Page 122 of Bitter Burn
“Sounds like an interesting dream.” His expression is curious. Encouraging.
I shift on the rock. I’m wearing thick leggings and an Oxford sweatshirt of Greer’s that she gave me to borrow, and I’m almost too warm, something I haven’t felt in so long. “Do you think…do you think there’s any kind of hope for me? To be good? I wanted to for so long, you know, to be utterly clean in spirit, to have a heart that would send smoke up to heaven if it was set on an altar and burned in offering. But I can’t keep track anymore of what’s good and what’s evil, and I can’t ask God, because he’s stopped listening to my prayers. If he ever did in the first place.”
Father Brady turns his head to watch the river, silent for a moment. And then he says, “Good and evil have stayed the same, but you have changed. You can no longer unquestioningly accept as good what someone tells you to, and the same with evil. That’s not losing direction. That’s completion, discernment, adulthood. You saw through a glass, darkly, and now you see face-to-face.”
“Maligning unquestioning acceptance is very radical for someone who works for the Catholic Church,” I point out.
He makes a face of mock dismay, and I suddenly realize how young he is, how strikingly and humanly handsome. He is so incandescently inspired by God that it’s easy to forget he’s not a beautiful and terrifying angel come to earth.
“I forgot my theses to nail to the nearest door. But in the meantime, I recommend listening to the still, small voice inside you. It will be a much better judge of good and evil than your uncle.”
He glances at his watch and then smiles warmly at me.
“I’m afraid it’s time for me to go, so let me say what I found you to say. God aches for your loneliness, Isolde. He wants you to know that you’re never truly alone.”
The last part sounds like a platitude, something from a sympathy card. “Because of Jesus?”
Father Brady laughs, a sudden and happy sound that brightens everything around us. “No, but you’d be a great Sunday school student with answers like that. You’re never alone because you have yourself, Isolde. That’s all.”
Levity immediately wiped away, I look down at my feet on the rock. “I feel lonely with myself, Father. I don’t like myself.”
“Then that’s where you start,” he says gently. He gets to his feet. “Perhaps it might be useful to think of when you haven’t felt lonely, when you have liked yourself. When you felt like you knew your own heart, face-to-face, and not through a glass, darkly.”
He touches the top of my head for just a second, a glancing benediction, and then leaves without any further farewell, as if sure we’ll meet again. I watch him go, my brows knitted together, my mind burrowing inside itself.
When had I last felt like I knew my own heart? When had I last liked myself and the world around me?
The answers come quickly, effortlessly, as inevitably as the river washing oceanward at my feet.
Sparring with Tristan. Playing chess with Mark. The sound of Tristan’s voice over rain on glass while Mark stroked my wrist.
Watching Mark in the kitchen, walking with Tristan under the trees of Morois.
Kneeling for Mark. Tristan kneeling for me.
Hearing I love you in two different voices.
Hearing my own voice say I love you back.
I’m on my feet and walking back to the house before I let myself think about it too much. I’m in my room and putting together my bag; I’m pulling the folder with the divorce application out of a drawer and looking at it once more before I throw it in the trash.
I find Maxen Colchester and ask if he’d mind terribly if I borrowed a car.
Forty-Two
Mark
“Ah, the great Mark Trevena, laid low by love.”
I look up from the folder of reports that I’ve been unable to focus on to see Nimue come through the door of my office. She’s been working downstairs in her own office whenever she comes in, which has been less and less now that I’m back, though I’ve insisted she keep full ownership of the club. Even with Embry and his stepsister, Vice President Morgan Leffey, quietly squashing the FBI’s interest in me, I think it’s safer if I remain hidden for now. Organizationally at least.
“I don’t look that bad,” I say, but the protest is half-hearted. I look like shit and everyone knows it. Side effect of my fun new hobby of crying in the dark—and my other new hobbies: not eating or sleeping.
The only times I even get close to sleep are when I can wrap myself around Tristan like a vine and allow the steady beat of his heart to soothe my own.
“How is the florilegium coming?” she asks as she sits down in the chair across from my desk. Outside, the morning sun is bright and cheerful, apparently having forgotten that it’s February in the Mid-Atlantic. It catches the odd silver strand in her dark hair.
I flip the folder closed. “We’re almost ready. Next week, I think; Andrea is still working on the mechanism of the leak. We want to make sure nothing can be traced back to the club or our members.”
