With the Father (3 page)

“Did you see your dad today?” he finally asked.

“I did. The kids and I took him some lunch after
school.”

“Good,” he said with a smile.

I eyed the man sitting beside me. Without his tie, he
didn’t look nearly as formidable. His hair, which had been artfully arranged
when he’d left this morning
,
 
looked
like he’d run his hands
through it all day. Another sign that he’d had a rough day.

Even though I’d just settled into my favorite chair, I
stood again and moved to sit beside him on the couch. His lips curled into a
smile. He knew I didn’t like being so far from him.

He could have teased me. He knew the effect he had on
me. It was on the tip of his tongue to do so.
 
But he picked up a piece of my hair,
wound it around his finger, and studied it instead. “He needs to get out more.
It’s been over a year,” he finally said, continuing our discussion about my
dad.

In fact, it had been fourteen and a half months since
my mother died. My dad had retired at the age of sixty only six months before
and then was left to rattle around their huge house all by
himself
.

I missed my mother every single day, but I had a lot
of things to keep me busy. My dad had nothing but a dog to fill his days.
Consequently, he rarely got out of the house. I checked on him everyday to make
sure he was eating properly, to make sure that he hadn’t given up on life. “He
seemed better today.”

“I thought so, too. Are you going over there
tomorrow?” Jonathan asked.

“Yeah, I’m sure we will. I worry that he won’t eat if
we don’t.”

“Take him out for lunch tomorrow.
Somewhere
new – like that new burger place on Caddo.
She wouldn’t want him
to live like this. She would want him to move on. He’s too young to stop
living.”

I didn’t think that a burger was going to help my dad
get over my mom. “I think they close for lunch at 2:00 and then open again
later for dinner.”

He raised an eyebrow at me.

“I have to put together the take-away bags tomorrow so
that they’re ready for Friday.” I squared my shoulders and prepared for part
two of his usual lecture series.

He eyed me thoughtfully but said nothing.

I sat my glass of wine down and picked up his glass
instead. “Thanks for the wine, but I don’t think it’s going to cut it tonight.”

A mischievous smile spread across his face. “My
beautiful big-hearted wife is a lush and a thief.”

“Shut up,” I said, grinning at him at him like a fool.
After two kids, my hips were too wide, and my hair was too limp. When I looked
in the mirror, all I saw was a tired mom. However, when he looked at me like
this, I couldn’t help but feel like the most beautiful woman in the world. “I
was looking at vacation spots online today.”

“Catching up on Kate?” he asked, referring to my
sister who traveled the globe like a superstar for her job writing for a travel
magazine.

“No.
For us.
I thought we
could leave the kids with my dad and get away for a few days. Maybe just a
quick trip to Mexico or something?”

“It’s too dangerous there right now,” he said.

“We could go somewhere else. I also looked at Turks
and St. Thomas. There are some good deals out there right now. Heck, I wouldn’t
mind Vegas at this point.”

His expression was reproachful. “I can’t take off the
time from work right now, Grace,” he huffed. His voice was sharp with
annoyance.

I looked away, scolded.

He sighed heavily. “Maybe in a few months, okay?” When
I turned back, his expression was softer. “How were the kids today?”

“Good. I could not get Trey out of that Spiderman
suit. He wore it to the grocery store this afternoon.”

“Of course he did.”

“Everyone was oohing and
ahhing
all over him – he loved it - right up until he tried to climb the shelves
to rescue a bird flapping around the ceiling, and all the cereal boxes hit the
floor.”

‘Look, Mommy! I’m climbing the walls just like
Spiderman.
Spidey
to the rescue!’
he’d said just before everything came crashing down
around him. He’d been so proud of himself right up until he’d discovered that
he couldn’t fly.

“Did you clean it up?”

“I tried, but I ended up buying six beat-up boxes of
cereal. Whether he likes it or not, Trey’s going to be eating shredded wheat
for the next two months.”
  

Jonathan slid his arm around me. “You’re a great
mother. They’re lucky to have you.” He said the words as if he knew they were
the most seductive in the world, and I melted around him. His mouth met mine,
and
I
 
completely
forgot that he’d never told me about his bad day.

_________________________

The
shrill of the alarm woke me. It jolted me from sleep and immediately set me on
edge.

My head argued with the alarm. It couldn’t be time to
get up yet. I felt like I’d hardly slept at all.

My arm was as reluctant to get up as the rest of me. I
tried to reach out to slap the top of the alarm, but prickling needles rendered
it useless. I rolled on my side to reach for the clock with the arm I hadn’t
been laying on.
  

The numbers glaring at me explained why I felt like my
night had been cut short.

1:38 AM was a wretched hour of the morning for the
alarm to be going off.
 

The realization that it was not the clock causing the
offensive noise hit me at the same time that the smell did, and my body finally
reacted. Jumping out of bed, my feet kicked the shirt I’d been wearing the
night before. In a daze, I stumbled around the bed, cut it too close, and
stubbed my toe on the footboard. My yelp was drowned out by the bleating smoke
detector.

“Jonathan, wake up! Wake up! The house is on fire.”

Fortunately, he was not as slow to react as I had
been. He grabbed his phone from the nightstand and was headed out the door even
before I had my shirt over my head. His boxers were in his hand and he slipped
his feet into them as he hopped down the hall.

“I’ve got the kids,” he yelled over his shoulder as he
moved down the hall, his words barely audible over the chirp of the smoke
detectors. As we got closer to the main part of the house, the noise began to
compete with a crackling whisper that was both foreign and terrifying.
 

With nothing other than my children on my mind, I
rounded the corner into the living room right behind Jonathan. There was no way
either of them were sleeping through the wailing smoke detectors. Isabelle
would be in her bed, afraid to leave it, and there was a good chance that Trey
would be with her. For the past six months, he’d been just as likely to climb
in bed with Isabelle as with us.

Unprepared for the thick blanket of smoke in the room,
I gasped and sucked in a lungful. I bent over in half, coughing. “Jonathan,” I
gasped.

He backtracked for me and pulled me down to the floor.
“Crawl, baby.”

From the floor, I had a clearer view of the fire that
was eating its way across the only wall that separated the kitchen and the
living room. The other side of the partial wall, the side I couldn’t see, was
where the double ovens were. Jonathan constantly chastised me for forgetting to
turn them off. ‘You’re going to burn down the house,’ he would say as he’d walk
by and hit the off button.

For the briefest second, I wondered if I’d finally
done it.
 
Had I burned down our
house?

The thought ate a hole through my stomach.
 
However, the instant that I reached the
entryway, any guilt was replaced with panic as I clawed my way toward the
stairs.

The flames were working their
way toward the base of the curved staircase. The heat
was stifling and the sounds that accompanied it weren’t the relaxing sounds
that we’d enjoyed in front of the fireplace earlier that night. The crackling
and popping had turned into something closer to a roar, nearly drowning out the
still bleating smoke detector. Though I could barely hear it, I could feel its
pulsing timbre in my veins, and my heart beat wildly in time with it.

Jonathan, who was still ahead of me, crawled back to
me. He handed me his phone and I stared at it blankly before looking back at
him.
 
Shielding his mouth with his
hand, he coughed out, “Grace, I’ll get the kids.
 
You go outside and call for help. Meet
me outside Isabelle’s window.”

Despite everything, he remained calm. He looked at me
with steely determination, a look with which I was very familiar. The set of
his brow and clarity in his warm amber eyes convinced me with one glance that
our kids would be safe and sound in his capable hands.
 

I didn’t doubt him. Jonathan had never given up on
anything or anyone in his entire life. He would succeed. He would get us all
out of the house and keep us safe, which was exactly why I didn’t want to leave
him. I wanted to help him and knew he would rescue us all if it came down to
it.

“I think we should stay together,” I sputtered,
crawling after him. We both eyed the flames that were now moving across the
bottom of the stairs, effectively separating us. The smoke stung my watering
eyes.

My handsome hero crouched, in his boxers and bare
feet, four steps up and shook his head deliberately. “No,” he insisted. “I’ll
get Trey and then Isabelle and then lower them to you from her window. You need
to be there to catch them.”

I nodded wordlessly, letting his instructions sink in.
Even in a panic situation, he had a plan. My head spun as I debated all the
places I needed to be simultaneously.

I needed to call for help.

I needed to be with my kids.

I needed to be outside to catch them.

Jonathan nodded at me one more time and headed up the
stairs.
 
I turned to the front door
and threw it open.
 
A gust of air
blew in, and smoke whooshed around me in response.
 
Turning back to the stairs one last
time, I was horrified to see the flames already dancing their way up to the
second step. They were following Jonathan. In a matter of minutes, maybe
seconds, they would engulf the entire staircase. Smoke gathered on the upper
landing, and I could no longer see him.

‘Call for help,’
he’d said.

The urge to follow his instructions waged a war
against my more primal, maternal instinct to follow him and protect my
children.

My whole life was at the top of the stairs. Everything
I cared about. They were my whole world. I was a mother. I was a wife. Without
them, I had nothing.
 
I would
be
nothing.

I stared at the flames now spreading to the third
step. Soon it would be impassable. My home was a lost cause, but my family
didn’t have to be. If I went upstairs, Jonathan could jump first, and I could
drop the kids to him.
 
He was
stronger and taller. He should be the one catching them.

I stared into the fire.
 
I could still jump over it, but I had to
go now.
    

But,
‘Go get help,’
he’d said.
 

Should I go
upstairs or go outside? I frantically looked around for any sign that would
help me decide what to do.

I weighed my
options for only a few seconds more, but it was as if time stood still.

Grace

The
ground was hard and dry. The brittle grass crunched beneath my shoes as I
navigated my way through the stones.
 

It hadn’t rained during the past sixty-two days.
That’s what they’d said on the news this morning. We were officially in a
drought. However, I hadn’t even noticed. As far as I was concerned, the sun
hadn’t made an appearance at all during the last five months.
 
Of course, a tsunami could have come
through southern Texas and I wouldn’t have noticed that either.

I turned left at the praying Madonna and right at St.
Vincent de Paul. Like most things around me, I didn’t notice these markers. I’d
made the trip so many times that thinking was no longer required. I could get
there on autopilot.

My entire life was on autopilot.
 

It wasn’t until my feet hit the familiar patch of
green that I could breathe without it hurting. The heavy weight that usually
pressed upon my chest lifted, and I gulped in the air. Even as tears began to
sting my eyes, I felt better.
 

I dropped my bag and settled down beside it. The soft
blades tickled the palm of my hand when I ran it across the grass. I’d never
asked myself why this one spot – this one 12’ by 6’ square of grass
– was maintained and manicured while every other plot remained ignored,
and today was no different.

I didn’t ask because details meant nothing to me any
more. Besides, it just seemed right. After all, this patch of earth should be
as beautiful as the perfect family who now
laid
beneath it.

_________________________

It
was dusk before I got to my feet again. After nearly four hours of constant
chatter, my voice was gravelly and my throat scratchy. It didn’t matter though
because I didn’t plan on speaking again for the rest of today.
 

Four tiny steps put me within reach of the single
headstone.
 
Running my hands over
the marble, I traced the letters of each of their names.

“Good night, Trey.”

“Isabelle.”

“Jonathan.”
 

Finally, I forced myself to turn away. When I reached
the wrought iron gate, it was still open even though the sun was low in the
sky. My car, which was parked just outside, glowed in the orange hue.

Like everything else in my new life, it was an
uninteresting car.
Something on the smallish side that my dad
picked up for me to try and coax me out of the house.
If you asked me,
and I wasn’t standing in front of it, I probably couldn’t even tell you what
color it was.

Everything I owned was new.
Bright
and shiny and new.
And none of it felt like it was mine. I was living
someone else’s life with someone else’s things.

“Grace.”

“Kate.”
 
I
continued to rummage through my bag for my keys and didn’t look up. Though I
hadn’t expected her to come looking for me, I knew why she was here.

She’d mentioned something this morning about going out
for dinner tonight. As usual, I’d brushed her off. I didn’t want to go out for
dinner. Generally, I didn’t want to go anywhere, and she knew that. She knew me
better than anyone.

The flip side was that I knew her just as well and
knew exactly what she was thinking. Meeting me here was her attempt at cutting
me off at the pass. She didn’t want to give me the chance to make it home where
I would inevitably crawl back into bed for the next twelve to fifteen hours.

When I wasn’t here, that was where I spent most of my
time. Months ago, they’d given me pills to help me sleep. In the beginning, I’d
needed them. They’d tempered the nightmares and deadened my memories.
 
But I didn’t take them any more. I was
an expert sleeper now and attempted daily to sleep my life away.

That was exactly what I wanted to do right now. I
wanted to go home and sleep what was left of the day away. I certainly didn’t
want to go out to dinner and sit in a restaurant where I’d no doubt run into
people I knew.

Our town was small.
Too small.
 
Everyone knew my story, and I couldn’t
stand all of the pitying glances and curious stares. People whispered about me
because I was the one who’d lived. Everyone wanted to talk
about
me, but
no one wanted to talk
to
me.

I didn’t blame them. If I were in their shoes, I’d
whisper about me, too. Everyone loves a tragedy and I was the biggest tragedy
in town.

“Load up. We’re going out.”

“I’m not,” I said, still looking for my keys.

“Are so.
”

“Are not.”

“Get in.”

“Fuck off,” I said, finally giving up on my keys and
looking up. I threw a hand over my eyes to shield them from the setting sun. It
was only then that I realized that Kate wasn’t alone.

“
Ohhh
, Father Paul. I didn’t
realize.” He was leaning against his equally uninteresting car. However, the
smallish, darkish box on four wheels sharply contrasted with the sparkling
silver convertible double-parked behind it. Kate’s car was as flashy as she was.

 
“It’s good to see you,
Grace,” he said softly, nodding ever so slightly in greeting. A cautious smile
played at the corner of his mouth.

“I’m sorry,” I said in an equally soft voice before turning back to
Kate. “You blocked the wrong car.”

Kate smirked at me. “They look alike. I didn’t realize that this one
wasn’t yours until Father Sullivan got out of it.”

“You’ve been talking?” I asked warily. “Is this going to turn into an
intervention?”

“The thought had occurred to me.” She turned toward him as if to
propose the idea. “Would you like to have dinner with us?” she asked instead.

I groaned. “I’m not going out to dinner.” I stomped my foot like a
petulant child. The faint smile on Father Paul’s face grew wider, but he
remained silent. He seemed content
to
 
watch
the drama unfold between
us.

“Get in the damn car, Grace. A burger is not going to kill you.”

“Don’t cuss in front of the priest,” I hissed, squinting and glaring at
her through one blinded eye.
 

He chuckled. “I’ve certainly heard worse.”

“From you, apparently,” she said, bowing dramatically. “This is not up
for debate, Grace. Let’s go.”

I shook my head.

“Father, are you coming?” she asked.

I knew what she was trying to do.
 
If she could get Father Paul to agree to come, then I’d have a harder
time telling her no.

“I haven’t had dinner yet. Just let me lock up, and I’ll follow you,”
he said.

Oh, good Lord. They were ganging up on me. “I’ll follow you, too,” I
huffed and turned again toward my car.

“No way,” she said. “I don’t trust you. We’ll get halfway there, and
you’ll turn off and go home and crawl into bed.”

No one knew me better. “Fine,” I said. “Are we just going to leave my
car here?”

“It’ll be okay here,” Father Paul said, returning from locking the
gate. “No one will mess with it.”
 

I shrugged. I didn’t care if they did.

I trudged through the gravel to the passenger side of Kate’s car and
slid into the plush leather seat that fit her personality to a ‘T’. Even though
she didn’t plan on staying in
Merriville
, she’d
spared no expense on her car.

My sister lived a totally different lifestyle than I did. I’d gotten
married young and had kids. She’d spent the last ten years traveling the world
with nothing tethering her. She’d done well as a travel writer, and now she had
her pick of assignments. She could go pretty much wherever she wanted.
Presently that meant moving back to our hometown and hovering over me.

“Well, isn’t this nice?” she asked, sliding behind the wheel. “I can’t
believe his Holy Hotness is coming with us. Does he eat meat?”

“Geez, Kate, he’s Catholic. Not a vegetarian.”

“Well, yeah, but I wondered about the whole animal cruelty thing. Saint
Sexy looks like he likes animals.”

“Again. Affiliated with the Catholic Church. Not PETA. You’re a moron.”

 
“Do you see what’s
happening here?” she asked as she stopped at a light.

“What?” I asked, looking out the passenger window so I didn’t have to
look at her.

“We’re having a normal conversation.”

I remained silent. Nothing really felt normal. No matter what I was
doing, no matter
who
I was doing it with, it was all
varying degrees of abnormal. Going for a burger like I was anyone else felt
highly abnormal.

“We’re here.” She pulled into a parking spot and turned off the car.
“Are you going to be okay?”

I stared blankly at her.

“Seriously. I know I’m yanking you out of your comfort zone, but I just
…” She grabbed the hand that was resting in my lap. “I just don’t want you to
forget.”

“Forget what? Trust me. I haven’t forgotten anything.”
 
I looked away again because I didn’t
want to cry before I had a burger with my crazy ass sister and the town priest.

“Forget how to live,” she said, squeezing my hand again. “I know you’re
not ready, but every now and then, I feel like I need to remind you how to
live. Jonathan wouldn’t want you to be sad forever.”

I thought about what he’d said about my dad the night
he’d died.
She wouldn’t want him to live like this. She would want him to
move on. He’s too young to stop living.

I knew he wouldn’t want me to stop living just because he couldn’t be a
part of my life any more, but that didn’t make it any easier. I let go of her
hand and sighed an audible, exasperated sigh. I got out of the car and walked
toward the front door of the restaurant without looking back at her.
 

I didn’t have to tell her. She already knew. I didn’t want to live.

_________________________

Minutes
later, we were seated at a booth in the corner. I was pretty sure that she’d
specifically asked the hostess to put us as far away from other people as
possible. She might be trying to remind me how to live, but she was doing so
with baby steps. I was still angry
at
her for having
forced me into this but at least she was trying to make my reintroduction into
the world as bearable as possible.

Father Paul was
right behind us and slipped into the other side of the booth looking a little
less priestly than he had a few minutes ago. He’d taken both the black shirt
and the collar off, and he was wearing a tan V-neck t-shirt with his usual black
pants. He didn’t look at all like the Father Paul I knew, and I wondered if it
was even allowed.

 
“So Father Paul,” Kate began, “Grace here
says you can eat meat. Is that right?”

He smiled at her,
but eyed her warily as if he thought she might be setting him up somehow. “Yes,
I eat meat.”

Kate continued on,
oblivious to anything other than her curiosity regarding his carnivorous
nature. “Good because I wasn’t sure. It’s been a long time since I went to
church. And, I’m not sure what the Church’s stance is on meat these days.”

Father Paul
chuckled softly. “As of yet, the Vatican hasn’t taken a position on meat.
Outside of Lent, of course.
But, personally, I have no beef
with it.” There was a glint of mischief in his eyes that I’d seen only rarely.
Kate had that effect on people.

“Father Paul, are
you making a joke?” Kate asked.

He peered down at
his menu as a full-on grin took over his face.
 
“There’s no prohibition on jokes
either.”

“Well, that’s a
relief,” she said, glancing back at her own menu.
 
“I have to be honest. I wasn’t sure what
dinner with a man such as yourself would be like.”

“A man such as
myself?” he questioned, his laugh slightly more boisterous this time.

“Yes, you know,”
she said, waving her hand ceremoniously in his direction. “A man of the cloth.”

I rolled my eyes.
“Have you two actually formally met?” Kate and I grew up in
Merriville
,
but Father Paul had only lived here for a couple of years. She’d left town long
before he arrived.

They looked at one
another guiltily and then looked at me. “We’ve met,” he finally said. That one
glance told me everything I needed to know. Neither would want to say it aloud,
but I knew. They’d met at the funeral.

“Oh,” I said,
nodding dismissively. I didn’t want to hear the words any more than they wanted
to say them.
 

“Are you still
staying at home?” The question was directed at Kate so I went back to my menu.
Nothing sounded good to me.