by Luanne Rice
“And go where?” she asked, her heart plummeting to think of her brother leaving again.
“I don’t know. He thinks he’s brought too much pain back here to Honor and the girls. Wouldn’t put it past him to have done this,” Tom said, staring at the chiseled stone.
“He didn’t,” Bernie said.
Tom shrugged. “He says he was too far away to have done the first one. I’m trying to figure out whether it’s the same person who did both.”
“What do you think?”
“Well, like you said, the source is the same. So it has to be someone who reads, or knows, the Song of Songs. The writing is just scratched in, done in block letters, so it’s not easy to distinguish many differences. But here’s something.” Tom pointed at the more recent writing, glancing at Bernie, getting her to lean closer. “I won’t bite,” he said.
Bernie closed her eyes for a moment. She could never fear Tom. Ever since giving Honor her letter back, she’d opened a door she couldn’t close again. Last night, trying to sleep, she had finally dropped off after midnight. Her dreams had been of this grotto, piles of coins and books and mass cards and desperate notes left behind by hopeful, prayerful people; the statue of Mary; and Bernie trying with all her might to push a huge rock into the grotto’s doorway, to seal the secrets in and keep everyone else out.
“Just show me what you mean,” she said now.
“Okay,” he said. “Here—see how the person really bore down for the first few words, ‘set me as a seal on your heart,’ and less so as it goes on? Almost as if the person had thought there was plenty of time at the beginning, but rushed through at the end. Or lost heart.”
“The last two words, ‘is love,’ just trail off,” Bernie said.
“Almost as if the person realized he or she was about to be interrupted. Did anyone come out here in the middle of the night?”
“I did,” Bernie said, raising her eyes to his. “I couldn’t sleep, and I took a walk.”
“Patrolling the grounds, Sister?” he asked, towering over her, not touching her, but standing so close.
“Why would I do that?”
“I don’t know. Looking out for those wayward nieces of yours? Or just keeping an eye out for romantic idiots carving up the grotto?”
“Just taking a walk, Tom,” she said. “That’s all it was.”
“What’s a love poem doing in the Bible, anyway?” he asked, as if she hadn’t spoken at all.
“It’s a parable,” she said. “About the writer being led by God into perfect love. Scholars commonly agree that it’s meant to symbolize an exalted spiritual union—not romantic love. So there goes your theory.”
“It took some sweat,” Tom said, looking at the wall. “To scratch all these words. They’re not scored deeply into the stone, but it still took effort. Whoever has been doing this is really in the grips of something. And it seems to be getting darker.”
“It does,” Bernie said, thinking of John and his labyrinth, Honor in church, Regis striking out, Agnes and the wall, and other unsolvable mysteries. So much love, and so much trouble…
“So you’re saying this is about something sacred. Not something personal.”
Bernie nodded. She didn’t want to lie in here, not to Tom. But it wasn’t a lie, not really. She believed that the personal was as sacred as anything in church. And she knew it went against Catholic doctrine, but to her, the Song of Songs had always been about human love.
About what was sacred between two people who loved each other.
She stood there, feeling his gaze on her. His hair was in his eyes; Bernie wanted to brush it back, but she didn’t. She said, though, “I can’t see your eyes.”
“Why would you want to see them?”
“So I can see what you’re thinking.”
“I’m thinking,” he said, “about the depths of union possible between two people on this earth.”
“Tom…”
“And I’m thinking we should call the police. I’m not sure whether this is a threat or a cry for help, but I don’t like it.”
“Don’t call them,” she said. “We’ll handle it internally.”
He gave her a long, cold look that she could see even through the hair across his eyes. “And if in the meantime something happens? Someone gets hurt, or does something dangerous? Someone broken by love?”
“Who would that be?” she asked.
“Pick a number,” he said.
“Tom, you sound so bitter.”
“I know I’m just the groundskeeper, but I consider this place my responsibility. I know what I have to do here, Sister, and I’m going to do it.”
She didn’t reply.
Tom left the grotto, and she didn’t turn around. She could almost see him shaking his head—even after all this time she felt his frustration with her, with what he had once wanted for them. Didn’t he have any idea that she had wanted that, too?
Only Honor knew most of the story—but not even she knew all of it. Bernie hurried out of the grotto and knew she had to go find Honor. She had to talk to her friend.
She cleared the rise and started running, robe and veil flowing out behind her. By the time she made it back to the chapel—thinking all the way about what Tom had said about people broken by love—Honor was gone. The two young nuns were still there, praying at the altar, but the rest of the chapel was empty.
Honor didn’t know where to start. She had a whole list of things she wanted to say to God, but after half an hour of sitting in the chapel, her mind was blank and her heart felt as if it would burst. She had been such a happy child, and an easygoing young woman. She had married the man she loved, and had three children with him. Blessed with artistic talent, they had inspired and challenged each other, and somehow managed to keep the passion in everyday life.
And then the fall. Literally—their long, slow slide from grace, followed by a sudden plummet. Seeing him charged and inspired by life and the world, taking risks with his art and life—while she felt left behind. Her recent painting had unlocked all the joy and pain she’d felt in their marriage: loving John, wondering about him, fearing for his safety, even his life—welcoming him home, time after time, and then, finally, wondering whether she’d ever see him again.
These last days had been wonderful—she’d rediscovered her own artistic fire, and her paintings of Ballincastle were the best she’d done in years. She knew that John’s labyrinth, and of course John himself, had much to do with it. His work was suddenly so grounded—literally nestled into the sand of their own beach. While hers was suddenly soaring—back to Ireland, into her own dark hiding places.
Last night, lying alone in bed, listening to seagulls crying from their rookery across the bay, she’d felt the truth click into place. She blamed John for Regis’s daring, for the trauma of Ireland, for Regis’s engagement, for Agnes. Everything…And then it dawned on her: she blamed him for leaving her alone. Leaving her behind.
Walking through the vineyard on the way to the beach, she stopped to pick some wildflowers growing along the wall. She continued on her way, spotting Agnes and Brendan sitting in the grass under a big oak tree, with paints and paper. She would have stopped to talk to them, but she had something she had to do first.
When she got to the top of the beach, she saw John. He crouched at the center of the labyrinth, arranging small stones. Sisela lay along the top of a driftwood log; the once feral kitten gazed at him with abject love. Honor stood still, letting the breeze blow the hair back from her face. Then she took a deep breath and walked across the sand to her husband.
John looked up, surprised. From a distance, he had appeared peaceful, meditative; but up close she could see that the expression in his eyes was beyond hurting. She held out the wildflowers.
“For you,” she said.
“Why?”
“You brought me flowers the other day, and it made me so happy. I wanted…to do the same for you.”
“Thank you,” he said, rising a
nd taking them, not smiling.
“I’m sorry about last night,” she said.
“So am I,” he said.
“But you have nothing to apologize for. It wasn’t your fault…none of it was. The girls love you so much, John,” she continued. “They all try to be like you, in different ways. Agnes and her photography, Cece starting to sculpt with clay…and Regis…”
“I know,” John said.
“Ralph Drake was so out of line. But Regis, screaming, ‘Don’t hurt my father.’ For all her wildness, I’ve never, ever seen her like that. Why did she overreact that way?”
John crouched again, dropped the flowers by his side, and slowly began moving stones around, arranging them in the sand. She saw his hand shaking.
“John? Do you know?”
“She didn’t like seeing me humiliated,” he said. “Let it go, Honor.”
Honor stared down at him. This close up, the labyrinth looked like nothing more than rows and rows of stones, radiating out from a hole in the middle.
“It’s hot out,” she said. “You shouldn’t be working in the sun.”
She crouched next to him and very tentatively, she reached for his hand. Last night they had held hands in the dark; he had carried her through the woods. All the bad years had melted away, and she had let herself start to feel love again. She wanted that back so badly. John’s hand was shaking, and he pulled away.
“Honor,” he said.
“I’m sorry about last night,” she said again.
“Don’t apologize,” he said harshly.
“I was upset,” she said, shocked by his tone of voice. “I just wanted to get her away from all those people, take her home. I shouldn’t have blamed you—shouldn’t have left you there. I was so overwhelmed, I didn’t even think about you getting home.”
“They were rude,” he said roughly. “I could take it, no problem, but thinking of you and the girls, of Regis having to put up with it. That’s what killed me, Honor.”
“John,” she said, “you’re the one it was most terrible for.”
He shook his head.
His body was tan, from working in the sun. She looked down, saw a badly healed scar beneath his left arm, over his rib cage. She traced its edge with her finger, and he flinched.
“That happened in jail, didn’t it?”
He grabbed both her hands, and looked her straight in the eyes.
“Jail is over,” he said. “I’m free now. Understand that? You didn’t put me there; it wasn’t your fault. So don’t let me see that look in your eyes now. Get rid of it, Honor—stop beating up on yourself.”
“I stopped visiting you,” she whispered, a wave of grief rising up.
“It doesn’t matter. Do you know what kept me going, the whole time I was there?”
She shook her head, eyes stinging.
He put his mouth to her ear; his whisper felt like the gentlest breeze in the world. “You,” he said.
“But I wasn’t there,” she said. “I wasn’t there for you at all. I took the girls away, wouldn’t let them visit…”
“It doesn’t matter, Honor,” he said. “You did what was right for them. You were being their mother, just the way I’d want you to. But you were with me anyway. Every minute, I had you there.”
“I couldn’t protect you,” she said, shuddering with a sob.
“Honor,” he said, “don’t you know yet, even now? You can’t protect anyone. All you can do is love them, and have a little faith.”
“I lost faith six years ago,” she wept.
He didn’t reply; she knew that he had lost his faith, too. He didn’t even have to say it; she could see it in the hardness in his eyes.
“I’m not staying,” he said.
“What are you talking about?” she asked, staring up at him.
“I’m not putting you and the girls through any more. Tom will help me find a place. Somewhere in Canada—I can work there, I know. I’ll let you know where it is, so the girls can visit me when they want to.”
“That’s not what we want,” Honor said. Even as she said the words, she felt all the warmth drain from her body. John had made up his mind—she sensed it in his posture, the way he stood back from her, staring out to sea.
The tide had turned, and the first thin waves were stretching over the hard-packed sand where they stood. Tiny rippling advances, clear as cellophane, they spread across the tidal flats and lapped at John’s and Honor’s feet.
Just then they heard feet pounding the hard sand, and when they looked up, they saw Cece flying down the beach, arms flailing and waving a white paper.
“Mom, Dad!” she yelled. “There’s a police car at the Academy. Is it because of Regis? Because she’s gone! She’s run away!”
Twenty-three
Regis’s note said that she needed to be alone and think. But after last night, Honor said that would be the worst thing for her.
Back at the house, John followed Honor into the girls’ room. He stood in the door, looking around. There were pictures of him everywhere: on the bureau, on the nightstands, on the walls above his daughters’ beds. Photographs he had taken—some originals, some cut out of magazines—hung on a wall by the door. He stood still, stunned by the evidence of his presence in his daughters’ lives, knowing he had to leave them again. The words “Don’t hurt my father” seared his mind. If he left, perhaps Regis would go no further down that path.
Honor picked up Regis’s pillow and held it. Just held it. She stood in the middle of the room. She wasn’t going through Regis’s drawers or desks, wasn’t rifling drawers. He saw that she was taking Regis in, just absorbing her, trying to pick up some sense of where she had gone…
Cecilia was frantic. “We have to find her! Call her or get in the car and go looking for her!”
“Cece’s right,” Honor said. “I can’t bear thinking of what she’s thinking.”
“I wish,” Cece said, bursting into tears, “that Regis had known you were speaking! That you went to see Dad on the beach, Mom!”
“What do you mean?”
“She was so upset last night,” Cece said. “At the way we just left Dad there at Hubbard’s Point without a ride home.”
“I walked home by the beaches,” John said. “It was fine, Cece.”
“But Regis didn’t think so,” Cece wept. “She was beside herself. She was practically pulling out her hair, she was so sorry. She knew it was all her fault, she kept saying so.”
“She was just upset about what Peter’s father said,” Honor said.
“Maybe that’s not what she meant,” John said.
“What do you mean?”
“When she said it was her fault,” John said grimly, “maybe she wasn’t referring to last night.”
“Then what?” Honor asked, walking over to the table, absently straightening a placemat. Something caught her attention and she pulled out a blue envelope from beneath the fabric’s edge.
“Did you see her before she left?” Honor asked Cece before John could reply to her question.
Cece nodded. “We had breakfast together. Or, I did, and Regis sat there. She didn’t eat.”
“Did she mention this?” Honor asked, looking pale. The envelope was empty.
Cece shrugged. “I don’t think so. What is it?”
“Something that I shouldn’t have left lying around,” Honor said, sliding the envelope into her jeans pocket.
“Honor, what is it?” John pressed.
“It was a letter I wrote to Bernie a long time ago. She gave it back to me recently…to remind me of what I’d once said to her.”
“Look out there,” Cece said, standing at the window and pointing. Across the lawn, driving from the main part of the campus toward the grotto, were a police car and a dark sedan. “I saw them before, and I wondered if they’d come to find Regis.”
John thought back to last night—Regis’s wild explosion, the way she had charged to his defense—and hoped he could get to her before the
police found her, before she talked to anyone.
“Let’s go talk to them,” Honor said.
“They have to find her,” Cece said. “Come on, hurry!”
John hung back, trying to figure out where Regis would go so he could find her himself, and Honor noticed. She gazed at him, her eyes filled with questions.
She had no idea, and he hoped she never would.
“You were great last night,” Agnes said, sitting on the blanket with Brendan. “I was proud of you. The way you saw that Regis was in trouble, and went to help her.”
“She really loves your father, just wanted to defend him. You guys are so lucky, even with everything you’ve been through. I wish I had your family.”
“But what about your parents? Why don’t you just talk to them? Tell them what their drinking is doing to you…”
Brendan gave her a long, kind look; his eyes were so big and wide, his gaze so steady. He looked at her with the kind of patient tolerance Agnes used to feel for people who would ask where her father was, or when the family planned to visit him, or why her sister wanted to get married so young. Unanswerable questions. But Brendan didn’t even cringe.
“Stupid question, right?” she asked.
“Nothing you ask is ever stupid,” he said.
He reached over, pushed her long hair back from the shaved track on her head. He touched her scar. She felt electricity tingle through his fingers, and closing her eyes, she felt him healing her. In that moment, she saw the flash of white light she’d captured on her broken camera, and saw him pulling her sister, so gently, away from Peter’s father.
“Who are you?” she whispered.
“I’m Brendan,” he said. “You know that.”
“Brendan…Regis calls you ‘the archangel.’”
He laughed softly, his hand still cradling her head. “Brendan was just an ordinary saint,” he said.
“There’s nothing ordinary about a saint,” she replied. “Tell me what he did.”
“Brendan was a navigator,” he said. “He stood on top of Mount Brandon, one of Ireland’s tallest mountains, and looked out across the Atlantic Ocean…just about exactly across from where we are now.”