at the sky.
“Not this again,” she said.
“What’s peni...” Carrick asked.
“It’s a drug,” Faye said. “It hasn’t been invented yet. But it’s sort of a wonder drug. After it’s discovered, it saves millions of lives. As many lives as lighthouses have saved. Maybe more.”
Pat walked up the front porch steps.
“Millions and millions,” Pat said. “Faye keeps forgetting what she’ll be giving up if she decides to stay here. Access to modern medicine, for starters. In 2015 people can survive cancer, tuberculosis, scarlet fever. Vaccines eradicated polio and measles. Do you really want to live in a world with iron lungs and polio, Faye? Do you?”
“I guess I could go back to 2015 and live in a world with meth, heroin, terrorism, HIV and Ebola. Huge improvement, right? Sorry, Carrick,” she said, giving him a wry smile. “We must be speaking a foreign language again.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, but I know you need to talk about it,” Carrick said. “So I will leave you two to talk it out. If you need me, I’ll be up at the light.”
Carrick started to leave, and then turned back and kissed her on the lips.
“I needed that,” he said. “Sorry, Father.” Carrick winked at Pat and then left them alone on the porch.
Pat exhaled heavily.
“You’ve decided to stay, then?”
“Carrick says he wants me to. And I want to.”
“You’re giving up an awful lot of modern conveniences.”
“True. But gaining a lot in return. Carrick. Dolly. A baby.”
“Baby?”
“Yeah,” Faye said. “I’m pregnant.”
“Carrick’s?”
She shook her head no.
“I see,” Pat said. “Carrick spent his whole life wondering if Faith killed herself—and if she did, why.”
“I saw the note she left for Carrick. I guess she put it in her Bible.”
“She was buried with her Bible,” Pat said. “She was buried with the truth hidden inside, and Carrick never even knew...”
“He knows now. She couldn’t go back to Marshall, couldn’t stay with Carrick, couldn’t have the baby of the man who’d beaten and raped her...”
“That poor girl,” Pat said, gazing at the ocean with a faraway look in his eyes. “This is no time for fair and tender ladies.”
“Good thing I’m not one, then,” Faye said.
“Are you all right with this?” Pat asked.
“What? Being pregnant with the child of a man I don’t love? Wouldn’t be the first time.”
“Faye, tell me the truth.”
“You wouldn’t understand,” she said.
“Try me.”
“I feel the same way I felt when I found out I was pregnant with Hagen’s baby three years ago. Scared to death.”
“Scared to have the baby of a man you don’t love?”
“No.” She put her hand on her stomach. “Scared I was going to lose it again.”
Pat took one step forward and folded her into his strong, young arms.
“Unmarried and pregnant in South Carolina in 1921,” Pat said as he rubbed her back, kindly as a priest, tender as a friend. “I’m half-tempted to throw you over my shoulder and drag you back to our time kicking and screaming.”
Faye pulled back and poked him in the chest with her finger.
“I’m staying, Pat. You could stay, too, you know,” Faye said.
“I like penicillin too much.”
“Nobody even prescribes that anymore.”
“Fine,” he said. “I like amoxicillin.”
Faye reached out and took Pat by the hand. She lifted his arm into the air and straightened it. It stayed right.
“No tremor,” she said. “Isn’t that a reason to stay?”
“One reason, but not enough of a reason.”
He lowered his arm again.
“I know,” she said. “I just... If I’m here for a reason, I can’t help but think you are, too.”
“Maybe the only reason I’m here was to save you and convince Carrick of the truth. Maybe I should be getting back.”
“And yet...here you are.”
Faye stepped closer, searched Pat’s face.
“Are you sure you don’t want to stay?” she asked.
Pat laughed. “It was hard enough being a gay priest in the 1960s. And the 1970s. And the 1980s. At least gay people are allowed to exist in 2015. I don’t get to exist in the 1920s. I like existing.”
“Pat. Oh, my God, I’m sorry. I’m so clueless. I usually pick up on these things. You’re such a flirt.”
“Flirting with women is a gay priest’s number one survival skill.” He waved his hands dismissively. “And there’s no reason to be sorry. You had no way of knowing.”
“Does Carrick know?”
“He will in 1965,” Pat said.
“You told him?”
“He was dying,” Pat said. “You’re never so close to anyone as you are when the Angel of Death is in the room with you. I’d visit Carrick at the hospital. At first it was just out of pity, visiting this old war hero, this old sailor dying alone. What I thought would be a ten-minute courtesy visit turned into an hour. I went back the next day and stayed two hours. One day I asked him why he never got married. He told me about the girl he’d loved, the girl we all know of as the Lady of the Light. He told me her real name and how she’d trusted him, and how she’d died and how Carrick had buried his heart in her grave. I mentioned someone to him I’d loved but couldn’t be with when I was a very young man, another seminarian. I thought old Carrick would be shocked. He wasn’t. You know what he said?”
“What?” Faye asked, smiling.
“He said it was hard to a shock a sailor.”
“I can hear him saying that,” Faye said.
“And I can still see that handsome weather-beaten old face of his smiling up at me from his hospital bed, the gleam in his eyes, though he was too sick to laugh by then,” Pat said, grinning through his tears. “He said I was a good priest and a good man, and that’s all that mattered to him, and he was damn sure that’s all that mattered to God, too. His friendship was a beacon during a very dark time in my life.”
“You could be friends with him here,” she said.
Pat shook his head. “This time isn’t for people like me.”
“And it is for me?”
“You’re white. You’re straight. You’re well educated, healthy and beautiful. Every time is for people like you.”
“That’s not fair,” she said.
“Of course it’s not fair. That’s my point.”
“I know,” Faye said. “I know you’re right. But I want to help. If I stay, I can make things better. At least a little bit. Better than nothing, right?”
“You sound like the idealist I used to be.”
“It’s been a long time since I felt something like hope,” Faye said. “Don’t ask me to give it up for Netflix and a Prius.”
“No priest worth his salt would tell you to abandon your hope. Hope is something God gives us. Hope is...” He turned his face toward the lighthouse beacon. “Hope is a bright light on a dark night. If your hope is guiding you into this shore, then this is where you should drop anchor. I only want you to understand what you’re doing. I don’t know what you’ll do by staying to the timeline, but I do know this—Carrick will still die in a few decades, and so will you.”
“I know,” Faye said. “But for now we’ll live.”
“Then God bless you, Faye. I’ll pray for you every single day.”
“I’ll need it,” she said. “You know, in case I get polio.”
“Stay out of public pools. And ponds. And rivers.”
“I’ll remember that.”
Faye held out her hand. Pat took it, squeezed it, pulled her to him and held her again, held her like he knew he’d never see her again.
“Carrick won’t get jealous if I hug you and kiss y
our cheek, will he?” Pat asked.
“He better not. You’re my fiancé.”
“If only my dearly departed mother could have met you. Wait.”
“What?” Faye asked, stepping back.
“My mother is alive in 1921. Jesus Christ.”
“I didn’t think priests were supposed to swear like that.”
“I wasn’t swearing. I was praying. If I said Jesus H. Christ, then I’m swearing.”
Faye laughed and kissed his cheek. “I’ll miss you.”
“I will miss you, too. You’ve given me quite an adventure. Try not to do that again. I don’t want to hear any rumors about Faith Morgan managing to get herself kidnapped again or something. Once I go back home, I’m staying. This is my last trip.”
“Mine, too. And I’ll be careful, I promise.”
“Faye, I mean it. This is a different world. I know you two are in love with each other, but this is an unforgiving time.”
“I supposed we’ll have to leave the island,” Faye said, glancing around the island and loving everything she saw—the shimmering sand and the dancing waters, the cottage that was her home now, the lighthouse and Carrick and Dolly... She loved it all. “I hate to do it, but I guess we won’t have much of a choice. Dolly can tell I’m already getting a baby belly.”
Faye patted her round stomach. Pat patted his flat stomach.
“I will miss this young body,” Pat said, smiling, and there wasn’t a laugh line to be seen around his mouth.
“So will Dolly. She thinks you’re very handsome.”
“Did you tell her I was already taken by God?”
“I did. Broke her poor heart.”
“She’s too young to get married. Even in ’21.”
“I think she just really wants to make wedding dresses. She’s been designing mine ever since she caught Carrick and I kissing. She thinks we need to get married. I told her I’ve been technically widowed for about twelve hours. She thinks that’s long enough to grieve.”
“I could marry you, you know,” he said. “If you like. You and Carrick. It won’t be a legal wedding, of course, but I know it would make Carrick feel better about being with you. And I am a priest no matter what year it is.”
“You could marry me,” Faye repeated.
“I could. But again, not a legal—”
“No, that’s not what I mean. You could marry me. You and me—we could get married, here, in this time, in Beaufort.”
Pat gaped at her.
“Faye.”
Faye shook with excitement. The idea had come to her in a flash. Yes. Of course. It all made sense. The pieces were clicking into place. She, Faith Morgan, could marry the man the whole town already knew was engaged to—Patrick Cahill.
“Hear me out,” she said. “You and I go into town and get married. I already said I was engaged to a sailor named Patrick Cahill. If Hartwell was as much of a gossip as he seemed, then the whole town knows the lighthouse keeper’s daughter has a fiancé named Pat Cahill. You and I get married. Then you go home. You disappear. People will assume you shipped out again, because that’s what sailors do. And when everyone finds out I’m pregnant, they’ll think it’s my husband’s. Carrick and I wouldn’t have to leave the lighthouse.”
“You’re asking me to marry you?”
“Can you think of a better idea?”
“Well...no.”
“Do you have any moral objections to marrying me? I know priests aren’t supposed to get married.”
“I’m gay, retired, and seventy-seven years old.”
“I don’t expect you to consummate the marriage.”
Pat dug his hands into his pockets and pulled the liner out to show they were empty. “I don’t have any papers on me, any identification. We can’t just walk into town and get married.”
“Yes, we can. It’s 1921, Pat. Driver’s licenses don’t exist yet and neither does the Social Security Administration. Carrick will vouch for your identity. He’s a war hero. He can get away with anything in this town.”
“You mean this, don’t you?”
“Will you?”
Pat raised his hands in surrender.
“Why not? Who knows? Maybe that’s why God sent me back here anyway.”
“You’re the best priest ever,” Faye said.
She grabbed Pat to her and hugged him. Dragging him by the hand, she pulled him into the house where Dolly still sat at the kitchen table.
Faye grabbed the paper and pencil.
“How long would it take you to make me a wedding dress?” Faye wrote. “A simple one, nothing fancy.”
Dolly pulled her measuring tape out of her pocket and wrapped it around her neck like a jaunty scarf.
“Tonight,” Dolly wrote. “If you’re in a hurry. But it won’t be perfect.”
“Want to get married tomorrow?” she asked Pat.
“No time like the present.”
“I always wanted a June wedding,” she said. “Now I get to have two of them. I should probably tell Carrick.”
“That we’re getting married?”
“Yes. And that Carrick and I are getting married.”
24
“By the powers vested in me by God and His Holy Church, I now pronounce you husband and wife. You may kiss the bride.”
“That sounds really familiar,” Faye said as Carrick took her face in his hands. “Where have I heard that before?”
“Your other wedding,” Carrick said. “This morning.”
“Oh, that’s right.” She glanced at Pat, who laughed and rolled his eyes at the absurdity of the situation. “I got married to that guy, too.”
“You did, but this is the one that counts,” Carrick said. “Now hush so I can kiss you.”
“I’m hushing. Start kissing.”
Carrick kissed her, or attempted to. She could hardly stop smiling long enough to make it a real kiss. But that was fine, as Dolly chose that moment to pelt them both with rice, which ruined the kiss even more than her semipermanent grin did.
Faye laughed as Carrick groaned, but he didn’t give up. He tilted her head back, pulled her body flush with his and kissed her like he meant it, like every other kiss between them had been an ellipsis and this was the full-stop period.
The end.
Lips to tongue, tongue to lips... Carrick didn’t seem to care they were being watched by both Pat and Dolly as he kissed her, and Faye couldn’t care less, either. Only when Dolly hit them with another cup of rice did they finally stop. Carrick pressed his lips to her ear and whispered one more vow to her. “I’ll will love you and take care of you for the rest of your life.”
“Don’t you mean your life?”
The Night Mark Page 33
