| |
Caitlyn
“A white car drove by,” Priscilla shouted.
Caitlyn gasped, again.
“Yeah, and it went real slow,” Stacey said, teasingly.
Caitlyn tossed the kitchen towel and bolted for the living room window. The street was empty. The driveway was empty.
Steam shot from her ears. She couldn’t take it anymore. “Mom! Make them go away. Can’t they play outside?”
“No, dear, they’re all dressed up. Everyone’s just anxious to meet Keefe. This is a new experience for all of us.” Mom slid a pie out of the oven and set it on a cooling rack, the sweet warm smell permeating the house. “We’ll all sit in the living room for a few minutes. Then they’ll go play in their room until bedtime.”
Caitlyn groaned and would’ve thrown herself onto the couch for emphasis, but she didn’t want to mess up her dress or hair—or the couch for that matter. Her dress came from the second-hand store but it was gorgeous, beige and frilly with big dark-brown and red flowers. She’d spent a full hour on her hair, trying to tame the curls and get them to sit nicely. The living room, well, there was nothing she could do to make twenty-year-old furniture look good. It was what it was: a little living room with over-sized, hunter green furniture with tan geometric patterns and replete with knitted blankets. Crocheted doilies and candles decorated the glass-topped coffee table.
“Who messed up the candles?” Someone had arranged the candles into a heart shape. Caitlyn grabbed one with each hand, wanting them back in the casual pattern she’d created earlier.
She still couldn’t believe Keefe West liked her. He wasn’t put off by the courtship rules at all. She hadn’t even had to explain how she didn’t date. He just came up to her one day at lunch. She’d been sitting in the cafeteria with Mya and five other girls, laughing and having a good old time when he stopped at the end of their table.
“Hi,” he’d said and nothing more, but his gaze was definitely on her.
“Hi,” Caitlyn had said back.
Her girlfriends giggled.
Keefe blushed and pulled a note from the front pocket of his jeans. He started to hand it to her then pulled it back, shaking his head. “I’d like to know if I can drop by your house sometime and . . . and talk to your father.”
Now that it got down to it, Caitlyn had no clear idea how this courtship thing worked. How was a guy supposed to make known his interest? It was only the reaction of her friends that made her realize Keefe was interested in her. They all giggled, Phoebe kicked her, and Mya nudged her. She had assumed Keefe needed some heating or air-conditioning work at his house, and that he’d known her Dad did that for a living.
“I’d like that,” Caitlyn had said, long after he’d turned every shade of red and glanced over both shoulders.
Two days later, he’d stopped her between classes and asked if he could call her. Caitlyn said he could but never gave him her number. Roland must’ve given it to him. He called that very evening and had painfully little to say, but they had arranged the meeting of her family for tonight.
“He’s here!” Priscilla screamed.
Caitlyn abandoned the last two candles, jumped up, and straightened her dress. Mom made the girls sit on the couch and—didn’t it figure—David toddled into the living room with absolutely nothing on his lower half.
“Mom! Where are his pants?”
Laughing, Mom scooped him up and carried him away as the doorbell rang.
When the doorbell rang a second time, Dad shouted from his recliner in the enclosed back porch, “Somebody get the door.”
Why hadn’t she answered the door on the first ring? Why did she still just stand there? Worried he might take offense at the delay, she sprang to the door but forced herself to ease it open.
Keefe stood on the front porch with his head down and one hand behind his back. The driveway was empty, so whoever had given him a ride must’ve dropped him off and left.
As she pushed open the screen, he lifted his head and smiled. After having hoped on Roland for so long, imagining him coming over to officially meet the family, it felt a little strange having his brother at her door. She wasn’t sure at all how she felt about him. Dressed in jeans and a blue-striped polo shirt under an open gray jacket, he had a clean look and a gentle demeanor, not roguish like his twin, nor mysterious like Roland.
“I, uh . . . Is it okay that I brought flowers?” He offered a little bouquet of pink and white daisies.
“Oh, they’re beautiful. Thank you.” Taking the flowers, she stepped out of the way to let him in.
Her sisters sat on the end of the couch, enjoying the moment with giggles and whispers. Mom returned and took the flowers, David—in pants—toddling after her. Dad’s voice came from the enclosed porch. He was mumbling something about the football game.
Keefe and Caitlyn sat on the couch under the window. They hadn’t said two words before Mom and Dad joined them in the living room, Dad getting comfortable in the rocking recliner chair and Mom sitting by Priscilla.
Priscilla spoke first. “Do you really have a twin brother?”
“Yes.”
“Does he look like you?”
“Pretty much, except his hair is longer.”
“How long?”
Keefe glanced at Caitlyn as if unsure of how to answer. “Long.” He tapped his shoulder. “Down past his shoulders. But it’s curly so . . .”
“Does he look like a girl?”
Caitlyn gasped.
Dad laughed and leaned forward in the chair. “Priscilla, you’re a silly head. He just told you they’re identical. That means they look the same. Does Keefe look like a girl?”
Keefe peeled off his jacket and wiped the back of his neck.
Caitlyn hadn’t realized how much darker the twins’ complexions were than Roland’s, not that anyone had skin as pale as Roland’s. Nor had she paid attention to the similarities, but they shared a definite family resemblance in the way their gorgeous eyes and brows dominated their features. Keefe had dark brown eyes, however, and Roland, steel-gray.
Caitlyn wished she would stop comparing them.
“I saw you at the Halloween party,” Keefe said to Priscilla. “I’m sure you saw my twin brother. He was the musketeer.”
The girls giggled and Stacey said, “That was his real live hair?”
“That was a nice party, Keefe,” Dad said, taking over the conversation, to Caitlyn’s relief. He continued talking about work and the weather for the next ten minutes until dinner was ready. Mom added a comment or two about the family.
It wasn’t until everyone stood to go to the dinner table that Stacey really humiliated Caitlyn.
Mom made the girls tell Keefe goodbye, and Caitlyn’s tension eased as she watched them skip from the room. Then Stacey stopped in the hallway. She turned around, an impish look on her face. “Do you know Caitlyn likes Roland? She thinks he’s cute.”
Caitlyn sucked in a breath that smacked the back of her throat with croak-like sound. She couldn’t bring herself to look at Keefe and see his reaction.
Dad lumbered to the hallway, picked Stacey up, and threw her over his shoulder. “I think it’s time for this little bugger to go to bed.”
Mom led Keefe to the table, and Caitlyn helped bring out the food: ham and pineapple, scalloped potatoes, rolls, and steamed green beans. Dad led them in the prayer before meals. Keefe said how nice everything tasted, and Mom thanked him. Caitlyn still couldn’t make eye contact.
“I enjoyed hearing about your trip to Italy,” Dad said halfway through the meal. “I can’t wait to see the slide-show your father’s working on.”
Keefe nodded. “I loved Italy.”
Caitlyn glanced.
He glanced back, and she felt a warm glow inside. If he still liked her by the end of the night, if he still wanted to court her, someday, she would be comfortable enough to ask him about the miracle. She’d witnessed a miracle herself, not too long ago. She could still see Dominic getting up from his wheelchair after they had prayed over him with the relics of Saint Conrad. It changed everyone who witnessed it. It had put a hunger in Caitlyn that she didn’t understand.
“Hey,” Dad said. “I don’t think Caitlyn was in the room when you told us about the miracle.”
Tensing with anticipation, she dropped her fork and it clattered on the table.
“Why don’t you tell us again?” Dad said, and Caitlyn could’ve hugged him. “I’ll bet she’d love to hear about it.”
Keefe turned from Dad to her.
Too nervous to nod or say a word, she simply stared back.
“Okay.” He sipped his water, set his glass down, and gazed at the table. “We were in Bagno di Romagna, two hours east of Florence. My father needed to meet with the priest of the Basilica of Saint Mary.” He closed his mouth and pressed his lips together as if some inner emotion had taken hold of him.
Mom and Dad stared, probably making him uncomfortable, so to break the tension Caitlyn said, “Was it a pretty church?”
He gave her a smile that communicated his thankfulness. “Yeah, it was pretty. They had adoration of the Blessed Sacrament going on inside. Afterwards, we were told about the miracle that had taken place in 1412.”
He continued to gaze at her as he spoke.
It made her warm all over and somewhat uncomfortable, but she wanted him to keep talking. She wanted to know.
“The prior of the basilica in 1412 had doubts, doubted the Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist. And while he was saying Mass, at the words of consecration, the wine transformed into living blood and flowed from the chalice. It dripped onto the linen cloth on the altar. The priest was so deeply moved that, in tears, he confessed his lack of faith to the people present.”
He took a breath. “They’ve got the bloodstained cloth preserved in that basilica. They even did a chemical analysis over five hundred years later. It still had the properties of human blood.” His eyes flickered and his gaze shifted to the table. “It’s Jesus’s blood.”
Something deep transpired inside him, she could tell. And she had questions. What was it like to be there? How did it make you feel? But she knew he wouldn’t want to talk about it now. If they did become friends and continued to get to know each other, maybe he’d tell her more.