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CHAPTER SIX

“HE WANTS TO marry me,” Cecilia said.

It shocked her how hard it was to get the words out of her mouth. Possibly because saying them out loud gave them weight. It made them real. Particularly here, in the kitchen of the abbey where she had eaten so many meals in her time. And now cleaned it as if it was still her own.

Maybe some part of her thought it was.

Mother Superior sat at the long, communal table fashioned of weathered wood where the sisters gathered, her hands cupped around a steaming-hot mug of tea. Cecilia remembered when her hands had been tough, but smoother. Now they were gnarled with the arthritis she never complained about, and something about looking at those familiar, aged hands with those dangerous words floating in the air between them made Cecilia’s chest ache.

“Does this surprise you?” Mother Superior asked. Mildly enough.

But then that serene, decidedly calm tone of voice of hers was one of her superpowers. It made grown men quail before her. It made novitiates tremble. It had made Cecilia cry, more than once.

Today she scowled into the sink she was scrubbing down, and absolutely did not feel the slightest prickle of unwanted moisture behind her eyes.

“Yes. It astonishes me, in fact.” She shook her head as if she could shake away all the competing, complicated feelings that had been clattering around inside her since that moment outside on the field when he’d looked at her with that unsettling, raw expression on his face. Then had said what he’d said. “If I’m honest, I think it offends me.”

But that wasn’t the right word, either. It had felt like a sucker punch, directly into her gut. She’d been faintly amazed that she hadn’t doubled over.

A huge, wild ache had ripped opened wide inside her, a crevice so deep and so wide that she’d been terrified for a moment that she might actually topple off the side of the world and disappear inside it. Her heart had pounded so hard, even high in her throat, she’d been terrified she might get sick.

Instead, she’d turned on her heel and walked away from him on legs gone wobbly, not sure she wouldn’t simply crumple into the cold ground. But she had to get away from Pascal. At once. Because she thought that if she didn’t, she might pull down the mountains all around them with the force of her reaction.

He’d followed, of course.

And there had been too much noise in her head for her to process the things he’d said. The reasons he’d laid down before her like proof. Or some kind of cold, cut-and-dry temptation that was supposed to speak to her somehow when there was that ache.

“I’m not dignifying that with a response,” she’d said. When she could manage to speak at all.

“There can be only one response,” he’d replied. She whipped her head around to stare at him, perhaps imagining that she could shame him out there in the fields she knew too well. The wind had cut into her like knives, but his presence was a far deeper wound by far. How could he imagine otherwise? “I will wait for it, Cecilia.”

She was well aware that this time, his waiting was a threat. That had been two days ago.

“Why should you be offended?” Mother Superior asked in her maddeningly unbothered way that Cecilia knew full well was meant to set her teeth on edge. “What we know about Pascal is that he likes to solve his problems in the most direct way possible. We know what happened when he felt lonely here. Dante is the result.”

And it was a measure of how agitated Cecilia was about other things that she forgot to react with her usual mix of emotions at that oblique reference to that morning she had woken up to discover Mother Superior at the foot of a bed she shouldn’t have been sleeping in and her whole life changed.

“We know what happened when he left here, and launched himself at the world,” Mother Superior continued placidly. “And I’m not the least surprised that his return, wherein he learned that he had a son, should lead to this. It solves all of his problems, elegantly.”

“I don’t wish to be his problem,” Cecilia bit out, her eyes on the sink. “Or have anything to do with solving it for him.”

Mother Superior laughed that raspy, lusty laugh of hers that served to remind anyone who heard it that she was, in fact, a woman made of flesh and blood like anyone else. No matter how holy she seemed the rest of the time.

“Child, you have been a problem for that man since the moment he woke up after his accident and saw you there at his bedside,” she told Cecilia. “Left to his own devices, he would have taken you with him when he left the first time.”

It took a moment for the full meaning of those words to penetrate. When they did, Cecilia set down her sponge, carefully. Very, very carefully. Then she took her time turning and wiping her hands on the apron she wore wrapped around her waist. She was not surprised to find Mother Superior’s wise, kind gaze level on hers.

Waiting, she could see. But without a shred of trepidation or concern.

“What do you mean by that?” she asked, though her voice shook, and worse, she already thought she knew. Hadn’t Pascal himself hinted at this in the church? “What do you mean, left to his own devices?”

“You did not join us for Morning Prayer,” Mother Superior told her, her calm tone scraping down the length of Cecilia’s spine like fingernails. “When I went looking for you, I found you in his room. You were still asleep, but he was not.”

“Are you… You’re not saying…?”

“I merely asked him what his intentions were,” Mother Superior replied, that mild gaze not only steady on hers, but distressingly compassionate. “He was a man recovering from an accident who had clearly become well again. I suspected that meant he would not wish to stay with us, tucked away as we are from the rest of the world. Meanwhile, he’d taken it upon himself to despoil a novitiate. I merely wondered what his plans were.”

“His plans,” Cecilia repeated as if she couldn’t comprehend what the other woman was saying. When she did. Too well. “You asked him his plans.”

“I merely wondered if he intended to take you with him when he returned to his life, as I had no doubt at all he would do, because that is what men like him are put on this earth to do.”

“That was never something we discussed.”

But she didn’t know if she was saying that to protect him or herself, because while it was true, it was also true that there had been an understanding between them. Or she never would have participated in her despoiling, a word she might have found entertaining in other circumstances. When, for example, her despoiler was in distant cities the way he was supposed to be instead of holed up in the abbey clinic right this moment.

Cecilia wasn’t finding any of this entertaining at all.

And Mother Superior was watching her face as if she could read all of this right there on Cecilia’s cheeks. That she likely could only made it worse. “What I know about you, child, is that you are not a casual woman,” Mother Superior said. “You never have been. You do not give yourself to anything unless you plan to do so with your whole heart and soul for the remainder of your days. It is what would have made you such an excellent nun, if that had been your path. And it is what makes you such a marvelous mother.”

And how was she supposed to summon up any self-righteous indignation now? When she said something like that? This was why Mother Superior terrified everyone who came into contact with her—and they thanked her for it.

“I can’t… I mean I don’t believe…” Cecilia put her hands to her face then, to cover up all the reading material she was broadcasting around the abbey kitchen. And she couldn’t tell if she was trembling, or her hands were trembling, or if the earth beneath her feet was rocking and rolling. “Why did you never tell me this?”

“What would have been the point?” Mother Superior asked as if she was genuinely curious. “He left.”

“Yes, but…”

And that ache in her was too big. Too vast. She felt as if she was nothing but earthquakes and aftershocks, and beneath it all, there was only the ash and ruin of her first love. Heartbreak masquerading as anger when what she wanted to feel for Pascal and their past was nothing. Not regret, not fury—nothing at all.

How had she managed to convince herself that she could be indifferent to any part of this, much less Pascal himself?

“Do you want me to tell you that he wavered?” Mother Superior asked when the silence only stretched out between them. “Because he did. He argued, and he was torn. But in the end, he left. And yes, I chose to protect you from that. What difference would it make to you that it was difficult for him?”

“I don’t know. But it would have, surely.”

Because it made a difference now. It seemed to coil inside her, warming her. And the warmth made her feel steadier. It helped her breathe.

“Would it?” Mother Superior smiled faintly. “First you thought you would rededicate yourself to your faith. And then it turned out you were pregnant, and you had to wrestle with whether or not to keep the baby or give it over to adoption. Would his wavering have helped you learn how to be strong enough to grapple with these decisions?”

“I’m not sure it was your call to make.” Cecilia’s voice was harsher than she’d intended, and it made her stomach hurt. Because she had never spoken to Mother Superior before like that. Never.

She rather expected the ancient abbey to come tumbling down all around them at her impertinence, but it remained solid. The walls did not so much as shiver in response.

Worse, Mother Superior only smiled a little more deeply.

“I’m not sure it was, either,” she replied, which made all the emotion inside Cecilia feel heavier. Thicker. Because it was hard to focus on blame and fury when the other woman wasn’t defending herself. “That is my weight to carry. What you must decide is what you plan to do about it now.”

Cecilia turned back to the sink, blinking back the obnoxious sting of moisture in her eyes that she told herself was blame and fury in spades, no matter how heavy it felt. It was still a betrayal, and from the least likely source imaginable. It was far too much emotion, with nowhere to go. No outlet at all.

Only the seismic shifts inside her.

“I plan to do exactly what I’ve been doing,” she said, and she was proud that her voice didn’t shake. And that she wasn’t gritting out her words through her teeth. “My life may not be what I planned it to be when I was twenty, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. It’s full. I’m proud of it. I don’t need him.”

“And your son?”

“Dante certainly doesn’t need him.” And she found that she was gritting her teeth after all.

“Does he not?” Mother Superior made a clicking noise with her tongue. “It was my impression that children bloomed in the presence of both their parents, should they have that as an option.”

“I had neither parent,” Cecilia shot back at her. Or to the bottom of the sink anyway. “And I’m perfectly fine.”

“You had an entire abbey, child. You still do.”

“And so does Dante.”

“Cecilia,” Mother Superior said in that particularly gentle way of hers that was nothing but iron beneath. “There’s a difference between accepting a circumstance, even thriving in it, when you have no other choice. You have done so admirably. You always have. But Dante has choices you did not. Will you let your personal feelings about his father dictate those choices?”

Cecilia’s eyes were blurry now, and she didn’t turn back around because she didn’t want Mother Superior to see it. Though she suspected the old woman could see straight through her, either way.

“You say that as if I don’t know what’s best for Dante. As if I don’t want what’s best for him.”

“I know you love that child,” Mother Superior said soothingly. “And you have worked so hard to give him what you think you lacked. But Cecilia. I don’t think it’s ever occurred to you that when your mother left you here, she made certain you would be tended to by an entire order of surrogate mothers.”

“Of course that’s occurred to me. It’s why I wanted to join the order myself.”

It was also why she had stayed here even in the darkest hours of her disgrace instead of leaving the valley behind. How could she leave the only family she’d ever known? No matter how disappointed they were in her?

“But she also made certain you would never know the faintest bit of information about your own father,” Mother Superior continued. “I flatter myself that the sisters and I have done our best, but we can only be surrogate mothers, aunts and sisters. You may not recall that when you were about seven, all you wanted was a father. And you cried and cried for what could never be.”

She’d forgotten that. But she shook her head. “It was a phase. It faded.”

“Child. Why would you choose to do to Dante what was forced upon you? Would you not spare him that pain if you could?”

And that was the question that stuck with Cecilia as she finished up her duties in the abbey that day, then took the longer walk home so as to make sure she didn’t stray too close to the clinic. It was the question that echoed around inside her when she picked Dante up from her neighbor and gazed down at him with the usual mix of fondness and exasperation as he shouted the events of his day at her. Rapid and loud, the way he always did when he was overexcited—and he was usually overexcited.

She thought about the question all throughout their normal afternoon and evening. She considered it during bath time, when Dante leaped out of the tub and ran in circles around the cottage, laughing maniacally and waving his hands over his head until Cecilia could do nothing but laugh with him.

She read him a story, heard his prayers and tucked him into bed, and when she turned out the light and left him to sleep, she could still hear Mother Superior’s calm, measured voice inside her.

She’d forgotten—or she’d tried to forget—how much and how often she’d imagined herself with a real family when she’d been young. Cecilia had loved growing up in the abbey. All the sisters had treated her as their own, a very junior sister or everyone’s child, and she had never doubted that she was loved. And by many.

But she wasn’t like the other children in the village. All the intricacies of family dynamics were lost on her. And as Mother Superior had said today, she had found it especially trying when she was a little bit older than Dante and entirely too consumed with making sure that she was normal. It had been clear to her that she was not, and it had bothered her. How had she forgotten that?

She supposed she’d set so much of it aside when she decided to join the order herself that she’d somehow managed to wipe it all out in her memory.

Or perhaps you wanted to join the order because it tied up the story of your life in a nice, neat bow, a voice inside her suggested archly.

She scowled at herself as she cleaned up the kitchen. Then she went to sit out in the main room of the cottage. It was a pleasant, open space that felt airy and large when it was neither. She curled up in her favorite chair before the fire, where she liked to read or sew, and did neither tonight. Instead, she stared into the flames, able to see nothing at all but Mother Superior’s deft, dear hands wrapped around her tea. And that voice of hers, so gentle and so soft, that sat in her like a stone.

Why would you choose to do to Dante what was forced upon you?

Cecilia blew out a long, hard breath, and then made herself get up again. She crossed back to the kitchen drawer where she’d thrown the bit of paper she’d found thrust beneath her door one morning. It was a mobile number written in a bold, impatient hand and an initial. P.

And maybe it was telling that she hadn’t tossed it straight into the fire, but she hadn’t.

She stared down at the number and that P for a long time.

And when she couldn’t put it off any longer, she decided she couldn’t face a telephone call. She picked up her mobile and texted him instead. Simple and to the point.

This is Cecilia. We need to talk. Can you come to the cottage?

She told herself he would likely take his time replying, but his response came within seconds.

On my way.

And then Cecilia was treated to some more hard truths about herself, because she…dithered.

There was no other word for it. Before she’d texted him, she hadn’t given a thought to her appearance, here at the end of a long day cleaning ancient buildings and tending to an active five-year-old. Or her clothes. The moment he replied, she rushed into her bedroom and found herself changing from her usual loose shirt and comfortable lounging pants into a wholly uncharacteristic shift dress she usually wore only to church. And then smoothing her hair and coiling it into a tidy knot at the nape of her neck.

Then she charged back out into the main room and threw herself into a whirlwind tidying session that had her breathing a little too heavily by the time she’d made the place look less like a child’s gymnasium and more like an adult’s serene living room. Or as close to such a thing as she could get as she was not a billionaire with staff.

That thought kicked her temper back into gear, and she frowned at herself in the reflection of the windows, because why was she trying to impress Pascal? Surely she should have gone the other direction and left herself and the cottage as slovenly as possible, the better to drive him away.

But she didn’t change her clothes again.

Nor did she empty the basket of Dante’s favorite toys across the rug, the better to be crunched painfully underfoot.

And at some point she would have to face what it meant that she wanted so desperately for Pascal to see her, and this home she’d made for their child, at their best. Just as she would have to face the electric charge within her at the notion he was coming here, and her sneaking suspicion that it was not agitation that was so bright inside her.

She was terribly afraid it was pure, undiluted anticipation.

Another betrayal in a day chock full of them.

When his knock came on her front door—a hard, commanding rap—her stomach fluttered about as if it was beset by butterflies and she hated herself. Fully. But she crossed the floor to let him in anyway.