Just Like Heaven

by Barbara Bretton

  “Didn’t I make myself clear?” Bishop Clennon extended his hand again. “I’ll be countersigning your contract this afternoon.” They clasped hands. “Welcome back, Father Kerry.”

  Coburn, New Jersey—French Kiss Antiques & Collectibles

  Kate had Paul drop her off at the shop on his way back to Manhattan.

  “You want me to hang around?” he volunteered. “I can drive you home.”

  “Thanks, but I’m walking,” she said. “Doctor’s orders.”

  “You sure?”

  “Paul, I’m not an invalid. The more I do, the faster I’ll be given the all clear to get back to work full-time.”

  He didn’t look at all convinced, but too bad. He was her friend, not her keeper.

  “Maeve said to call her if you change your mind,” he said as he rolled to a stop in front of the store.

  “If I change my mind, Sonia will run me home. It’s not a problem, okay?”

  Finally he ran out of excuses to linger and she waved him off down Main Street. For the first time in more than a week, she was out alone without adult supervision, and it felt spectacular.

  She pushed open the door, grinning at the sound of bells and the scent of apples and vanilla. “Look sharp, everyone, the boss is back!”

  Sonia let out a whoop and ran over to give her a huge hug. Liz popped out of the office where she kept track of the books and inventory, and burst into tears. Two customers she had never seen before exchanged glances and started edging toward the door.

  Let them, she thought. For once in her life, she didn’t care if all of their customers walked out. The fact that she was there, surrounded by her friends and colleagues, was more than enough.

  “We sold the Seaweed & Shell pitcher,” Sonia was saying, “and the oyster plates Dianne Howell brought in on consignment.” The dollar figures were impressive.

  “Wow,” she said, nodding her approval. “It looks like you have everything under control.”

  “We try, boss,” Sonia said, “but it’s not the same without you.”

  “It’s quieter,” Liz said, and they broke up into laughter.

  Kate spent a few minutes on her computer, checking on the last week’s sales figures, stock, and wish lists. The boxes she had brought with her from her U.K. trip were stacked against the back wall of the common room. The trip seemed a lifetime ago. Without her lists in front of her, she couldn’t remember what was in half of them. Why not open one box a day, enter the items into the inventory, then phone customers who might be interested in a sneak peek before the items went public.

  “I’ll start tomorrow morning,” she told Sonia over a cup of hot tea in the shop’s tiny kitchen. “I’m supposed to be out walking every day, so this will give me a destination.”

  Sonia jumped up and gathered her into a major bear hug. “You don’t know how much we’ve missed you around here. Old Mrs. Covington came in yesterday and pitched a fit over some Limoges she said wasn’t up to standard.”

  “Wait!” Kate said. “I know the rest: she wanted a forty percent discount and for us to pick up the state tax.”

  “I came this close to telling her to stick the Limoges where the sun don’t shine, but I said to myself, ‘Now what would Kate do?’ and that wasn’t it.”

  “Wise choice,” Kate said with a mock shudder. “Good thing I’m back to keep an eye on you reprobates.”

  “You sure you don’t want a lift home? I need to make a bank run, so I’m going out anyway.”

  “I’m only a half mile from home. I’ll be fine.”

  “You have your cell?”

  “My God, you’re worse than my mother.” She patted the pocket of her trousers. “Yes, I have my cell.”

  “Call me if you change your mind about the lift, okay?”

  “I promise.”

  They all meant well, she knew that, but she breathed a huge sigh of relief when she escaped back out into the world.

  “Hey, Katie!” Gigi from the café across the street waved to her from the front door. “Good to see you back!”

  “Good to be back!” she called.

  “I saw Paul dropping you off,” Gigi shouted across the din of traffic. “Tell Mr. Big Shot not to be such a stranger.”

  “I’ll pass it on, Gee.”

  “You look terrific, Ms. French!” Frank the mail carrier gave her a thumbs-up as he trudged down the street wheeling his cart. “We missed you.”

  “Thanks for the flowers, Frank. That was so nice of you.”

  “You gave us all a hell of a scare,” he said. “My wife made me get my cholesterol checked pronto.”

  “Good,” she said. “I’m glad to hear it!”

  It was slow going as she made her way along Main Street. News traveled faster than the speed of light in a small town, and it seemed her medical adventure had been discussed in every shop, café, bookstore, and office on the street. A few asked about Gwynn. A couple asked about Ed. A handful were surprised to see that she was still alive.

  But absolutely everyone wanted to know about the priest in shining armor who had saved her life. By the time she turned off Main Street onto the relative peace and quiet of Elm Road, she had decided she would make up flyers recounting the incident and post them on every tree, lamppost, and bulletin board in town. In fact, maybe she should take out a full-page ad in the Coburn Bugle while she was at it. It would save her vocal cords and it might even be good for business.

  She stopped in front of Lena Bradley’s house and leaned against her ancient Chevy Blazer. Maybe she wasn’t quite as all the way back as she had thought. She was a little out of breath and she wouldn’t mind giving her heartbeat a chance to slow down. A dog barked somewhere in the distance. A school bus squeaked to a stop at the opposite corner. Her cell phone turned into Tina Turner.

  “I’m standing in the one working cell area in all of northern New Hampshire, so we have to talk fast.” It was Mark. “How did it go with the doctor?”

  “Great,” she said as her smile grew even wider. “I’m a textbook case. In fact, I’m outside right now, walking home alone from French Kiss.”

  He sent up a cheer that warmed her down to her toes.

  “Did you have your meeting yet?” she asked. “I’ve had my fingers crossed all day and they’re starting to cramp.”

  “Uncross them,” he said, his words breaking up thanks to the iffy connection. “The contract’s been signed and countersigned. I’m set.”

  She started crying at the news, but let him think they were tears of joy.

  “So when do you come home?” she managed. “The state isn’t the same without you.”

  “Tomorrow afternoon.” Unfortunately he had a youth club meeting at five, AA at seven, and a hospice visit scheduled for nine at a patient’s home.

  He suggested a Friday morning run down to Spring Lake, but she told him about her plan to walk to work every morning, stay an hour or so, then walk home, all in the name of physical therapy. Not to mention her sanity.

  They settled on Friday afternoon and the beach at Spring Lake.

  “I better go,” he said. “Maggy’s finished what she was doing in the bank and we’re headed over to Greenwood to meet with the vestry.”

  “Vestry? I’m going to need an Episcopalian-English dictionary if I keep hanging around with you.”

  “You’ll catch on,” he said. “Your twelve years in Catholic school give you a head start.”

  She started to make a flip remark about how her years at St. Aloysius had to be good for something but let the moment slide. Her lapsed Catholic stand-up routine was wearing thin, even for her.

  “I want to hear more about this Maggy when I see you,” she said. “I’m picturing a nubile young church-woman with designs on you.”

  “I’ll tell her. Believe me, she’ll love you for that.”

  Swell, Kate thought after they said good-bye. Maggy Whoever-the-Hell-She-Was would love her for that. She didn’t like the thought of them talking about her all the way
up there in maple syrup country. She pictured a buxom farm girl type in a plaid shirt tied under her breasts and the Yankee Trader version of Daisy Duke cutoffs. It wasn’t a pretty picture, but it was a whole lot more attractive than the way she was feeling. Something ugly and green nipped at her side and she didn’t like it one bit. She had never been jealous of anyone in her life and now here she was getting all bent out of shape over a woman she would never meet and a man she barely knew.

  Greenwood, New Hampshire

  They went from the bishop’s office straight to the hospital where Maggy’s father, Henry, was recovering from his second round of cancer surgery.

  It was hard to see the once-robust farmer lying shrunken and frail in his hospital bed, and Mark was grateful for the training that enabled him to maintain his focus and composure.

  They talked for a while about better days, and Mark gave his old friend a condensed version of his work in New Jersey.

  “So why are you here?” Henry asked in his blunt fashion. “Not that I haven’t been waiting for you to come back, but sounds like you built yourself a good thing down there.”

  “You sound like the bishop,” Mark said. “He asked me the same thing.”

  “Times change, son. Sometimes the best thing you can do is let go and move on.”

  Mark wasn’t sure if Henry meant the words for him or for himself.

  “Don’t listen to him,” Maggy said as they crossed the parking lot to her car. “He’s on medication. It makes him say crazy things.”

  He let her remark slide, but the old man’s words had resonated deeply with him.

  For months it had seemed as if he were barreling toward a future that no longer seemed to fit. Through the darkest periods when his drinking was most out of control, the thing that had held him together was knowing that one day he would go home again.

  Who knew that his definition of home would change when he wasn’t looking?

  They made a turn onto Chapel Road and he muttered a word he hadn’t used in a long time.

  “Don’t blame me,” Maggy said as they pulled up in front of the rectory. “I’m not responsible for this crowd.”

  He stared at the crowd of cars, minivans, SUVs, and bicycles parked along the street, in the driveway, and in one case on the front lawn. “Somebody must have told them.”

  “I mean, I told them you were coming up from New Jersey but I didn’t tell them the bishop signed off on the contract. We just found that out, right?”

  He gestured broadly at the crowd. “Somebody told them something, friend.”

  “Well, I might have mentioned you’d be stopping by this afternoon . . .”

  A fair number of his old congregation had gathered in the meeting room attached to the rectory to support his return to Greenwood. Faces he hadn’t seen since Suzanne’s memorial service beamed at him from the windows, the front steps, clustered on the lawn like daffodils.

  He felt humbled by their loyalty, deeply grateful for their forgiveness, but mostly he was flat-out speechless by the waves of affection flowing his way.

  “See that woman over there?” Maggy whispered into his ear. “The aging redhead with an overbite? That’s the one who tried to block your assignment.”

  He turned and looked toward the door. “Hannah Owens?”

  “Shh. The witch can probably read lips. She and her buddies were trying to promote her cousin’s son, a child fresh out of seminary. Just because he bought a house in that new development—”

  “I was fresh out of seminary when I first came here,” he reminded her.

  “That was different.”

  “And I had a lot of friends and family supporting my assignment.”

  “Oh, be quiet,” Maggy snapped, glaring at him. “You sound like you wish Billy Owens had gotten the job.”

  So now the competition had a name. “Bishop Clennon had good things to say about Billy Owens.” Even if the bishop hadn’t mentioned him by name.

  “Oh, I guess he’s all right,” Maggy said with a dismissive wave of her hand, “but he isn’t you.”

  So it went even deeper than he had realized. This Owens clearly had something going for him if even Maggy softened so quickly.

  “I recognize why I might not be somebody’s first choice.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Where’s the righteous indignation? You’re being entirely too reasonable for me.”

  She managed to temper her irritation long enough to introduce him to her Sam, who seemed to be a genuinely nice guy. He was happy for them, hopeful for their future, and maybe just the slightest bit relieved that he had been so easy to replace.

  He left them whispering together and wandered over to admire the buffet. With just a few hours’ notice the Women’s Guild had put together mountains of chilled shrimp, platters of blanched vegetables, buffalo wings drenched in hot sauce, quesadillas topped with melted cheddar, pitchers of lemonade and iced tea, and chocolate desserts usually reserved for saints in heaven. He was suitably wowed.

  The men of the congregation hadn’t been idle either. The rectory windows had been replaced, a new air-conditioning system installed, fresh paint and wallpaper and sparkling-clean rugs on polished wooden floors. They had done all they could to transform the home he had shared with Suzanne into neutral territory, a place where a man could start over again.

  He didn’t have the heart to tell them that he saw her everywhere he looked. She stood by the kitchen window, gazing out across the vegetable garden. She waited at the top of the stairs, laughing as he locked the doors for the night. “Nothing bad ever happens in Greenwood,” she said as she took his hand. “Don’t you know that?”

  Vangie Paulos sneaked up and enveloped him in a bear hug. “This is just like old times,” she said, beaming up at him. “You don’t know how long we’ve been praying for this day.”

  “Don’t get too excited, Vangie.” Tom Meyerson popped up beside them, faded blue eyes twinkling. “He’s only visiting.”

  “I know, I know, but it will be the end of May before you know it and everything will be back the way it should be.”

  “You’re looking great, Vangie,” he said. “Retirement agrees with you.”

  “If you think I’m looking good, you should see my grandbaby Edie. She’s twenty-two now and a teacher, has her own pension plan and everything. I’ll have you to dinner one night. You can see for yourself.”

  He gave her a noncommittal smile and tried to find himself a neutral corner, meaning one without a single woman or matchmaking mother lurking behind a potted palm.

  Everywhere he turned there was a familiar face, most of them friendly and welcoming; a few seemed wary and fearful that the priest in whom they were bestowing their faith would fail them the way he had in the past.

  But as he looked at them an odd thought worked its way to the surface. What if they felt they owed him this chance? Loyalty worked both ways. They were good people with good hearts and sometimes good people made choices that weren’t always in their best interest.

  Maybe Billy Owens was the better choice for them. Maybe the young priest and his family were exactly what Greenwood needed, but they felt they owed Mark this chance to put things right.

  Still, there was no point dwelling on it. The decision didn’t belong to him; it belonged to Bishop Clennon and he had to trust that the bishop’s reasons were sound.

  The only thing required of him was that he give them the next year of his life with a full heart. With a little luck, the future would somehow take care of itself.

  Fifteen

  French Kiss—Friday morning

  “Go home already,” Sonia said. “You’re making us crazy.”

  “Amen!” Liz pushed her glasses back up her nose. “Don’t you have to primp for your new boyfriend or something?”

  Kate felt herself blush deep red. “He’s not my boyfriend.”

  “He’s definitely an ‘or something,’ ” Sonia said, “otherwise you need to see the doctor again for this nervous conditi
on.”

  “I’ve been cooped up for more than a week,” she reminded them. “I’m looking forward to walking on the beach and getting some sunshine.”

  Sonia and Liz exchanged knowing glances.

  “Oh, knock that off,” Kate grumbled. “You act like you’ve never seen me go out with a man before.”

  “I don’t think we have,” Sonia said.

  “I’m sure we haven’t,” Liz said.

  “Gary Halston.”

  “Gimme a break,” said Sonia.

  “Ralph Mahoney.”

  “Total loser,” said Liz.

  “Bernie from the bank.”

  “Gay,” said Sonia.

  “Lucas the importer from Napa.”

  “We have to give you that one,” Liz conceded. “He was pretty hot.”

  Not to mention boring and self-absorbed. Was it any wonder she preferred her own company on Saturday nights? The last few years it had been HBO On Demand and a bowl of popcorn, and not once had she felt like she was missing out on anything.

  “I went out with Paul just the other night.”

  “Paul Grantham doesn’t count,” Sonia said. “He’s just a friend.”

  She opened her mouth to say, That’s what you think, but managed to close it in the nick of time.

  “What were you about to say?” Sonia asked. “Is there something going on with Paul?” Small towns never lost track of their favorite sons, no matter how far they roamed.

  “Nothing’s going on.”

  “I saw the way he looked at you when you got out of his car the other day. Something’s changed.”

  “He’s worried about me,” she explained. “Same as you are.”

  “I think he’s in love with you,” Liz said. “I could hear it in his voice when he called yesterday.”

  “His ex-wife just got remarried and his best friend had a heart attack. You’d sound strange too.”

  “Poor sap,” Sonia said. “He doesn’t stand a chance with Father McDreamy in the picture.”

  Father McDreamy? “Not you too,” Kate said with a loud groan. “Did Maeve put you up to that?”

  “Have you taken a good look at that man?” Liz demanded. “What else would you call him?”