Lauren reached again for the sheet of paper tucked into the drink holder. Though she’d memorized the directions, she quickly consulted them again as she reached the outskirts of Binghamton and found her way to Gail’s house.
“She’s been to Millvale so many times,” she’d said to Jamie when she asked them to check on Kyrie. “I couldn’t say no when she asked.”
Gail opened the front door as soon as she pulled into the drive. Hurrying down the porch steps, she enveloped Lauren in a tight hug.
“I’m so glad you’re here.”
“Your house is cute.”
“Nothing compared to yours.” Gail opened the back door and retrieved Lauren’s bag. “But it’s close to the church and nice enough for my needs.”
Lauren held up a tote bag. “I brought some—”
“Shortbread.”
Lauren’s face clouded. “Some for you. Some for Habte’s family. Should I not have?”
“No.” Gail smiled. “I love your shortbread. It’s just kind of old-fashioned that you always think you need to bring something. It’s really sweet.”
Gail led the way inside, and showed her around. Lauren was touched to see the tapestry she’d made hanging on the wall in the den.
“It was up there for days before I saw it,” Gail said sheepishly. “The psalm you wove into it.”
“A secret message.”
Gail stood there, her head tilted as she regarded Lauren, and Lauren felt her heart rate increase.
“It’s so good to see you,” Gail murmured, stepping closer.
Lauren met her kiss, tender at first, but when Gail began to pull away, Lauren reached for her waist, holding her in place as she opened her mouth to deepen the kiss.
When they parted, Gail’s eyes were slightly unfocused. “Another one of those, and we’re not going anywhere tonight.”
Lauren wavered, feeling the same, but she stepped back. “You’re sure Habte doesn’t mind my being there?”
“Are you kidding? She’s been bugging me for weeks, wanting to meet you.” Gail glanced at her watch. “We don’t have to leave for a while yet. Do you need to rest?”
“No.”
“How about some iced tea?”
“Sounds good.”
Gail went into the kitchen. Lauren wandered over to an end table and picked up a framed photo.
“Your sister and her husband?” she asked when Gail returned a moment later.
Gail nodded. “Monica and Gabe. A couple months before the crash.” They sat down on the sofa. “I heard from her a few days ago. She met this guy, really nice she says. She feels guilty even thinking about being with someone after losing Gabe just last year, but she’s so lonely.”
“Where does she live?”
“Oneida. She works as a clerk in the city offices. This guy, Mike, is a lawyer.”
“It’s not easy,” Lauren said. “Knowing when it’s time to move on.”
Gail reached for her hand. “I know.”
For a long moment, there was only the intertwining of their fingers, the warmth and softness of Gail’s hand in hers.
“How are you?” Lauren asked. “With all the questions and doubts you had when you were at the abbey?”
Gail frowned down at their hands. “Resigned, I suppose. Resigned to not having answers. Resigned to knowing there will be horrible things that happen to people, and resigned to the fact that there’s nothing I can do about it, except spout platitudes.”
Lauren squeezed her hand. “I don’t think they’re platitudes to the people who are hurting. They don’t need for you to have answers. Just to be there for them.”
Gail raised her eyes to Lauren’s. “Like you’ve been there for me. From the first time I met you.”
“I think we’ve been there for each other.” Lauren leaned over for another kiss, achingly tender and sweet this time.
Gail stroked Lauren’s cheek. “Time to go. Prepare yourself.”
It was a short drive to the Thomas house.
“Hey, Jamal,” Gail said when a boy who appeared to be about ten opened the door for them.
“Gail!” He gave her a hug around the waist and dragged her inside.
“Everyone, this is Lauren,” she said.
Habte rushed from the kitchen, flinging a towel over her shoulder. She wore her black hair braided at the temples and gathered behind to hold the rest of her hair back, dressed in a cobalt tunic over white crop pants. She gripped Lauren by the shoulders and kissed each cheek. “It’s so lovely to meet you at last.”
She gestured to the girl seated before the television, a gaming console in her hands. “That’s Alex.”
The girl waggled her fingers in their direction without taking her eyes off the TV.
Habte shook her head. “Forgive her lack of manners. Seb is out back at the grill.”
She led the way through the kitchen, out the back door, and down a few steps to a paved patio with a pergola. A huge bear of a man stood at the grill, dreadlocks gathered into a loose tail that hung down past his shoulders.
“My favorite chef,” Gail said.
His bearded face broke into a smile. “My favorite priest.” He enveloped her in his muscular arms.
“This is my friend, Lauren. This is Sebastian.”
Sebastian’s hand dwarfed Lauren’s. “So nice to meet you at last.”
“Thank you.” Lauren looked around. “Your yard and home are beautiful.”
“A work in progress,” he said. “Next project, raised planting beds for vegetables. Habte wants to grow all our own next summer.”
“Wine? Beer? Mojito?” Habte called from the kitchen.
“What’s a mojito?” Lauren asked.
“That answers my question,” Habte said with a laugh. A few minutes later, she reappeared bearing two glasses containing a slushy drink adorned with mint leaves.
“Oh, my goodness! This is delicious.” Lauren’s eyes widened. “What can we help with?”
“You two can make the salad, if you will.”
Gail and Lauren set to work chopping, grating, slicing until they’d filled a large bowl with carrots, peppers, tomatoes, radishes, dates, sunflower seeds, pecans, dried cranberries, all tossed with three kinds of lettuce. Standing side by side, their shoulders or hips occasionally brushed together, sending shivers through Lauren’s body.
“Lauren,” Habte said as she skewered kabobs with chunks of marinated chicken, peppers, onions, and tomatoes, “Gail tells me you were a nun.”
“Yes. For nearly twenty years. I still live near the monastery, but quite enjoy being where I am now.”
“And she says you’re a weaver?”
“I am. The abbey’s main source of income is the vestments and tapestries they make, so I had many years of training.” Lauren scraped the last of her chopped pecans into the salad bowl. “Speaking of which, the weave of your tunic is exquisite.”
Habte beamed. “Thank you! It was a birthday gift from my aunt in Egypt.”
“Tell me about your family.”
She saw Gail quickly hide her smile as Habte launched into tales she’d obviously told many times, because Jamal corrected her when she left out important details.
“Tell about grandmother on the boat, Mom.”
“Later.” She finished the last kabob. “Take these out to your dad. Tell him not burn the burgers. And I don’t want this chicken turned to leather.”
Alex appeared when it was time to eat, and the next few hours were spent laughing and talking as they ate their way through a mountain of food. Under the table, Gail’s knee maintained almost constant contact with Lauren’s, so that it was sometimes hard to pay attention to the conversation.
By the time they said goodnight, Lauren felt she had talked more in that one evening than she had in the past month all together.
“What a delightful family.”
“They are,” Gail agreed. “I love Habte. She’s my salvation at work. She’s wonderful with the parish children.”
They entered the dark house, and Lauren suddenly wondered where she would be sleeping. Gail quickly set that question to rest by showing her to her office, where a futon had been made up with fresh sheets, her suitcase sitting at the foot.
“I have the early service tomorrow,” she said apologetically. “I think I’ll be nervous, with you there.”
Lauren smiled. “It’ll be my first time at anything other than a Catholic Mass.”
Gail stepped nearer, half of her face illuminated by the desk lamp. She reached up to brush her fingers over Lauren’s cheek. Lauren closed her eyes as Gail’s mouth met hers. When Gail’s lips parted and her tongue flicked against Lauren’s, a groan escaped before Lauren could stop it. Their bodies melded together, and she was acutely aware of the contact of Gail’s breasts against hers, the way Gail’s thigh slipped in between her own to press against her pelvis, stirring what had been embers into full-blown flames of heat and desire.
Gail pulled away just enough to whisper. “If you want to stop, we have to stop now.”
Lauren lifted a hand to cradle Gail’s head, her free hand sliding up Gail’s side to caress her breast, eliciting a gasp from Gail. “I don’t want to stop.”
Within a couple of weeks, it felt almost as if Mother Theodora’s breakdown had never occurred.
“It wasn’t a breakdown,” Sister Mary David corrected when Mother made that comment. “Now hush.”
She leaned over, her stethoscope pressed to the crook of Mother’s elbow as she took her daily blood pressure, a precaution that Dr. Allenby had recommended.
“It was a forced rest, since you’re too stubborn to take one on your own.” Sister Mary David ripped the blood pressure cuff off Mother’s arm and jotted the numbers on a pad.
But it was true that, while she’d been away, a lot of chores had piled up, things Sister Paula hadn’t felt comfortable taking care of without her input.
Mother turned back to the pile of letters on her desk.
“Please,” Sister Mary David said, laying a hand on her shoulder, “don’t overdo it. The ones you don’t get to will still be here tomorrow.”
Mother sighed. “You’re right.”
Sister Mary David left her, and she pulled the top letter off the stack to reread it and consider her reply. A gentle breeze ruffled the papers on her desk, and her gaze drifted to the window as she wondered what Josie and Jim were up to.
They’d filled her mind several times every day since her return to St. Bridget’s. At random times, she found herself thinking Josie’s probably baking bread or Jim should be feeding the goats about now or they’re checking in new guests—little bits of thought that put a smile on her face.
Thoughts of Jacqueline were harder, though. As adept as Mother Theodora had become over the years at not thinking about the woman she’d loved, it seemed Jacqueline’s ghost now wriggled her way in, catching Mother unawares, so that her eyes filled with tears at the most inconvenient times. More than once, she caught the bewildered looks from other nuns as she had to take a moment to regain her composure.
“They must think I’m losing my faculties,” she remarked to Sister Isadore one afternoon as they strolled around the garden.
“They think nothing of the sort.”
“You’re a good friend and a terrible liar,” Mother said wryly.
Sister Isadore shrugged. “They may think you’re still… fragile.” When Mother groaned, she insisted, “Let them think it. There’s no need for you to be a stone-faced general all the time. You’re human. You’ve soldiered through so much for so long, it’s not a bad reminder for the community.”
“Reminder of what? That I’m old and decrepit?”
Sister Isadore wore such a reproachful expression that Mother Theodora couldn’t help chuckling.
“How’s that for pride?”
“You said it, not I.” But Sister Isadore smiled. Her smile faded, and her tone turned serious. “I do sense that something has… broken. Inside you. A wall, perhaps. One you erected long ago to protect yourself. You do seem more vulnerable in that way, as if the things that once ricocheted off that wall are now getting through more easily. And you know,” she squeezed Mother’s arm, “that’s not a bad thing.”
The first week of July seemed to drag on forever as Gail, Habte, and Scott worked with the volunteer committee on the final touches for the parish’s annual summer festival. Game booths, baking contests, wine tasting—“We are Episcopal,” Gail had joked to Lauren. “Must have wine.”
“You really liked her?” Gail asked Habte from under the stuffed animal fishing booth, where little ones would magically find prizes hooked onto their poles. “Where did Scott get to?”
“That’s at least the tenth time you’ve asked me that. And you know Scott. By the time he finds whatever he’s looking for, he’ll have forgotten why he was looking for it.” Habte used a staple gun to fasten crepe paper ribbons in swirly loops to the sides of the booth. “For the tenth time, she seems wonderful. I like her. Seb liked her. Jamal liked her. Alex doesn’t admit to liking anyone. She’s too busy being thirteen.”
“I’m really glad she finally got to meet you.” Gail tested that the hole they’d cut was large enough to allow a teddy bear to pass through. “I’ve told her so much about you, she was beginning to think I’d made you up.”
“Because no real person could be as charming as I.”
Gail burst into a belly laugh. “Naturally.”
Habte’s face appeared under the bunting that would hide whoever was hooking the animals onto the fishing poles. “You know the best part?”
“What?”
“The silly grin you couldn’t wipe off your face the entire evening.”
“Wha—? There was no silly grin.”
“Was, too. Can’t say I blame you. She’s beautiful.”
Gail sighed. “She is, isn’t she?”
Habte pulled back, apparently to check no one else was within hearing, because she popped her head underneath the bunting again. “And I take it, from the glow you had at the service Sunday morning, that after you left us, the evening only got better.”
Even in the darkness under the platform, Gail felt as if her face must have literally glowed. “I’m not going to respond to that.”
“Ah ha! You just did.” Habte slapped one of the six-by-six posts suspending the platform. “I knew it!”
Gail tried and failed to wipe the smile from her face.
“I know you don’t do casual relationships,” Habte said. “So I take it this is serious.”
“It is. At least on my end,” Gail admitted. “And I think on her end, too. There hasn’t been anyone else in her life other than Mickey.”
“The saint.”
“Yeah.”
“She still figures into things?”
Gail ran her fingers over the button nose of the bear. “Seems so. More when we’re in Millvale.”
“Think Lauren would move?”
“Doubt it. The garage is perfect for her weaving. She’s close to Mickey’s brother and his family.”
“So…” Habte said pensively, “maybe you need to figure how to live as a threesome.”
That conversation played over and over in Gail’s head when Monday finally arrived and she was free to take off for a few days. She and Lauren had had only Sunday morning after their night together—just the memory of it was enough to make Gail’s body tingle—so she really had no idea how things would be when she got to Millvale. Lauren had sounded happy when they spoke on the phone, but now, with her having been home—the place where Mickey’s memory was still so strong—maybe things would be different.
That worry only grew when she arrived with no sign of Lauren, who usually rushed outside as soon as she heard Gail’s car. Gail parked beside the SUV, wondering if she was maybe working in the garage. She checked her watch. Not late this time. She was just starting toward the garage to check when she saw Lauren strolling down the walk from the gazebo, Kyrie trotting beside her. Gail stood, mesmerized by the graceful sway of Lauren’s hips, the way she lifted a hand to tuck back a wayward strand of hair that had blown free in the breeze. When she saw Gail, her face lit up with a smile that made Gail feel as if her feet no longer touched the ground.
Lauren jogged the remaining distance and flung her arms around Gail, holding her tightly. “I’m so glad you’re here.”
Gail’s worries melted away in the warmth of that embrace, and when the embrace turned into a kiss, the heat escalated until she was sure they would leave scorch marks on the ground.
“Hi,” she managed when they pulled apart.
“Hi.” Lauren’s smile was radiant. “I’m so glad you’re here.”
“You said that.”
Lauren laughed and tugged her hand. “Come inside.”
“Wait.”
Gail reached into the back seat for her suitcase and another bag before following Lauren into the house. Something about the kitchen was different. It took her a moment to realize what it was.
“Are those towels new? And the mugs on the counter. Everything was white.”
She set her bags down and picked up one of the mugs—a deep maroon—and cradled it in her hands. “Feels nice.”
“Don’t they?” Lauren picked up the other. “I liked that as much as the colors. Jennifer decided I needed to change the décor around here a little. I wasn’t ready to do anything crazy like paint the walls, but things like this…”
“They’re nice.”
Gail reached for her bags again but stopped in her tracks as soon as she entered the living room. “Whoa.”
The changes here were more dramatic. The walls were the same sage, the couch and chairs were the same, but more colorful pillows and throws brought a new depth to everything. Deep blues, plums, dark greens, russets—all natural colors that coordinated wonderfully with what was already here.
“I love the colors.”
“Really?” Lauren stepped up beside her.
“Yeah.” Gail held out the extra bag. “These may go better now than before.”
With a puzzled smile, Lauren pulled out a tall box with an image of a pine green pillar candle. Inside the bag were four more of different colors and heights.
“Oh.” Her smiled slid away. “These are beautiful, and I know I light the fireplace, but candles… ever since the fire at the abbey, I just…”
“That’s the great part about these.” Gail took the box from her and opened it. She tugged out the candle inside. “The exterior is real wax, but it’s battery powered. Look.”
She flicked a switch on the underside, and the wick lit up and began to dance. “Flickers just like a real candle, but no fire risk.”
Lauren gasped in delight. “It’s beautiful! Oh, thank you.”
She set it on the mantle, and Gail bent for her suitcase.
“I’ll take this upstairs.”
“No.” Lauren took her by the hand and led her to the room Gail had never intruded into. “Jennifer helped me in here, too.”
The room was large and held a beautiful bed, with a slatted headboard of cherry, the spread a deep indigo with sage throw pillows that complemented the wall color.
“The bed is new. The sheets, comforter. Everything.” Lauren’s cheeks flushed. “She helped me see that, if we’re to… This needed to be just for us.”
Gail’s throat was too tight for words. When she simply stood there, staring around, Lauren asked, “Do you… don’t you like it?”
All Gail could do was nod. She drew Lauren to her and held her, nuzzling into her neck. “It’s gorgeous,” she whispered when she could speak.
She took a deep breath and stepped back, determined to follow through on Habte’s advice. Keeping hold of Lauren’s hand, she led her back to the living room and the sofa where they sat side by side.
Still cradling Lauren’s hand between both of hers, she said, “I love that you did that, but I don’t think this will work if we try to pretend Mickey was never here, to erase her from your life. I need to get to know her. Tell me stories.”
Lauren’s face shifted, her eyes shimmered, and Gail knew this was the right thing. “The first time I really met her,” Lauren began, “she was in the garden before dawn, throwing snowballs at a tree. I should have known then that she would be unlike anyone I’d ever known.”