was right to question me, at least in his world. Carmelita was still poking at the old man, but he wasn’t even listening to her anymore, his focus on the first heaping spoonful of rice and chicken. “Liberal bastards.”
She clucked at him once before scooping another heaping spoonful out of the pot on the rusted double-burner stovetop.
The aroma of the familiar dish of my childhood warmed up my insides, making me instantly glad I’d taken Ms. Carmelita up on her offer of lunch on Wednesday. My rounds usually brought me to the Martinez family home on Mondays only, but the smell of this traditional meal brought me back.
I’d spent all of my four years of free time at Iglesia de Santa Maria in devout prayer. Knees kissing the bare floor with my eyes pressed to God, I begged for eternal forgiveness on a daily loop. My prayer the same. My heart still heavy.
I hadn’t even thought about arroz con pollo since Tressa had confessed to making it for the firemen if they chipped in at the St. Mike’s winter festival.
It felt like a lifetime ago, and still, the pain weighed on me.
“Sit, sit.” Ms. Carmelita gestured to one of the mismatched chairs strewn haphazardly around the round table.
“Anything inappropriate happen up at the monastery? I haven’t been up there in a while, but you can just see a face hiding secrets, eh, Padre?” He crinkled his old eyes with amusement. He was trying to rattle me, there was no doubt.
“I’m not sure I do know what you mean.” I nodded my thanks at Carmelita when she set the bowl of rice and chicken in front of me.
The smell overwhelmed me, mixing with my memories of her, a jackhammer of pain pounding its way into my brain as I squeezed my eyes closed and I willed her ghost away.
“The look of a hunter, eyes on his prey.” His old man eyebrows waggled.
Carmelita tossed a rag at his bald head, and he cracked into a loud laugh. “He’s not up at the monastery, you dirty old thing, you. This is Father Castaneda from Santa Maria’s.”
“Santa Maria’s?” His eyebrows shot up, seriousness lacing his usually amused features. “What’d you do to get yourself sent there?”
“Pardon?” I asked.
He shrugged, digging back into his bowl and continuing on through a mouthful of rice. “Only reason the diocese sends anyone to Santa Maria’s is for penance.” Another bite. “What’d you do wrong?”
“Oh, shut up, would you? He didn’t do a thing wrong, and you know it. Stop giving him the runaround and tell me, how’s the chicken?”
The old man’s face lit up with a grin as wide as I’d seen out of him, casting her a sideways look and bringing both of his fingertips to his lips. “It’s simply magnificent, my darling. Is that what you want to hear?”
He must have whispered something under his breath I couldn’t make out because her blush deepened to crimson, one han
d at her ample bosom before she turned away almost coquettishly, a grin spreading her cheeks even wider.
Santiago chose that moment to burst through the front door, the sheets that’d been hung to dry when I’d come in now wrapped around his little body as he shrieked through the room, a tiny rat terrier jumping and running after him the entire way.
“Santi!” Carmelita bellowed, but it was too late. The boy and his dog were already long gone down the hallway and bursting out the back door of the small house. “That boy’s gonna give me a heart attack someday.”
“You spoil him.” The old man waved a hand at her, cleaning up the last spoonful of his food as he did.
“He’s my youngest boy. What am I supposed to do? No father to help me keep control of him, he runs around like an animal.”
Hearing their good-natured banter warmed my soul, the only time I’d had that in my own life, with Tressa.
I pushed her stubborn memory from my mind, forcing myself to dial in to this moment.
“A good strong hand, that’s what he needs.”
“So how about you come over and help me raise him more, Padre?”
The way his eyes turned icy for an instant at her words set my hackles on high alert.
Perhaps there was far more to these two than I’d initially thought.
“The sweetest rewards often await at the end of the greatest challenges.” I could hear Santiago and his dog outside, still shrieking and yipping.
Carmelita set a fresh bowl of piping hot rice and chicken in front of the old guy. But before she was out of his reach, he wrapped a thick arm around her, pulling her into his lap and tickling her with both hands. She giggled, cheeks pinking as he grunted softly in her ear. “You know I help you as much as I’m able, mi pajarita.”
I watched nearly stunned as they carried on like teenagers…in love.
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