Priest. Part 2

I stared at that picture for a long time while Sean and Aidan chattered about their jobs-they're both in investments-and while Mom and Dad played Candy Crush in their side-by-side recliners.

I'm sorry, Lizzy. I'm sorry for everything.

Logically, I knew there's nothing I could have done back then, but logic didn't erase the memory of her pale, bluish lips or the blood vessels that had exploded in her eyes.

Of walking into the garage looking for flashlight batteries and instead finding the cold body of my only sister.

Sean's low voice seeped into my grim reverie, and I gradually came back to the moment, listening to the squeaking of Dad's recliner and Sean's words.

"...invitation only," he said. "I've heard rumors of it for years, but it wasn't until I got the letter that I thought it was actually real."

"Are you going to go?" Aidan was speaking quietly too.

"f.u.c.k yes, I'm going."

"Going where?" I asked.

"You wouldn't care, priest boy."

"Is it the invitation-only Chucky Cheese? I'm so proud of you."

Sean rolled his eyes, but Aidan leaned in. "Maybe Tyler should know about it. He probably needs to work off a little excess...energy."

"It's invitation only, d.i.c.k-hole," Sean said. "Which means he can't go."

"It's supposed to be like the world's best strip club," Aidan continued, unfazed by Sean's insult. "But no one knows what it's called or where it is, not until you're personally invited. Word is that they don't let you come until your annual clears a million a year."

"Then why is Sean getting invited?" I asked. Sean, although three years older than me, was still working his way up through his firm. He made a very healthy salary (f.u.c.king incredible, from my standpoint) but he was nowhere near a million dollars a year. Not yet.

"Because-douchenozzle-I know people. Being connected is a more reliable form of currency than a salary."

Aidan's voice was a little too loud when he spoke. "Especially if it gets you choice puss-"

"Boys," Dad said automatically, not looking up from his phone. "Your mother is here."

"Sorry, Mom," we said in unison.

She waved us off. Thirty-plus years of four boys had made her immune to pretty much everything.

Ryan sloped into the room, mumbling something to Dad about wanting the car keys, and Sean and Aidan leaned closer again.

"I'm going next week," Sean confided. "I'll tell you everything."

Aidan, younger than me by a couple years and still very much a junior in the business world, sighed. "I want to be you when I grow up."

"Better me than Mr. Celibacy over here. Tell me, Tyler, you got carpal tunnel in your right hand yet?"

I tossed a throw pillow at his head. "You volunteering to come help me out?"

Sean dodged the pillow easily. "Name the time, sugar. I bet I could put some of that anointing-of-the-sick oil to good use."

I groaned. "You're going to h.e.l.l."

"Tyler!" Dad said. "No telling your brother he's going to h.e.l.l." He still didn't look up from his phone.

"What's the use of all those lonely nights if you can't condemn someone once in a while, eh?" Aidan asked, reaching for remote.

"You know, TinkerBell, maybe I should find a way to take you to the club. There's nothing wrong with looking at the menu, so long as you don't order anything, right?"

"Sean, I'm not going to a strip club with you. No matter how fancy it is."

"Fine. I guess you and your St. Augustine poster can spend next Friday night alone together. Again."

I threw another pillow at him.

The Business Brothers left around ten, driving back to their tie racks and home espresso machines, and Ryan was still out doing whatever thing he had needed the car so badly for. Dad was asleep in his recliner, and I was stretched out on the couch, watching Jimmy Fallon and thinking about what movie to pick for the middle school lock-in next month, when I heard the sink running in the kitchen.

I frowned. The Business Brothers and I (and a complaining Ryan) had done all the dishes after dinner expressly so that Mom wouldn't have to. But when I got up to see if I could help, I saw that she was scrubbing the stainless steel in savage circles, steam clouding around her.

"Mom?"

She turned and I could immediately see that she'd been crying. She gave me a quick smile and then shut the water off, swiping at her tears. "Sorry, hon. Just cleaning."

It was Lizzy. I knew it was. Whenever we were all together, the whole Bell brood, I could see that look in her eyes, the way she was picturing the table with one more setting, the sink with one more set of dirty dishes.

Lizzy's death had nearly killed me. But it had killed Mom. And every day after that, it was like we kept Mom artificially alive with hugs and jokes and visits now that we were older, but every now and again, you could see that a part of her had never fully healed, never really resurrected, and our church had been a huge part of that, first driving Lizzy to kill herself and then turning their backs on us when the story went public.

Sometimes I felt like I was fighting for the wrong side. But who would make it better if I didn't?

I pulled Mom into a hug, her face crumpling as I wrapped my arms around her. "She's with G.o.d now," I murmured, half-priest, half-son, some chimera of both. "G.o.d has her, I promise."

"I know," she sniffled. "I know. But sometimes I wonder..."

I knew what she wondered. I wondered it too, in my darkest hours, what signs I missed, what I should have noticed, all the times she seemed about to tell me something, but then sank into a fog of silence instead.

"I think there's no way we can't wonder," I said quietly. "But you don't have to feel this pain alone. I want to share it with you. I know Dad would too."

She nodded into my chest and we stayed like that a long time, swaying gently together, both of our thoughts twelve years away and in a cemetery down the road.

It wasn't until I was driving back home, listening to my usual c.o.c.ktail of brooding hipster songs and Britney Spears, that I made the connection between Sean's club and Poppy's confession. She had mentioned a club, mentioned that most people would cla.s.sify it as sinful. Could that be it?

Jealousy slithered inside of me, and I refused to acknowledge it, clenching my jaw as I maneuvered my truck onto the interstate. I didn't care that Sean would get to see this club, this place where Poppy had possibly exposed her body. No, I didn't.

And that jealousy had nothing to do with my sudden, out-of-the-blue decision to find her the next day and follow up on her request for a conversation during my office hours. It was because I was worried about her, I rea.s.sured myself. It was because I wanted to welcome her to our church and give her comfort and guidance, because I sensed that she was someone who was not easily lost, not easily broken, and for something to send her into a strange confession booth and bring her to tears...well, no one should have to bear those kinds of burdens alone.

Especially someone as s.e.xy as Poppy.

Stop it.

It wasn't too hard to find Poppy again. In fact, I did literally nothing except jog past the open tobacco barn on my morning run and collide into her as she rounded the corner. She stumbled, and I managed to stop her fall by pinning her between my chest and my arm.

"s.h.i.+t," I said, yanking the earbuds out of my ears. "I'm so sorry! Are you okay?"

She nodded, tilting her head up and giving me a small smile that gave me chills; it was so perfectly imperfect with her two front teeth peeking behind her lips and a sheen of sweat covering her face. At the same time, we both realized how we were standing, with my arms wrapped around her and her only in a sports bra and me without a s.h.i.+rt. I dropped my arms, immediately missing the way she felt there. Missed the way her t.i.ts pushed against my naked chest.

In the future: only sideways hugs, I told myself. I was already seeing another cold shower in my future.

She put her hand on my chest, casually, innocently, still giving me that small smile. "I would have fallen if it wasn't for you."

"If it wasn't for me, you wouldn't have been at risk of falling at all."

"And yet I still wouldn't change a thing." Her touch, her words, that smile-was she flirting? But then her smile widened, and I saw that she was just teasing, in that safe, playful way that girls do with their gay friends. She saw me as safe, and why shouldn't she? I was a man of the cloth, after all, bound by G.o.d to be a caregiver of his flock. Of course, she would a.s.sume that she could tease me, touch me, without bothering my priestly composure. How could she know what her words and voice did to me? How could she know that her hand was currently searing its outline onto my chest?

Her hazel eyes flickered up to mine, green and brown pools of curiosity and intelligent energy, green and brown pools that reflected grief and confusion if you cared to look long enough. I recognized it because I had worn such a look for years after Lizzy's death, except in Poppy's case, I suspected that the person she was grieving-the person she'd lost-was herself.

Let me help this woman, I prayed silently. Let me help her find her way.

"I'm glad I saw you," I said, straightening up as her hand fell away from my skin. "You said earlier this week that you wanted to meet?"

She nodded enthusiastically. "I did. I mean, I do."

"How about my office in, say, half an hour?"

She gave me a mock salute. "See you there, Father."

I tried not to watch her run away, I really did, but I promise I only looked for a second, an infinitely long second, a second long enough to catalog the gleam of sweat and sunscreen on her toned shoulders, the taunting movements of her a.s.s.

Definitely a cold shower then.

Half an hour later, I was back in my uniform: black slacks, Armani belt (a hand-me-down from one of the Business Brothers), long-sleeved black s.h.i.+rt with the cuffs rolled up to the elbows. And my collar, of course. St. Augustine gazed austerely out over the office, reminding me that I was here to help Poppy, not to daydream about sports bras and running shorts. And I wanted to be here to help her. I remembered her soft crying in the confessional and my chest tightened.

I would help her if it killed me.

Poppy was one minute early, and the easy but precise way she walked through the door told me that she was accustomed to being prompt, took pleasure in it, was the kind of person who could never understand why other people weren't on time. Whereas three years of waking up at seven o'clock had still not transformed me into a morning person and more often than not, Ma.s.s started at 8:10 rather than 8:00.

"Hi," she said as I indicated a chair next to me. I'd chosen the two upholstered chairs in the corner of the office, hating to talk to people from behind my desk like I was a middle school princ.i.p.al. And with Poppy, I wanted to be able to soothe her, touch her if I needed, show her a more personal church experience than the Ancient Booth of Death.

She sank into the chair in this elegant, graceful way that was f.u.c.king mesmerizing...like watching a ballerina lace up her slippers or a geisha pour tea. She had on that igniting shade of lipstick again, bright red, and was in a pair of high-waisted shorts and a blouse that tied at the neck, looking more ready for a Sat.u.r.day yachting trip than a meeting in my dingy office. But her hair was still wet and her cheeks still had that post-run flush, and I felt a small swell of possessive pride that I got to see this polished women slightly unraveled, which was a bad impulse. I pushed it down.

"Thanks for meeting with me," she said, crossing her legs as she set down her purse. Which was not a purse but a sleek laptop bag, filled with strata of brightly colored folders. "I've been thinking a lot about seeking something like this out, but I've never been religious before, and part of me still kind of balks at the idea..."

"Don't think of it as being religious," I advised. "I'm not here to convert you. Why don't we just talk? And maybe there will be some activities or groups here that match what you need."

"And if there's not? Will you refer me to the Methodists?"

"I would never," I said with mock gravity. "I always refer to the Lutherans first."

That earned me another smile.

"So how did you end up in Kansas City?"

She hesitated. "It's a long story."

I leaned back in the chair, making a show of settling in. "I've got the time."

"It's boring," she warned.

"My day is a praxis of liturgical laws that date from the Middle Ages. I can handle boring. Promise."

"Okay, well, I'm not sure where to start, so I guess I should start at the beginning?" Her gaze slid over to the wall of books as she worried her lower lip with her teeth, as if she were trying to decide what the beginning really was. "I'm not your typical runaway," she said after a minute. "I didn't sneak out of a window when I was sixteen or steal my father's car and drive to the nearest ocean. I was dutiful and obedient and my father's favorite child right up until I walked across the stage at Dartmouth and officially received my MBA. I looked at my parents, and I finally really realized what they saw when they looked at me-another a.s.set, another folder in the portfolio.

"There she is, our youngest, I could picture them saying to the family next to them. Graduated magna c.u.m laude, you know, and only the best schools growing up. Spent the last three summers volunteering in Haiti. She was a shoo-in for dance at Juilliard, but of course she chose to pursue business instead, our level-headed girl."

"You volunteered in Haiti?" I interrupted.

She nodded. "At a charity called Maison de Naissance. It's a place for rural Haitian mothers to get free prenatal care, as well as a place for them to give birth. It's the only place besides the summer house in Ma.r.s.eille that my boarding school French has come in remotely useful."

Dartmouth. Ma.r.s.eille. Boarding school. I had sensed that Poppy was polished, had guessed from her mention of Newport that she had known privilege and wealth at some point in her life, but I could see now exactly how much privilege, how much wealth. I studied her face. There was a thriving confidence there, an old-fas.h.i.+oned bent toward etiquette and politeness, but there was also no pretentiousness, no elitism.

"Did you like working there?"

Her face lit up. "I did! It's a beautiful place, filled with beautiful people. I got to help deliver seven babies my last summer there. Two of them were twins...they were so tiny, and the midwife told me later that if the mom hadn't come to MN, she and the babies almost certainly would have died. The mother even let me help her pick out names for her sons." Her expression turned almost shy, and I realized that this was the first time she'd gotten to share this pure form of joy with anyone. "I miss it there."

I grinned at her. I couldn't help it, I just rarely saw anyone so excited by the experience of helping people in need.

"My family's idea of charity is hosting a political fundraiser," she said, matching my grin with a wry one of her own. "Or donating enough to a pet cause so that they can take a picture with a giant check. And then they'll step over homeless people in the city. It's embarra.s.sing."

"It's common."

She shook her head vehemently. "It shouldn't be. I, at least, refuse to live like that."

Good for her. I refused as well, but I also had grown up in a household of religion, of volunteering. It had been easy for me; I didn't think this conviction had come easily to her. I wanted to stop her right then, hear more about her time in Haiti, introduce her to all the ways she could help people here at St. Margaret's. We needed people like her, people who cared, people who could volunteer and give their time and talents-not just their treasure. In fact, I almost blurted all this out. I almost fell to my knees and begged her to help us with the food pantry or the pancake breakfast that was so chronically short-staffed, because we needed her help, and (if I was being honest) I wanted her at everything, I wanted to see her everywhere.

But maybe that wasn't the best way to feel. I steered us back to her earlier and safer topic of conversation. "So you were at your graduation..."

"Graduation. Right. And I realized, looking at my parents, that I was everything they had wanted. That they had groomed me for. I was the whole package, the manicured, sleekly highlighted, expensively dressed package."

She was all those things. She was indeed the perfect package on the surface...but below it, I sensed she was so much more. Messy and pa.s.sionate and raw and creative-a cyclone forced into an eggsh.e.l.l. Small wonder the sh.e.l.l had broken.

"I adorned the life that already had too many cars, too many rooms, too many luncheons and fundraiser galas. A life already filled with two other children who'd also graduated from Dartmouth and then proceeded to marry fellow rich people and have little rich babies. I was destined to work someplace with a gla.s.sed-in lobby and drive a Mercedes S-Cla.s.s, at least until I got married, and then I would gradually scale back my work and scale up my involvement with charity, until, of course, I had the little rich babies to round out the family portraits." She looked down at her hands. "This probably sounds ridiculous. Like a modern Edith Wharton novel or something."

"It doesn't sound ridiculous at all," I a.s.sured her. "I know exactly the kind of people you're talking about." And I really did-I wasn't just saying that. I'd grown up in a fairly nice neighborhood and-on a much smaller scale-the same att.i.tudes had been at work. The families with their nice houses and their two point five children who were on the honor roll and also played varsity lacrosse, the families that made sure everyone else knew exactly how successful and delightfully American their healthy Midwestern offspring were.

"I rejected that entire reality," she confessed. "The Wharton life. I didn't want to do it. I couldn't do it."

Of course, she couldn't. She was so far above that life. Could she see that about herself? Could she sense it, even if she couldn't see it? Because I barely knew her, and even I knew that she was the kind of woman who couldn't live without meaning, powerful and real meaning, in her life. And she wouldn't have found it on the other side of that Dartmouth stage.

"I was heartbroken over Sterling, yes," she continued, still examining her hands, "but I was also heartbroken over my life...and it hadn't even happened yet. I took the fake diploma they give you before they send you the real one, walked off that stage and then right off campus, not staying for the requisite hat-throwing or the pictures or the too-expensive dinner that my parents would insist on. And then I went to my apartment, left a definitive voicemail on my father's phone, stuffed my things into my car and left. There would be no more interns.h.i.+ps for me. No more $10,000-a-plate fundraisers. No more dates with men who weren't Sterling. I left that life behind-along with all of Daddy's credit cards. I refused to touch my trust fund. I would stand on my own two feet or not at all."