Page 58 of Saint
I know because I tried.
I reach out now and touch Elijah’s wrist...the first time we’ve touched since last night. I trail my fingers up to clasp his forearm, waiting for him to meet my gaze.
When he does, whatever he sees there makes his shoulders drop the tiniest bit. And then slowly—so slowly that I think he’s going to change his mind at any moment—he rolls his arm so that his palm is up and his fingers are holding my forearm too. It’s not like holding hands; it feels more like we’re holding each otherhere, in this place, in this moment.
He lets out a long breath and says after a minute, quietly, “I thought that’s why you left.”
“The fight?”
He nods and horror slides through me. I shake my head. “No,” I say empathically. “Elijah, no. I left becauseIwas fucked up, and leaving seemed like the only way to fix myself and stop hurting everyone else. If I’d known that you’d thought...”
But how could I have known? I left without a word and came back only to drop the key to the farmhouse in his hand. And even then, I was still too lost in the fires of my own mind to speak with him, to give him a proper explanation. The only goal I’d had was to disappear from the world as quickly as possible.
“No,” I say again, catching his gaze. “Elijah, I didn’t leave because of the fight.”
There’s a line between his brows again and a frown curving the sharp edges of his mouth, like maybe he doesn’t entirely believe me, and I realize that I’m going to have to tell him the truth at some point. Maybe not even at some point—maybe soon.
Maybe now.
But before I can think of how to start, what to say, the train pulls to a stop, and the sleeping woman in back wakes up to leave. I reluctantly let go of Elijah and he of me, as she stands up and the half-crowded train platform comes into view.
As my fingers slide down his tattoo, I realize I’m the right direction to properly see the collage. The grid which I now recognize as the grid of streets from our neighborhood. The tree which I now see is the tree from his backyard with tiny little rungs leading up to a tiny treehouse in its branches. And the words inked in a small, typewritten font under the collage. They are in Latin, and I have enough grasp of the dead language now to know what they mean.
Quid si.
My heart flips over, once, inside my chest.
It means:what if.
I look up at him, and he looks back at me, and I can’t tell what he’s thinking. Not at all.
What if.
He’d put that on his body...why? As a remembrance? As a reminder? I open my mouth to ask, but then other people begin boarding the train and he pulls his arm off the table and clears his throat.
And I want to ask anyway—or I want to spill the truth of that night—or at least I want to touch him again, but the train is crowded again, and what I might have done without much hesitation in Paris is a different kind of calculus now, so deep in an unfamiliar countryside.
It’s not until I look out the window as the train starts moving that I remember the other limit to touching him in public.
I’m in my full monk robes today, scapular, belt, and all.
34
Our Ladyof the Fountains reveals itself like a little brooch stuck into the folds of a scarf. Steep hills rear up everywhere, all rocks and trees, and then we are plunged into a thick ribbon of lavender. Fields and fields of it in the flat bottom of the valley, its scent filling the inside of the car immediately.
And nestled among all this green and purple is the abbey itself, a small cluster of buildings made of the same honey-colored stone the hills are made of. Between the tree-crowded slopes surrounding it, the sea of lavender, and the bright blue sky, the abbey’s surroundings are a living postcard, and the abbey itself—over nine hundred years old—is just as venerable and lovely.
As the car rolls between the tall cypresses which line the drive to the campus, I feel the heavy mood from the train begin to lift. When I look over at Elijah, he’s already looking back at me from behind his sunglasses, his mouth tilted in an almost smile.
And between Elijah’s almost smile and the sharp scent of lavender and wild herbs crowding along the sides of the road, I’m already in love with this place.
Which is strange, because it wasSt. Columba’smy heart quickened at, it was St. Columba’s that matched everything I knew I needed, not this happy Provençal retreat.
You haven’t been to St. Columba’s yet,I assure myself.You’ll love it the most when you get there.
Our driver is Brother Luc, a young monk with light golden skin and a close-cropped beard, and he is much chattier than Brother Xavier was at Semois, telling us about the history of the area and of the abbey as we roll to a stop in the gravel parking lot. He helps us unload our suitcases, and then he leads us to the small guesthouse—a low-slung stone building studded with small round windows and narrow wooden doors.
“We only have one other guest at the moment,” he says, “because we will start harvesting the lavender soon, and the abbey is quite different during the harvest, since we are so busy. Not good for visitors. But you are not regular visitors—and our other guest is a visiting priest—so Abbé Bernard thinks you won’t mind that we will be so busy.” Brother Luc’s French accent turns every word into a soft melody—much different than the harder, faster French of Luxembourg or Paris. It seems to match the landscape somehow, like even the words here are sunny and happy and ready to smile.
