The Carson Springs Trilogy: Stranger in Paradise, Taste of Honey, and Wish Come True (44 page)
Read The Carson Springs Trilogy: Stranger in Paradise, Taste of Honey, and Wish Come True Online
Authors: Eileen Goudge
Tags: #Fiction, #General
Maude, a bit tipsy from the wine, lifted her glass. “I propose a toast to the baby, too.”
Sam glanced at Laura out of the corner of her eye, but she didn’t seem the least bit bothered. She merely smiled, the smile of a woman happy with her life just as it is. “To the baby,” she said.
“I just hope it takes after Sam,” Ian said.
Wes laughed knowingly, the laugh of a father who’d survived his son’s teenage years.
“What about you, Alice?” Laura asked hopefully. “Any chance you’ll change your mind and have one of your own?”
“I doubt it.” Alice didn’t look uncomfortable like before, merely pensive.
“Give it time,” Laura said.
“Oh, believe me I will. A long, long time.”
“I doubt I’ll be thinking of grandchildren for a while,” Sam said lightly. Her earlier self-consciousness seemed to have vanished. “Besides, I already have one.”
She looked over at Finch, who smiled back tentatively. She was dressed in what Sam supposed was the latest teenage fashion: a pair of slim-fitting jeans and fuzzy pink sweater that showed off the ring in her navel. Laura had confided that Finch spent hours on the phone every day after school gabbing with her best friend Andie Fitzgerald. But with everything else that’d been going on Sam hadn’t had much chance to get to know her. She found herself very much looking forward to it now.
Then the table was cleared and coffee cups set out. A plate of freshly baked Toll House cookies made its way to the table. In the softly lit kitchen, with dirty dishes piled in the sink and dogs scratching at their feet, Sam felt the glow of shared affection spread out to fill every well-worn corner. Enough to go around in the years to come, to mend hurt feelings and battered pride, even bridge the occasional gap.
A family. For better or worse.
No novel is completed without a journey. And no such journey can be made without the help of others. To all those who assisted me along the way, I’d like to say how much I appreciate your help and guidance. I even have a jar of honey to show for it, which sits on a shelf above my desk.
I am forever indebted to the following people:
My old friend Tom Mogensen, once and always mural monitor. Tom, you rule.
Ed and Boots Thrower of Nantucket, for kindly opening their home and apiary to a perfect stranger.
Earl Bates, for sharing his extraordinary archives on Ojai without waiting to be asked.
My editor, Molly Stern, for her enthusiasm in launching into unknown territory with only a hand-drawn map.
Louise Burke, who is everything a publisher should be, and then some.
My dear friend and agent (in that order), Susan Ginsburg, who is the guiding light in every port.
My husband, Sandy, who’s always there. It’s half the work with him, and wouldn’t be half the fun without him.
Eric Koperwas, for his limitless patience and unfailing good humor in the face of a particularly thorny problem.
And last, but not least, my doctors, George Lombardi and James Clarke, as well as the dedicated nurses on Ten South, Greenberg Pavilion, New York Presbyterian Hospital. Without their expert care and compassion I wouldn’t have made the most crucial journey of all: from my bed to my desk.
A Carson Springs Novel (Book Two)
Eileen Goudge
For my godsons, Jason and Ethan Lazar, who serve as constant reminders that family comes in all shapes and forms.
My child, eat honey, for it is good
and the drippings of the
honeycomb are sweet to
your taste.
Know that wisdom is such to
your soul;
if you find it, you will find a future,
and your hope will not be cut off.
—Proverbs 24:13–14
Our Lady of the Wayside
, 1973
G
ERRY FITZGERALD, POISED BEFORE
the altar in her dark gray habit and white veil, fixed her gaze on the squares of cloth spread over the scuffed floorboards at her feet. They seemed to float almost, like magic carpets: the white one a symbol of the material world she was renouncing, the black one of her journey through darkness to Christ. Within minutes she would be a professed nun, the years of rigorous tutelage and constant questioning behind her. Yet as she stood there alongside her fellow novices, she all at once felt deeply afraid. Her heart began to pound and each breath brought the sodden weight of the August heat that lay over the chapel like a freshly boiled jar—Mother Jerome steadfastly refused to install air-conditioning—pressing down on her lungs.
She brought a trembling hand to her veil, which she would soon trade for the black one of the professed nun, her mind spinning back to her very first interview with Mother Jerome.
This will be a test, my dear,
the kindly old mother superior had warned,
not of your strength or courage
—
you have more than enough of those to spare
—here, she’d smiled—
but of the quality of your faith, which is the most difficult test of all.
She’d been just shy of her eighteenth birthday. The next nine months as a postulant had been filled with constant reminders: to walk without bouncing on the balls of her feet; to hold her hands clasped to prevent them, in Sister Eunice’s words, from flapping about like two birds; and, most difficult of all, to keep custody of her eyes. She’d learned to bite her tongue and to rein in her ready laugh. Two more years as a novice had taught her the patience of Job. She’d learned to let answers come naturally rather than constantly seeking them out, and to give without asking or expecting anything in return.
And hadn’t she humbled herself before Him, praying until her knees were a constant ache? Risen before sunrise seven days a week for morning office? Toiled without complaint scrubbing floors and toilets, pulling weeds, working in the apiary at the risk of getting stung? She’d even borne in silence (except for occasional mutterings under her breath) the criticisms of sharp-tongued assistant superior Sister Eunice. All that remained now was to take her final vows. Why then was her heart pounding so? What was this taste like old pennies on the back of her tongue?
She watched Ann Marie Lozano, on her right, lower herself onto the black cloth, facedown, arms stretched out on either side of her. Dark-haired, birdlike Ann Marie, newly renamed Sister Paul, who’d been desperately homesick that first year and often whimpered in her sleep even now. As she lay motionless a white sheet was placed over her: a shroud symbolizing death to the material world. Listening to her recite her vows, Gerry heard only a series of muffled cheeps that seemed to mimic those of the swallows nesting in the terra-cotta roof overhead. Gerry cast a glance over her shoulder at Ann Marie’s family nearly filling the second pew, her mother and father and six brothers and sisters, all small and dark like her, with eyes that seemed to take up half their faces. They were beaming as Father Gallagher and Mother Jerome said their blessings over Ann Marie.
After Ann Marie, Peggy Rourke’s trim, taut form was a living crucible stretched out on the cloth. Peggy’s calling was the envy of every thirteen-year-old girl: The Blessed Virgin Mary had actually appeared before her, clad in a shimmering blue robe and bearing a bouquet of white roses. That this vision had occurred in the days following Peggy’s mother’s death made it all the more awe inspiring. Wherever she went Peggy seemed to carry with her a faint but somehow pervasive scent of roses. Though it hadn’t escaped Gerry’s notice that in her humble insistence on always being the last in line, taking the smallest portion, and assuming the hardest task, Peggy succeeded only in drawing more attention to herself.
Under the white cloth that covered her from head to toe, Gerry could see her trembling. She felt oddly reassured. If Peggy Rourke, their resident Bernadette, had butterflies, then who was she to question her own faith?
It’s not just nerves, and you know it,
another more sinister voice whispered in her head. A voice that spoke the truth, for her belly seemed hotly alive, not with butterflies, but with a buzzing swarm of bees.
Gerry raised her eyes to the carved reredos over the tabernacle, at the center of which, crudely applied to wood with mineral colors and cactus juice by some long-forgotten artisan, was a painting of Jesus on the cross, heart displayed like a medallion on His chest. When she was little, she’d misread
sacred heart
as
scared heart
until Sister Alice set her straight in front of the whole class her first year of catechism, to the tittering delight of her classmates. Yet it seemed appropriate somehow. How could Jesus
not
have been scared? He’d been a man after all, a man with doubts and fears. A man who might even have given in to the occasional temptation …
Gerry grew light-headed, swaying on legs gone watery as the thing she’d pushed to the back of her mind came bursting forth.
You’re a liar and a hypocrite,
scolded the waspish voice in her head.
And you have the gall to stand here, pretending to be worthy of the vows you’re about to take.
It wasn’t as if her mother and sisters hadn’t tried to warn her. Mavis, who’d remained dry-eyed throughout Gerry’s father’s funeral five years before, had wept when her youngest daughter announced she was going into the convent. Even Sam, her best friend, Sam, who rarely raised her voice, had shouted that she’d be a racehorse shackled to a plow. As usual, Gerry hadn’t listened, even when her own inner voice chimed in. Such doubts were normal, she knew. And how could she ignore this
pull?
But something had happened along the way: She’d sinned. Not like the sins whispered in the confessional—doubts and small lapses, a word spoken out of turn—but one so deep and dark she’d told no one. Not even dear, good-hearted Sister Agnes. For the novice mistress would have been duty bound to bring it to the attention of Mother Jerome, who’d have immediately summoned Gerry to her office.
That’s not all,
she’d have been forced to tell them.
There’s more.
But a missed period didn’t necessarily mean anything, did it? It wasn’t the first time she’d skipped a month, and was probably the result of not eating enough to keep a bird alive, as her mother would’ve said. Hadn’t Sister Agnes warned that fasting could interrupt the cycle and even bring on nausea?
But what if it was something else? Something she didn’t dare voice, not even to herself. Gerry felt it start to take shape, the murky brown fear in the back of her mind, and was swept with a chill that blew through her like a Norse wind. She rocked back on her heels, taking slow, even breaths until the buzzing lightness in her head receded and she could trust her legs to remain steady. Close to her heart, where she’d once felt the warmth of God’s love, there was only emptiness. How could He love her in the face of what she’d done?
Even with her head lowered, she became acutely aware of Father Gallagher’s eyes on her. But when she at last dared meet his gaze, it passed through her as if she were invisible. An icy bolt shot through Gerry’s heart. What was going on behind those eyes? Eyes malice free and blue as the sunlit Sea of Galilee depicted in the stained-glass window over the tabernacle. There was a time she’d believed Father Gallagher—Jim—to be as close to God as was possible in a mortal being. But now she knew that he walked the earth like any man: on feet of clay.
If he led, I willingly followed.