Just Like Heaven

by Barbara Bretton

  “You’re worse than a girl,” Maggy said with a roll of her eyes. “This isn’t New Jersey. We’re not all about choice. We have ranches and we have shacks. Pick one and get it over with.”

  The one on Sprucewood wasn’t right. Neither were the ones on Drake, Fremont, and Garretson.

  “This is a small town,” Maggy reminded him over coffee at the Pancake Platter. “There’s just so much available. You’ll have to settle like the rest of us.”

  “I can look in Bedford.”

  “No, you can’t. You’re the rector of a small-town parish. You have to live in the same small town as your parishioners.”

  “That wasn’t in the contract.”

  “It would have been if we’d had any idea you were thinking of looking in Bedford.” She leaned across the table. “What’s the problem, Mark? I know how you feel about living in the rectory, but it’s beginning to look like you feel that way about the whole town.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “Then convince me I’m wrong.”

  “Most of the places were too big. I don’t need three bedrooms and a family room.”

  “The one on Marcotte was a two-bedroom with a workshop in the garage. What was wrong with that one?”

  “Nothing,” he admitted.

  “So why didn’t you make an offer?”

  “What do you want from me, Maggy? I haven’t found the right place yet.”

  “Okay,” she said, leaning back against the bench seat. “Don’t tell me. But if you’re afraid I’m going to tell Sam your secrets, I swear I won’t. Just because Sammy and I are engaged doesn’t mean I’m going to betray a confidence. I’ll put your secrets in the vault, same as I always have.”

  He didn’t say anything.

  “That’s a Seinfeld reference,” she said.

  He really needed to watch more TV.

  “It’s about that woman, isn’t it?”

  It was and it wasn’t, but romance was the safer conversational road to follow with Maggy.

  “I thought I was covering up pretty well.”

  “Not to me.”

  “It’s been a long time since I’ve felt this way, Mags, but I don’t know if she feels the same about me.”

  “Did you ask her?”

  He shook his head.

  “What did she say when you told her how you felt?”

  “I haven’t told her.”

  “You haven’t told her that you’re in love with her?”

  “No.”

  “Then you’re a bigger jerk than I thought.”

  “Would you talk to Father Billy like that?” Billy Owens was still awaiting an assignment to a church of his own. In the meantime the young cleric had been helping Mark get settled and, as a result, growing even more popular (and indispensable) by the day.

  “If he were a jerk, you bet I would.”

  “The right house will come along,” he said. “I’m not in a rush.”

  “I know,” Maggy said. “I’m just afraid the right house is in New Jersey.”

  TO: mark.kerry@mklj.net

  FROM: kate@frenchkiss.biz

  SUBJECT: big news

  I tried your cell phone but was flipped to voice mail so here I am.

  I really wanted to tell you in person (okay, voice to voice) but I can’t hold it in a second longer.

  Gwynn is pregnant! She told me today over lunch and it was one of those times when I wished I was still a practicing Catholic because I needed all the help I could get to keep a big smile on my face. Of course I’m happy that she’s happy. (She and Andrew were beaming like the couple on top of a wedding cake.) But she has no idea the responsibility she’s taking on and there’s no way I can tell her that she’ll understand. I guess we all make our own choices, don’t we?

  Ed and I spoke about it for a long time this evening. He’s feeling as overwhelmed as I am. Not at the thought of being a grandparent (although 41 does seem young to me) but at the memories this is digging up. I always thought my pregnancy was a “mistake” but I can see now (hindsight being what it invariably is) that there was no mistake involved in it at all. I wanted a family. I wanted a steady, dependable home life. And I knew somehow (even at that tender age) that Ed could provide all of that. Love, real love, never entered into it. I saw a chance to create my own stable home and I made it happen. No regrets, though. We have a beautiful daughter, a grandchild on the way, and a sustaining friendship to show for it. But I can’t help hoping it’s more than that for Gwynn. I’m hoping she’s found love.

  The baby is due in late January so they’ve decided to move up the wedding from next spring to September 15th. Gwynnie wants to know if you could possibly come down to officiate at the ceremony. Shethinks so highly of you.

  Did you find a place to live yet? I checked out Realtor .com and was surprised how high the prices are. No wonder you’re having so much trouble.

  Professor Armitage (Chester to his intimates . . . ) put me in touch with John at Christie’s and John thinks I’ll see somewhere in the low six figures for the collection. I’ve decided to follow through on the idea I told you about and use the money (assuming there is any, fingers crossed) to buy a house for Gwynn and Andy (and the baby). What do you think? I don’t want to embarrass either one of them (esp. A) but the inheritance from the senator’s son changed my life. I’d like to do the same for Gwynn but while I’m still alive! I’d appreciate any advice.

  Hope you’re well.Talk to you soon. PS: I visited Charlotte Petruzzo yesterday. We shared tea and conversation. She sends her love.

  Mark leaned back against the motel headboard and read the e-mail a second time. It didn’t read like Kate. It was chatty, sure, but the warmth, the depth of affection he’d grown accustomed to, was missing.

  Hope you’re well. That was the way you talked to a business acquaintance or the cousin you hadn’t seen in twenty years. You didn’t say it to the man who’d shared your bed and, he’d believed, your heart.

  He’d been warned. He couldn’t say he hadn’t been. This isn’t the real me. The “life is beautiful” syndrome would run its course in time, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t have a future together.

  He had repeated that mantra over and over again as he crossed the states between New Jersey and New Hampshire and now, for the first time, he wasn’t sure he believed it any longer.

  Worse than that, he wasn’t sure she believed it.

  They weren’t twentysomething kids with clean slates who crashed into each other like a pair of guided missiles. They brought the full measure of their life experience with them. You didn’t check the last twenty years of your life at the door when you met someone. That wasn’t the way things worked.

  She had a mother and daughter in New Jersey, a wedding to help plan, and a grandchild on the way. She had a successful store in a town where she was loved and respected, a town that was her home in every sense of the word.

  You didn’t ask a woman like that to throw it all away to follow a widowed Episcopal priest to a place where he didn’t belong in the first place. She had a great life. She didn’t need his complications, his responsibilities, his mistakes.

  A better man would let her go. It would be easy to do. Geography had already done part of the job for him. And if what he suspected was true, the return of the real Kate was doing the rest.

  That was what a better man than he would do.

  He, however, asked her up to Greenwood for the holiday weekend because he was a priest and priests believed in miracles.

  TO: kate@frenchkiss.biz

  FROM: mark.kerry@mklj.net

  SUBJECT: RE: big news

  I’d call but it’s too late. I was out looking at more houses, then had to make an emergency hospital call. Sarah Spruell has been fighting cancer for six years. They thought she had it beat but it’s back and winning the battle. I’m typing this from a machine at the nurses’ station (using Web mail, in case you’re wondering) and watching Sarah’s husband and kids as they keep vig
il. The doctor told them it might be a few days but I think he’s wrong. I think it’s going to be tonight and I’m hoping that I’ll be able to find the right words.

  I read your news about Gwynn and said a prayer for her and Andrew and the baby. I have a good feeling about them. You did a fine job with Gwynn, and Andrew’s a good man. Let me think about your house idea. There’s a way to do it without tipping the balance of family power. You’d figure it out without me but I’m glad to help.

  We could talk about it on the Fourth of July weekend. The town is celebrating its 300th anniversary and we’re marking it with a barbecue and fireworks festival. It’s not a bad drive (seven hours) and I guarantee great food and company.

  The Chinese food’s better in New Jersey. Consider yourself warned.

  M K

  PS: I spoke to Charlotte this morning. Your visit worked wonders.

  * * * * * *

  M K?

  Kate leaned closer to the screen and read the e-mail twice.

  M K??

  No love. No sense that they had shared anything more than friendship. He didn’t even sound like a good friend, just a friendly acquaintance with an extra room to let for the holiday weekend.

  This was what she got for going where sane women feared to tread. A polite invitation from a man whose own basic sense of decency required that they end things properly and not just let the three hundred miles between them do it for him. One trip to New Hampshire and she would see for herself that it could never work.

  Besides, no good could possibly come from an involvement between a lapsed Catholic and an Episcopal priest. You didn’t have to believe in a higher power to see disaster written all over it.

  Maybe the thing to do was accept it for what it was—six weeks of paradise—and then let it go before her battered heart suffered a blow it couldn’t bounce back from.

  She wished with all her heart that she could still cry.

  Kate’s house—the last day of June

  “Mom’s not going, is she?” Gwynn dipped a fresh, fat strawberry into a bowl of nonfat whipped cream and popped it into her mouth. “How could anyone say no to Father Mark’s invitation?”

  Maeve, who was making short work of the real whipped cream, nodded. “Mark has invited her into his world. This is the next part of their journey. Of course she’s not going. That would be putting herself out there, and we know Kate doesn’t do that.”

  Kate, who had been toying with her iced tea spoon, let out a primal shriek that stopped the conversation cold. “Quit talking about me like I’m not here.”

  “Fine,” Maeve said, turning to look at her. “Kate, we’re terribly disappointed in you.”

  “Totally,” Gwynn agreed. “We would’ve driven up there with you if you’d said yes.”

  “Thanks for the offer, ladies, but we’re having a big sidewalk sale that weekend at the shop. I can’t spare the time.”

  She hadn’t realized her mother and daughter used language like that.

  “Tell me how you really feel,” she mumbled into her iced tea.

  “You’re making a terrible mistake,” Gwynn said. “True love is a once-in-a-lifetime thing.”

  Clearly Gwynn’s hormones were doing things to her judgment.

  “He’s putting himself out there,” Maeve said. “He’s inviting you to see him in his own milieu, to meet his congregation. What kind of signal are you sending him by saying no?”

  “You’re reading too much into this invitation.”

  “What else can it possibly mean?” her mother demanded. “He wants to continue the relationship.”

  “Or end it.”

  Her mother and daughter exchanged glances.

  “Besides, I already told him I couldn’t make it.”

  “You did what!?” Maeve and Gwynn shrieked in unison.

  Oh God. And here she had thought she was over the crying jags. “We never talked about a future, okay? We never once mentioned anything about what we were going to do after he went back to New Hampshire.” Except for the joke about the three-hundred-mile commute, the topic was still unexplored.

  “So now he is talking about it.” Her mother was relentless. “What are you afraid of, honey? That it might not work out the way you hope?”

  “We were living in the present. Not the past. Not the future. Isn’t that what you’ve been trying to get me to do?”

  “I’ve been trying to get you to let go and be happy, and this isn’t the way.”

  “I’m not having this conversation.” She pushed back from the table and stood up. “I’m going to load the dishwasher.”

  Gwynn looked up at her with her huge weepy eyes. “You were so happy with Father Mark,” she said, her beautiful and foolish pregnant daughter. “I was so hoping you two could make it work.”

  “Maybe he wasn’t so happy with me.” She stopped cold. “What do I know? He has a life up there, ladies. I knew that from the beginning and I’m okay with it.” Who would have known she was such a good liar?

  “And he wants you to be part of his life,” Gwynn said, waving the printout of his e-mail. “Why else would he invite you up there?”

  “Reread that note, darling daughter,” Kate said. “He wants me to be part of a barbecue.” She started toward the door. “It doesn’t matter anyway. Like I said, I told him I’m not going.”

  “Who is this woman?” Maeve said to Gwynn. “I can’t believe she’s one of us.”

  “I don’t know,” a sniffling Gwynn said mournfully. “It just makes me so sad . . .”

  A little more than twelve weeks after her cardiac incident and everything was officially back to normal. Once again it was Maeve and Gwynn on one side of the romantic divide and Kate on the other.

  Alone.

  Greenwood, New Hampshire—July 2

  Mark was at the computer, trying to make sense of the church budget. There was talk of implementing a day care center in the Sunday school space, but projects like that took a commitment of money as well as time. He was trying to determine how much they would need, how much they already had, how much more they would have to raise in order to turn the idea into reality.

  So far he had been staring at the screen and getting nowhere. He’d been back at St. Stephen’s for more than a month now, and he still hadn’t managed to settle into anything that approximated a normal routine.

  His heart, it seemed, was still in New Jersey with Kate.

  He missed her. His life seemed incomplete without her, as if he had left an essential piece of his soul in her keeping. He had been sleepwalking since his arrival in Greenwood, going through the motions the best he could but not truly connecting with the process.

  The plain truth was, he didn’t belong there anymore. He knew it and, unless he missed his guess, everyone in town had figured it out by now too. Bishop Clennon would probably get an earful when he returned from his trip to California. Even the good people at Motel 6 were beginning to talk.

  He still loved the town and its people. The memories he had of life as the rector of St. Stephen’s were sweet ones, but they belonged to the past. His life had changed and so had his interests, his skills; those skills had found a better fit in New Jersey.

  It felt good to be able to say that and feel its truth inside his bones.

  His first day back he had driven up the mountain to the cemetery where Suzanne lay buried next to her father and grandparents and he finally said good-bye. It had taken him five years to reach this point, and it felt right. Suzanne would live on in his heart forever but the time had come to move on.

  He was pretty sure God still had a plan for him, but he was having trouble figuring out what that plan was.

  He was three hundred miles away from the woman he loved, mired in the first month of a one-year contract with his old home parish, living in a Motel 6 off the highway on fast food and regrets.

  When had New Jersey turned into the center of his universe?

  Why hadn’t he told her he loved her? Why hadn’t he thr
own a lifeline into the future, something they could both hang on to until they were able to be together? He hadn’t a clue what she was thinking right now. Her e-mails were opaque. He couldn’t see through them to the warm-blooded woman he had held in his arms.

  She had turned down his invitation to spend the Fourth of July holiday with him. Her voice-mail message gave him no clues at all.

  Thanks for the invitation, Mark. I wish I could drive up for the celebration but we’re having a store event that weekend and I need to stay in town. Sorry we missed each other. Talk to you soon.

  He had it memorized. The words. The tone of voice. The distance between them that couldn’t be measured in miles.

  “Father Mark.”

  He looked up and saw Billy Owens, the young cleric, standing in the open doorway.

  “Can I come in?”

  “Sure thing.” He took off his glasses and tossed them down on the desk. Just looking at the guy made him feel ten years older than the number on his driver’s license. He pointed toward the chair adjacent to his desk. “Make yourself comfortable.”

  Billy took note of the church ledgers stacked on the floor next to his chair. “The day care project?”

  “I’m trying to see if there’s some way we can close the gap between what we have and what we need.”

  Billy looked like a kid wearing a priest costume on Halloween. He had a thick shock of red hair, bright blue eyes behind a pair of plain black eyeglasses, and an infectious smile. He also had a sharp intellect and an almost intuitive understanding of human nature that made people open up before they had a chance to duck behind their defenses.

  “You probably already thought of this,” Billy said, “but there must be surplus from the tower restoration project a few years ago.”