twenty-eight

Sunday morning turned Mama Eva’s house into a beehive, everyone gathering first around her breakfast table, then scattering to get dressed for mass before reconvening on the front porch. She insisted that Peyton come to church with her family and spend one more night under her roof before moving on. So he borrowed church clothes from one of Gina’s brothers. Rosa took his picture next to his bike before they all walked together toward the church bells ringing out through the palm trees.

St. Joseph’s was a beautiful old stone church with a bell tower and massive iron-hinged doors made of heart pine. Peyton’s family had been members of Independent Presbyterian in Savannah as long as anybody could remember. He had never been inside a Catholic church.

This one echoed with silence. No one spoke once they entered. St Joseph’s was a seafaring church, with an inscribed roll of sailors and fishermen who had died at sea hanging on a wall just inside the entrance. The font of holy water was shaped like a seashell, and the murals over the altar included the apostle Paul at sea in stormy waters. Stained-glass windows depicted seafaring scenes from the Bible—Moses parting the Red Sea, the disciples casting their nets, Christ walking on water.

Sitting next to Gina on what she called “Mama’s pew,” Peyton looked up at the series of carvings that lined the walls of the church—fourteen in all—depicting Jesus from the time he was tried, through carrying the cross to the crucifixion, to the empty tomb. They were beautiful and horrifying at the same time, crushing and triumphant. Peyton was feeling something in this old Catholic church that he couldn’t verbalize. He just let the Latin and Spanish flow through him, allowing himself to feel what he couldn’t understand.

After church, even as the family laughed and talked on their way home, Peyton couldn’t stop thinking about those carvings.

“You are very quiet, Peyton,” Gina said. “What message did St. Joseph send you?”

Peyton frowned. “I’m not sure. I just know I can’t stop thinking about those carvings around the church.”

“Ah,” Gina said. “The stations of the cross. They moved you, no?”

“Yes. And I’m not sure what to do about it.”

“Receive it, Peyton. That is all.”

On Monday morning, it was time to say goodbye. Peyton made his bed, wrote “For your wedding dress” on his bag of tips, and left it on his pillow.

After breakfast, he hugged Rosa and Mama Eva, who had wrapped him a bundle of tostadas in tinfoil. He secured it in Aunt Gert’s pouch on the back of his bike. Then Mama Eva hung a small medal around his neck. “St. Christopher protects all travelers,” she said. “But I have prayed special mercies on you.”

“Thank you, Mama Eva,” Peyton said, looking down at the medal. Then he turned to Gina.

“You remember everything I told you,” she said.

“I will.”

“You don’t trust nobody. Who knows where those people on that highway come from?”

“I promise.”

“And you change your mind, you come back here. I will drive you to find your Lisa myself if I have to.”

Peyton kissed her on the cheek. “I wish you were my big sister.”

“I am—and don’t you forget it.” Gina hung a more delicate St. Christopher medal around his neck. “For good measure. And if you start to feel alone on that highway, you remember the carvings. You are not the only one who has felt forsaken. That is how you know you are not.” She hugged him goodbye. “Now go before I cry.”

Peyton set off, waving one more time at the end of Mama Eva’s driveway. As her house full of family faded into the distance, Peyton felt as lonely as he had ever felt in his life. Except for Prentiss and Winston, he rarely thought about the Cabots—his blood relatives—and yet he knew he would carry Gina and her kin with him always. They were a real family, the kind everybody was meant to have, and now that he saw what one looked like, he couldn’t go back to pretending that’s what he had in Savannah. His mother, Aunt Gert, Finn, and Gina—they were his family now. He could only hope Lisa would want to be part of it.