“So, you’re okay?” he asked, turning back to her. “You’re really okay? Everyone told me you were doing better than anyone expected, but I had to see for myself. Just once, I had to see.”
“Physically, the doctors and therapists say I’ve made remarkable progress. But okay? Without you?” Hallie was unable to quell the tremor in her voice. “Can’t you at least give me a hug? I’m dying here.” It was exactly what she didn’t want to say, but standing this close to him, there was no way to keep back the truth, or the tears that rolled down her cheeks.
But Gus remained where he was. Hallie followed his gaze out over the sea.
“I promised I wouldn’t see you again, Hallie,” he said. “And I intend to keep my word. But before I do, there’s something I need to tell you.”
“Who would ask you to make a promise like that?” But even as Hallie spoke the question out loud, she already knew the answer. Nick. Aside from Gus, the person she loved most in the world. She wondered what her father had given Gus in return. Had he paid for the high-priced attorney that Neil told her about? Maybe even shown up in court in his ancient suit, the frayed red tie he pulled out for funerals and weddings? Had he testified on Gus’s behalf—not merely as a “pillar of the community” but as the father of the victim?
“He had no right,” Hallie said. “This is my life we’re talking about here. Our lives.” A new rage sluiced through Hallie’s blood. At Nick, who had betrayed her in the name of protecting her. At an anonymous court system that knew neither her nor Gus, but thought it had a right to decide her fate. At everyone who had withheld the truth from her. But especially at Gus. She would have served fifty years in prison before she agreed to give him up. Had he been willing to sacrifice their future—to sacrifice her—for a favorable outcome in court?
As if reading her mind, Gus said, “I didn’t do it for them, Hallie. The only promise that ever mattered to me was the one I made to you.”
“What are you talking about?”
Gus took a long, deep breath. “Don’t you remember that day in the cemetery?”
“Do I remember? Everything began that day for me,” Hallie whispered, once again fighting tears.
“No, it didn’t,” Gus said. “You had an incredible life before me, and you’ll have it after I’m gone. It’s in your eyes right now; I can see it. You are so strong, Hallie—more strong—”
She interrupted before he could finish. “We said we’d always tell each other the truth. Even when we couldn’t tell anyone else. That’s the promise I remember from the cemetery.”
“There was another one, though. Maybe you didn’t hear it; maybe you took it for granted. But I didn’t. I couldn’t. I was sitting on my mother’s grave when I promised I’d never hurt you.”
“It was an accident, Gus. You didn’t—”
But something steely and distant in Gus stopped her. “I asked you to come out here because there’s something I have to say,” he said, meeting her eyes with a disconcerting directness. “I didn’t want you to hear it from anyone else.”
An image of Reggie Aluto came into her mind. All the girls and women who were drawn to Gus. Was it possible Nick was right—that there was someone else?
“I’m going away,” Gus said, intruding on her thoughts with the words that had haunted her since Neil first spoke them. “I’m—”
“No, we—we’re going away. To Montana. Remember, Gus? We’re going to live someplace so open that nothing can limit us. We’re going to a town where no one remembers what happened to your mother, or looks at me and sees Nick’s daughter. I know my accident slowed us down, but we can still—”
She hated the way her words rushed out in a panicky torrent and the note of pleading she heard in them.
“That was a great dream, Hallie. And if I was someone else—”
“I never wanted you to be anyone else; you know that.”
She was sure that he was about to hug her like he always did when she cried. Draw her close and say that of course, he knew that. And of course they’d go to Montana, just like they’d planned.
But instead he looked at her, his eyes full of the blinding compassion that had drawn people to him since he was a small boy. “I’m entering the seminary as a postulant in three days, Hallie. I know it must sound crazy to you. How could it not? But it’s the right decision for me.”
He reached out to take her hand, but Hallie jerked away. “The seminary?” The words made no sense. Though she knew he found solace in the quiet of an empty church, he never even attended mass.
“Is this a joke? You—a priest? No one does that anymore, Gus,” she blurted out. “I didn’t even know you really believed all that stuff.”
“Well, I do. I believe it, Hallie. Don’t you remember when you found me that day in St. Pete’s? You must have known—”
“You were drunk—drunk and grief-stricken and smoking cigarettes on Old Man D’Souza’s hallowed ground. Now you’re trying to tell me that you were having a religious experience?”
“You’re right, I was drunk. Drunk and screwed-up—just like Neil said I was. Probably more so. But I went to the church for a reason. It’s where I’ve always gone when—”
Hallie took a dazed step backwards, stumbling in the sand. “Don’t try to make this about God, okay? Because it’s not. This is some crazy guilt trip you put on yourself because of what happened to me.”
“Not what happened to you—what I did to you. Do you think I can just forget that?”
“It was a drunken accident, Gus,” Hallie pleaded. “And it’s never, ever going to happen again.”
“You might believe that, Hallie—and you know why? Because you don’t have it in you to hurt anyone. But me? Well, obviously I do. I beat Neil badly, and I almost killed you.”
“It’s not true. And even if it was, do you really think that becoming a priest is the answer? If the Church wasn’t so desperate, they wouldn’t even consider you.”
“Maybe they are desperate, but so was I. So am I—and you know what? It’s okay. In fact, some people would say desperation is the first step toward redemption.”
“What people—Father D’Souza?” Hallie snapped. “Don’t you think a religious vocation should be about more than running away?”
Gus sat down in the sand and folded his arms loosely around his knees. “I suppose I was running away at first, and the church was the perfect hiding place. None of my friends would think to look for me there, and since half the police force belongs to the parish, they wouldn’t say much.”
“So that’s where you’ve been all summer?” Hallie asked, sitting beside him.
“The first couple of nights, I slept on the pews; then I’d hide in the confessional when a few parishioners straggled in for the morning mass. I guess I thought I was getting away with something till Father D’Souza pulled open the curtain one morning. ‘If you’re going to stay here,’ he said, ‘you better come over to the rectory for breakfast. I can’t have anyone starving in my church. What have you been eating?’ I pulled out an empty bag of Doritos I’d taken from Fatima’s house before I left. Believe me, my first impulse was to take off right then and there, but I was so hungry I would’ve sold my soul for breakfast.”
“It sounds like you did.”
Gus laughed wryly, but Hallie refused to return his smile. “Father D’Souza is an old crank who’s mad at the world, and you know it. Probably because no one cares about his church anymore.”
“I admit the guy’s a little old-fashioned. And, yeah, he might push the fire-and-brimstone bit too far. But he took me in when the whole town was ready to lock me up in my father’s cell. He took me in and didn’t judge me.”
I didn’t judge you, either. I never judged you, Hallie thought, recalling the summer she’d spent defending him. She had never stopped believing in him.
“I couldn’t stay at my aunt’s house anymore,” Gus continued. “Between Fatima crying and Manny screaming about what a typical piece of Silva shit I was,
I couldn’t take it. Besides, Sean and Daisy, and everyone else from town, they were all showing up constantly. I didn’t want to see anyone. I couldn’t.”
It was the first thing he’d said that Hallie truly understood. “I didn’t want to see anyone either,” she said, then lowered her voice to the intimate whisper that had always pulled him to her in the past. “Just you.”
Gus gazed in the direction of the Race Point Light as if he hadn’t heard her. “That day over breakfast, Father D’Souza gave me the lecture of my life. Then he offered me a spare room in the rectory. Nothing but a bed and a dresser and a little cross on the wall.”
“The old coot probably realized you were vulnerable.”
“It wasn’t like that; he left me on my own. The cook even served me supper in my room.”
“What did you do all day?” Hallie thought of the weeks she’d spent in a hospital bed, but even there, she’d had her father’s daily presence, the staff who had become friends during her stay, and the rhythms of the ICU and then the floor where she was transferred to anchor her.
“At first, I thought I was going to lose my mind. Then I remembered that Sean’s father found a stash of booze when he went to fix the sink at the rectory—gifts from parishioners who didn’t know Father D’Souza was a teetotaler. Mostly it was sweet vinho, the kind my grandmother used to drink, but I didn’t care. As soon as he went out to say the seven-o’clock mass the next morning, I snuck down and got a bottle. I know it didn’t make any sense. I mean, alcohol had ruined my life twice, but I didn’t know where else to turn. I stayed drunk for two weeks straight.”
“I was waiting for you,” Hallie whispered. “Even when I could hardly speak, I called for you.”
“You asked for me? They never told me when I checked with the hospital—”
“Just like no one ever told me you called.”
“I didn’t leave my name. I was considered a threat to you.”
Hallie closed her eyes. If they could have spoken—even once—when she was in the hospital, would they be sitting here now? Would she be listening to his desperate plan? In her mind, she cursed everyone who had kept him away: the nurses who had pretended to be her friends, the police, her father. “So you crashed at the rectory and stayed drunk for two weeks? Then what? You realized you had to stop?”
“More like I ran out. One day, I went to look for a bottle under the kitchen sink and there was nothing left. When I looked up, a strange little man was standing over me in a T-shirt and his polka-dotted boxers. I’d never seen Father D’Souza without his collar before.”
“Has anyone? I thought he was born in it.”
“So there he was—no longer the powerful priest, bellowing from the lectern, but a feeble old man. ‘It’s gone,’ the old man said. ‘And it doesn’t look like it worked very well, does it? Maybe it’s time to try something stronger.’”
“Let me guess. He was talking about prayer.” Hallie struggled to keep the skepticism out of her voice. Though she hadn’t been brought up in a church, she found the words to many of the prayers she read beautiful, especially the St. Francis Peace Prayer. And occasionally, when she was in trouble, she secretly found herself importuning some unseen force for help. But now all she could feel was resentment at a Church that had tricked him into a vocation.
“Probably. But at that moment, I couldn’t even think,” Gus said, impervious to her anger. “I had become someone I promised myself I would never be. I was my father—a violent, jealous drunk who would do anything to get what he wanted. That night I called my cousin, Sunny, in New Bedford.”
“Sunny? You mean the—”
“That’s the one. The crack addict. Or maybe it’s heroin now. Whatever she can get her hands on. She hadn’t heard from me in years, but an addict is always happy to bring someone into the fold. I told her I was coming down. Could she hook me up? I was hoping I’d OD before the cops ever caught up with me.”
“But you never went,” Hallie said, almost disappointed. It seemed that anything—even drug addiction—would have been easier to fight than what now possessed Gus.
“I made it onto Route 6, and the first car stopped for me. It was sputtering along at about thirty miles an hour.”
“D’Souza.” Hallie recalled the jokes she’d heard about the priest’s driving. “The old buzzard followed you.”
“Honestly, I wasn’t gonna get in the car, but you know him—he plays hardball. He threatened to send me back to my aunt’s house. And I couldn’t do that—no matter what. My room was so full of you, I could taste you as soon as I went in there. When I woke up in the middle of the night, I felt your hair spilling across my chest. If I even walked through the door, I knew I’d break.”
It was the first time he’d acknowledged their afternoons in the house on Loop Street, or that he loved her. But as he spoke, he looked out on the ocean, as if he were seeing something far away, not something real and vital the way it felt to Hallie.
“We’ll be together like that again, Gus. Not in Junior’s room, but in our own place. In Montana.” This time, though, her voice no longer sounded convincing—even to herself.
When he looked at her, she saw the anguish on his face. But also an unmistakable resolve.
She steered the conversation back to the highway, where his story had the potential to turn out differently. She imagined Gus standing before the priest’s hearselike black Buick, making one of the most critical decisions of his life while the old crank stared him down. “So you went back,” she said.
“I went back and hid in the spare bedroom at the rectory, but there was no escaping myself. I felt the insane rage I experienced when I saw you and Neil together. I didn’t just remember it, Hallie. I felt it—heart hammering, fists ready to pound someone, the whole thing. You want to know the worst of it?”
Hallie wanted to say no; she didn’t want to know, but she couldn’t summon the word.
“The worst was how good it felt when I was hitting Neil. Like being on the field under the lights, the whole town cheering for me. A minute on the clock, I had the ball, and no one, no matter how fast they ran, was ever gonna stop me. Except this time someone did.”
“Me,” she whispered.
“One thing you need to know: no matter how crazy I was that night, I never meant to hurt you. I was going for Neil—and out of nowhere, you were there. I don’t care if the judge believed that or this whole stupid town believed it, but it’s important to me that you do.”
“Do you think I ever questioned that?” Hallie asked.
“The next thing I knew you were on the ground. You weren’t moving, and there was blood in your hair. I didn’t live it once, Hallie; I lived it a thousand times a day. I’ll probably never stop living it.”
“I’ve got something I wanted to say to you since that night, too. One thing you need to know: I never kissed Neil and I never wanted to. There was never anything—”
“You think I don’t know that?” Gus reached out to touch her face, but then retracted his hand. “The problem wasn’t you; it wasn’t even Neil. It was me. The way I reacted when I saw your dress—it was like a bomb went off inside me. Something that had been dormant for a long time. If it hadn’t exploded that night, it would have happened another time.”
“It was five in the morning, and you’d been drinking all night. It isn’t who you are, Gus. And even if it was, do you think your God can change that?”
“He already has,” Gus said quietly. “Once the booze was gone; once I stopped cursing myself and my blood, there was nothing left but me and that quiet room. By the time I was ready to go downstairs and sit at the table with Father D, I wasn’t the same person.”
When he finished speaking, a calm had replaced the grief in his eyes. Finally, Hallie understood that all her protests were useless. Her father was right: Gus belonged to someone else now; and even if his new love seemed like an illusion to Hallie, it was utterly real to him.
She felt a surge of fury to think that a fe
w weeks in the rectory could have stolen both their future and their past. How could he just forget that he loved her?
“So you brought me out here to tell me you were going away before I heard the gossip in Nick’s waiting room? That’s really thoughtful of you, Gus. I appreciate it.”
“It’s not like that—”
“I didn’t understand what my father was hinting at, but he knew,” Hallie said. “I guess everyone who visited me knew. Felicia and Daisy—people I ran into at Ina’s. Everyone. Hell, even Wolf probably knew.”
“Felicia and Daisy knew I wanted to tell you myself, that I had to see you before I let you go.” This time when Gus looked at her, it was as if he really did see her.
But Hallie was thinking about the weeks she had spent in the hospital, and cosseted in her room, fighting to get well enough to be with him, weeks Gus had used to leave her behind, and find a new vocation.
“So now I’m supposed to say goodbye like an old friend and pretend I understand, right?” she said. “Pretend you’re doing it for me? Is that what I’m supposed to do? Well, you want to know the truth? What you’re doing right now is far worse than anything I went through in the hospital, and a thousand times more painful than what happened on the Point. So fuck you, Gus Silva. Fuck you.”
Tears blinding her, Hallie turned and started up the beach. Gus called her name just once. The sound of the gulls cut through her like a late-October wind. She kicked off her sandals and walked faster. At first she felt dizzy and weak, but then she forgot what her body was or wasn’t ready to do and just ran. She felt the sand kicking up behind her, and Gus’s eyes as he watched her disappear. And she also felt the truth growing stronger with every step: Gus wouldn’t come after her. Not this time. Not ever again.
Chapter 15
That fall, when most of her friends left for college, Hallie stayed home and walked. Every morning she walked from the East End, where she lived, to Loop Street in the West End. She stood across the street from Manny and Fatima’s forlorn cottage with its dangling shutter and the fallen Madonna out front, wondering what drove her there. Did she expect to see Gus, bounding out the front door the way he once did every morning, hungry to see her? Or maybe the shadow of the girl who had waited for him on the porch? The foolish girl who had laughed as easily as she breathed.
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