CHAPTER ELEVEN
S
ARAH
MET
M
ARY
Catherine Cook at St. Mark’s School on Tuesday morning. Mary Catherine was putting together a children’s choir for the church, hoping the children’s participation would help bring back some of the parishioners who had slowly been abandoning St. Mark’s.
“You play the piano so beautifully, Sarah, and I need the help,” Mary Catherine said, clamping her plump hands together. Mary Catherine taught third grade at St. Mark’s and had four children of her own. She was barely five feet tall and as round as she was tall. What Sarah liked about Mary Catherine was that she always smiled at everyone and not a single negative remark ever came out of her mouth.
Until today.
“This is very ambitious of you, Mary Catherine,” Sarah said, “trying to get the kids together in the middle of the summer.”
“We have to do something or St. Mark’s is doomed!”
“What are you talking about?”
“I know you’ve had a lot going on in your own life, but surely you’ve noticed how few people attend Sunday services anymore. Half the enrollments for the school are not from the church. The building itself needs so many repairs,” she said as Father Michael walked in the school doors.
“Father Michael. How nice to see you. We were just discussing...”
He put up his hand. “You don’t have to say it, Sarah. Our church is dying.”
“Well, I wouldn’t quite put it that way.”
“Really? Then let me take you on a tour,” he said, slipping his arm through hers and leading her to the school’s main staircase. “See these stairs? They’re not just rickety. They’re unsafe. I had Harry Abrams give me an estimate. Ten thousand to fix them. And it has to be done before September, when the children come back to school.”
Father Michael coughed and then coughed again, raising his arm and covering his mouth with his sleeve.
“Have you seen a doctor?” Sarah asked and looked at Mary Catherine, who shook her head.
“I had pneumonia twice this winter. This bronchial thing kicked me from here to Sunday.” He raised his head and looked at the two women. “I am fully aware, Mary Catherine, that the reason we are losing parishioners is because of my chronic ill health. But I can’t help it.”
“You could eat better and get more rest,” she scolded.
“Has Colleen Kelly been snitching on me again?”
Mary Catherine nodded. “That’s why I made the vegetable casserole for you yesterday.”
“Hmph,” he snorted. “Even my wife couldn’t get me to eat vegetables. Nasty things. Come, Sarah, let’s go look at the church.”
They walked outside and down the cement sidewalk where newly planted petunias were bobbing their colorful blossoms in a gentle breeze. Father Michael pointed to the roof. “It needs new shingles.”
Sarah squinted and looked closely at the gutters. “The flashing along the gables needs replacing, as well. Definitely some tuck-pointing on the brick. Looks like some cracks in the foundation over there.” Sarah pointed to the corners near the back church doors.
“We need a new boiler and furnace, lights and flooring,” Father Michael said.
Sarah didn’t need a calculator to know that the repairs were going to cost close to a million dollars. “This is going to be expensive.”
“But we can’t afford any repairs, Sarah,” Father Michael moaned.
“We can’t afford to let St. Mark’s crumble into a pile of dust, either,” Sarah retorted, feeling a wave of pride wash over her. “My grandparents helped to build this church. My mother was devoted to this church. I can’t just let it...go away. And what of the school? If the church shuts down, what happens then?”
“The school board is already talking about closing it next year,” Father Michael said.
Mary Catherine turned to Sarah. “Now do you understand why I think the children’s choir would help rejuvenate things?”
“I do,” Sarah agreed. “But it’s going to need more than just a few songs on Sunday to tackle this problem.”
“Like what?” Mary Catherine asked.
“I don’t know. But I’ll think of something,” Sarah assured them tentatively. Had she just made a commitment? She looked up at the soaring spire and saw another dozen shingles that needed replacing. Her church was broke. They needed her help, but she hadn’t the first clue how one went about raising a million dollars.
* * *
R
AIN
PELTED
THE
hundred-year-old glass windows in the library, creating a cacophony of pinging and tinkling. Inside the well-lit meeting room, Sarah sat in the same chair as last week, opposite Luke and Margot. Two chairs to Margot’s right was Alice Crane, who was talking about her fiancé’s car accident. “He was coming home from work on a night like this,” she said, motioning to the huge window. “The rain was coming down in torrents, and it was very windy. The bridge just south of town had washed out, but he didn’t see it. The cops told me there was a mudslide, which made the highway even slicker. His car spun and then flipped over twice. He was killed instantly.” Alice started to cry and grabbed the box of tissues on the chair next to her. She blew her nose. “Sorry.”
“Don’t be,” Margot said.
Sarah got up from her chair and put her arm around Alice. She didn’t say a word, knowing words would have been too much.
Alice bit her lower lip. “It was so fast, you know? He was never sick. He was just dead. Gone. In a single night. We were supposed to pick out our wedding cake the next day. Burt was looking forward to that. He loved cake. It was the only kind of dessert he liked,” she rambled.
Margot’s voice was compassionate as she spoke. “And so, Alice, I’m guessing that you feel robbed of that chance that both Sarah and Luke were given to say goodbye. Is that right?”
Alice’s face shattered, and tears ran in rivulets down her cheeks. “I was cheated. There are so many things I would have said to him.”
Margot took Alice’s hand, which had been wadding the tissue into a tight ball. “What’s stopping you?”
“What?” Luke barked. “Her fiancé is dead!”
Sarah’s head shot up. “You don’t talk to your wife?”
He shook his head. “No.”
“I don’t believe you,” Sarah said flatly, staring at him. “In the two years since she’s been dead, you haven’t told her that you miss her? That you wish she were here?”
“Well, yeah, but...”
“It’s the same thing, Luke,” Margot interjected. “Alice, for next week, I want you to write a letter to Burt telling him everything you would have said to him if you’d had the chance. Say everything. The good and the bad. Then bring it next week to share with us. Can you do that?”
“I think so,” Alice replied with a forced, uncertain smile.
Margot turned to Luke. “I was afraid we scared you away last week, Luke. I’m glad you’re back.”
“So are we,” Sarah piped in with a smile. Alice nodded.
“I hadn’t thought I would come back, but I guess you figured that out already. I realized that the reason I came here in the first place was because of my kids. They’re my Achilles heel, I guess you could say. I would do anything for them, but right now, I seem to be alienating them more than being a father to them.”
“Why’s that?” Margot asked.
“I get angry at the least little thing they do, or I don’t notice when they’ve done something special. This is not fair to my oldest, Annie, especially. She’s been the little homemaker for both my son and me since Jenny died. She does half the household chores without my even asking. I don’t know why she does that.”
“She’s assumed her mother’s role,” Margot said. “Because she loves you and sees your unhappiness, she’s taken on the responsibility of your happiness.”
Luke’s face grew stern and pensive. “This is not a good thing at all. She’s just a kid. She should be doing little girl things. Not pretending she’s the adult, which she does well.”
Margot cast him an understanding smile. “Precisely. All the things you can do to promote her being a child will be invaluable. Can you hire a housekeeper to do the chores?”
Luke looked down at his boots and then lifted his head. “No, I can’t.”
“I understand,” Margot said.
Sarah hadn’t taken her eyes off Luke since the conversation began. She could tell he was embarrassed to admit his shortcomings, yet he courageously plunged into his explanations. He wasn’t holding anything back. He was earnest in his desire to put his grief behind him. If that were so, then the day would come when he would step out of the shadows of his pain.
Sarah’s heart opened to him, and she had to fight the urge to get up and give him a comforting hug. She truly wanted to help him, as any real friend would.
Sarah was so engrossed in what Luke and Margot were saying, she felt as if she were an integral part of their conversation.
“Is it just the grief? Or are you unhappy, Luke?” Sarah blurted her thought aloud.
Luke shot her a piercing look. “Sarah, didn’t you say earlier that the grief was heavy on you, like you were being crushed or you couldn’t breathe?”
“Yes,” Sarah answered.
“It’s like that for me, too. But you’re right, Sarah. There’s something else. It burns like the dickens right in my gut, and I know it’s anger. I know this. But I can’t make it go away.”
Sarah gave him mental kudos for blunt honesty. Few people ever admitted their faults like Luke did. Counseling was important to her because she wanted to be whole again. At first, Luke had fought the help Margot offered. But now, Sarah felt she and Luke had come together across a huge expanse. Their experiences were similar. Through their pain, they understood each other on deeply emotional levels. They were strangers no more.
Margot interrupted. “Luke, think about it. Alice wishes for closure. She feels guilty that she didn’t say what she wanted to say when she had the chance. It doesn’t matter if we know someone is going to die or not, when they are gone, we all feel guilty to some degree. What did you
not
do?”
Luke’s eyes went from Margot to Sarah to Alice, then he looked off to the rain-splattered window. “If I’d had money back then, I could have taken Jenny to the Mayo Clinic or MD Anderson in Houston. I read up on herb treatments and diets, even drugs that might have saved her. I had no power to help her. I had to just stand by and watch her diminish to nothing right before my eyes. That’s why I call myself a born-again atheist. Jenny was my gold ring. She was everything any man could want. I was lucky to have even known her, much less be her husband. Nobody gets a shot at the gold ring twice in life. See, my bottom line is that I just want to get through the rest of my life and not hurt my kids in the process,” he said, misery permeating every word.
Sarah was stunned at Luke’s pronouncement. She’d never heard a heart in as much pain as Luke’s, and without realizing it, she was crying for him. Sarah half listened as Margot asked Alice if she had any words for Luke. Alice offered a benign platitude she must have heard a hundred times from the people who’d handed it to her.
“God always takes the angels first,” Alice said.
Maybe that saying had meant something to Alice, but Sarah could tell by the forced and very wan smile on Luke’s face that he was only being polite when he thanked her.
Sarah realized that Luke had built an emotional blockade around himself, cutting himself off from the pain others might inflict while keeping his torture private and personal. He was the kind of person a thousand counseling sessions would not help. Her heart went out to his children, who had to be feeling trapped and perhaps even scared. Sarah was afraid the only thing that would save Luke was Jenny’s resurrection.
Margot turned to Sarah and asked, “Do you have anything you wish to share with Luke, Sarah?”
“I’m so sorry, Luke,” was all she could answer.
“Thank you for that, Sarah. I appreciate it,” he said with the only warm smile he’d given anyone that evening.
Margot concluded the session and asked everyone to help her clean up the refreshment table as they always did.
While Luke folded the chairs and put them in the storage closet, Sarah wrapped up the leftover cookies she had baked for the evening. “Luke,” she said as he opened a garbage bag for the paper coffee cups and napkins. “Would you like to take these cookies home to your kids?”
“I shouldn’t.”
“It’s fine. Really. If I take them home, I’ll just wind up giving them to my dog.”
Luke looked at her askance and laughed. “You give him your peanut butter cookies?”
“Yes,” she replied quite seriously. “I bake them for him every Saturday. He loves them.”
“But he’s a dog.”
“Beau is no ordinary dog. Besides, I only let him have one a day.”
Luke laughed again. “God, you sound like Jenny. She was such a stickler about sugar for the kids, and I love baked goods. Always have. My mother baked cookies for me and sent them to Iraq all the time.”
Sarah’s jaw dropped. “You’re kidding.”
“No. Is that too much information?”
She chuckled. “Not at all. I just didn’t know...about Iraq. Army?”
“Navy SEAL.”
Sarah was doubly confused by Luke. He’d just told her he’d seen combat, and probably the kind of atrocities she didn’t think the nightly news could broadcast. He was a man of more contradictions than she could count. How was it possible for a man who’d been through so much—war, fighting, killing and who knew what else—to be so debilitated by a single person’s death?
And then it hit her.
That’s how much he had loved. His capacity for loving had been so deep, so boundless, so all-encompassing that the loss of it was nearly his undoing. Luke Bosworth was no ordinary man. He was the kind of man she wanted to get to know. A man like Luke didn’t come around more than once in a person’s lifetime. She knew that he felt honored to have even known Jenny.
Sarah felt privileged to know Luke.
Luke cleared his throat. Suddenly self-conscious, Sarah turned away and picked up her red rain slicker from the back of her chair.
“Thanks for the cookies, Sarah,” Luke said.
“Oh, you’re welcome,” she replied. Sarah fumbled with the zipper as she said good-night to Luke and Alice.