Patrick found himself glancing over the top of his newspaper far more often than usual. Whatever he was reading escaped his mind almost entirely, and every time he tried to finish an article his eyes would be at the bottom of a paragraph without having absorbed any of its content.
The laughter was what surprised him the most. He wasn't prepared for how happy Timothy would be in Shelagh's presence, or how his son lit up when she lavished him with attention. Timothy was an intelligent child, much loved by his father, but frequently left to entertain himself when Patrick knew he should be spending more time with him. Shelagh's presence created an astounding change in the boy, urging smile after smile that left his cheeks rosy, his hands animated, and his posture comfortable.
"Oh-ho! You got me there, Timothy, good job!" Shelagh grinned and clasped her hands together as he reached over the chess board and stole her last remaining knight. Her eyes flickered to Patrick and she caught him gazing at her yet again. She did what she always did when it happened: pursed her smile together in the middle of her lips and looked down momentarily before looking at him again and holding his gaze. Patrick felt as he always did when she did this: as though an invisible ribbon had woven itself through all of his ribs and pulled him toward her. He let half of his mouth tip upwards in a smile.
Shelagh turned back to Timothy. "You're very good at chess, Timothy. I'm not sure I'm a worthy opponent."
"You've only just started, though, so it would be really embarrassing if I couldn't beat you," Tim pointed out in a obvious tone of voice. "Dad, do we have to listen to Beethoven anymore? I know you're trying to impress Auntie Shelagh but my eardrums are beginning to hurt."
Patrick grunted and loudly turned the page of his newspaper without looking up. "What would you prefer we try next, Timothy, Bach or Tchaikovsky? " He raised his eyebrows and felt like the terrible fraud that was soon made apparent by the son who always gave him away.
"Ugh, neither!" The boy turned to Shelagh, "He's trying to make you think we're really posh by playing some of Mum's old records, but he actually plays the old bands when he thinks I'm asleep. I don't like it but he dances around to Glenn Miller when I'm not in the room."
"Timothy!" Patrick's embarrassment colored his ears and then immediately subsided as he watched Shelagh's eyes widen and her mouth form a tiny circle.
"Oh, do you have Glenn Miller, Patrick?"
There was that familiar pang in his gut, the one he could not control whenever she surprised him. The newspaper was in his lap now and he sat on the edge of the chair and nodded.
Her face was lit as if she were a child on Christmas morning. "Oh, Patrick, could we - could we listen to it? If it's all right with Timothy, that is." The boy shrugged as if anything from this century would satisfy him. She looked at Patrick again in anticipation, one hand holding the other, and he tried not to move too eagerly as he rounded his chair to look through the albums behind him. His finger went right to the one he was after, and without thinking to slow down he slid the vinyl from the cardboard and replaced Beethoven's 5th with a well-worn record that brought him immediately back to his far more youthful days almost fifteen years ago. When he spun around the smile on his face was contained but his feet begged to dance.
He'd never been much of a dancer, but almost since the moment she'd gotten into the Austin on that day in the mist he had painted a picture in his mind of the two of them dancing together in this very room. He wondered what her back felt like and whether she would remember how to dance at all. He doubted she could be bad at it, knowing how wonderfully she conquered every task she undertook. A lump appeared in his throat as he imagined teaching her to dance again and twirling around and watching her smile with her chin tilted up toward him. He swallowed hard. They'd only known each other in this way, as an ordinary man and an ordinary woman, less than two weeks. To anyone else it might seem forward for him to request an arm at a former nun's waist, yet he so fiercely longed to ask her that his fingers twitched at his side. He was saved from any decision by a groaning yawn that escaped Timothy's mouth.
Patrick raised his eyebrows and lowered his chin as the first notes of trumpets began their sweet song on the table behind him. "I think it's time for you to go up to your bath, Tim. It's been a long day."
"Oh, but Dad!"
"Come on, up you go," he gently nodded his head toward the door, with a small voice in his mind reminding him that he would have been much firmer with his son had Shelagh not been present.
"But we haven't even finished our game! I was about to make a really big move!"
Shelagh smiled at Patrick conspiratorially, then touched Timothy's shoulder across the table. "We can finish it tomorrow, dearest. I'm sure you'll think of an even bigger play if you sleep on it. Take your bath now and come down for good-nights, hmm?"
Patrick watched with amazement as his precocious son did not offer any argument, instead nodding at Shelagh and slowly moving toward the doorway. Violins began to build in the song, drowning out the sounds of his heavy footsteps as he climbed the stairs.
They were both staring at the doorway for long moments after he had left the room. Patrick was glad for the music, which covered the sound of a heartbeat he thought could be heard on the street. It was always like this when they were alone. The stillness that was left in Timothy's absence was familiar and sweet, now accompanied by Serenade in Blue.
When Shelagh turned away he watched her go to the table and lift the chess board, careful not to move any pieces, and place it on the sill of the kitchen hatch. Then she brushed the tablecloth with one hand and caught any rogue crumbs in her other, heading toward the kitchen bin as though she belonged in the place as much as the doorway or the floor. He watched her make her way around the kitchen and pick up a plate that held remnants of biscuits he and Tim had devoured, but when she started toward the sink he stepped to the hatch.
"I can do that," he said, with a light gesture toward his chest. "Leave it until tomorrow."
She shook her head with a cute smile. "No, Patrick, if we leave it there'll just be more mess in the morning. I'll not have your housekeeper put out."
"Leave it, Shelagh. Please. Come and sit with me. I feel I haven't seen you in an eternity."
Shelagh needed no more coaxing once their gazes collided over the half-wall that separated them. Plate set aside, she crossed slowly to the living room where he stood, her heels slowly clicking on the floor in time to the music. She was grimacing slightly, he noticed, and he was about to say something about it when she looked up at him from only an arm's length away. Her piercing eyes stirred something in him and he wondered if their children would have her eyes or his.
"I loved Glenn Miller when I was a girl."
Patrick walked to the sofa without taking his eyes from her, and she followed and sat close enough for him to touch, but he contained himself. He tipped his head toward her. "I listened during the war. Everyone did. If we could find a radio on the front, we listened." Once again, without invitation, the reminder was hanging before him that he had been a grown man when she was just a child. As the awareness of their age difference made him momentarily uncomfortable, Patrick cleared his throat and scratched his nose. Those questions formed before he could stop him: Why would she ever choose to be with him? How could he make her happy? He would have to brush the thoughts away until later, when he would undoubtedly lie awake adding the years they might have together if they ever married and he lived a long life. The numbers were depressing.
Shelagh seemed to detect his discomfort and she offered the slightest touch to his wrist. "I used to rush through dinner on the nights when he was to be on a radio program so I could listen in Dad's car."
Patrick frowned with a smile. "In his car?"
"Yes," she let out a tiny laugh, "we didn't have a wireless but he had a Model Y with a radio and I would sit outside in it and listen to Glenn Miller... In the Mood, String of Pearls... I cried for days when his plane went missing."
He watched her lean back on the couch and rest her head with her eyes closed, listening to the beat of his favorite, Stairway to the Stars. Her fingers were still at his wrist. The brass sang and he swelled with longing for everything that was so near him. He'd known her for so long, yet he knew her so little. Imagine, Shelagh crying in her father's car when she heard Glenn Miller died. He wondered if she had worn glasses then, how she did her hair, what kind of dresses she wore. Now she was close enough to touch, yet he only wanted to look at her in this moment. The song played on and her ankles twitched at the floor, and he noticed her chin tilt a little every time a clarinet played. She knew the song just as well as he did, and the thought connected them in another small, silent way.
He was studying her face when she opened her eyes. Pink leapt to her cheeks just as the tune ended and there was a tiny crackle between melodies, blanketing them in silence. Patrick looked down at the seat between them and slowly opened his hand for hers, not daring to infringe upon her personal space by more than a suggestion. She had been a lone vessel of God for so long that he still didn't feel the right to touch her freely.
When her hand met his and curled into his palm he felt as though that ribbon was pulling his ribs to her once again. The weight of her hand in his, though the smallest of gestures, was the grandest of gifts. As his thumb moved over her knuckles he allowed himself the indulgence of wondering if she had freckles everywhere like they were on the back of her hands, then what she would feel like in his arms dancing around the room.
If he ever stirred up the courage to ask her to marry him he would get to dance with her at their wedding, he thought. For a moment the vision of her in a white dress made him stop moving his thumb over hers. He'd thought it a thousand times a day for weeks and weeks, every day brushing it from his mind. But now in this past week and a half the picture was ever-present, like knowing the sun shone at noon or that fish were in the sea. He pictured her in a wedding dress as if he had already seen it, though in his mind there were no details, no styles or specifics, only the look of her hair and her face and the way she smiled at him - they were always the same. Tonight, with her hand in his, the daydream became more vivid, adding things they would do on their wedding day - laugh, sing, dance, touch, kiss. The thought heated Patrick's face; kissing Shelagh would be one of the crowning moments of his life. He smiled to himself, with hope. She beamed back as the music played and he imagined her laughing as he twirled her in his arms. When he stirred up the courage to propose, he would get to dance with her. He would have to be willing to wait.
Yet the music was there right now, and she was there right now. and there was no use in pretending she was not breathing deeply as their eyes locked; even The Glenn Miller Orchestra could not drown out that sound. With a bolt of courage Patrick leaned forward and took her other hand. Shelagh's eyebrows shot up but a light smile played on her lips. Oh, how he longed to tell her everything he could not in the letters. My dear friend, he had written, over and over, finding it unbearable to think of her merely as a sister, yearning desperately for her friendship when he knew he could have nothing more. My dear friend, he had thought all those weeks, day and night, when his mind was not distracted by the tasks of medicine and fatherhood. My dear friend. he wanted to shout to her now that she was the dearest thing in his life apart from the boy splashing in the washroom above them, and he wanted her to know it and hear it for the rest of their lives.
Oh, how he wanted to marry her. He wanted to marry her and hold her and see her smile in the morning and laugh when she laughed. He wanted to discover everything she discovered in her new life, teach her and show her things that a nun could never learn without sin. He wanted to hear about her father's car radio and the cigarettes she stole from his desk drawer and what her favorite books were as a child. He wanted to spend days and nights and months and years with her hand near enough to him that he could take it and kiss it whenever he desired. He wanted, he wanted, he wanted... The list was never-ending, growing with each breath she took, each flutter of her eyelashes. Marry me, Shelagh, marry me and make me the happiest man in the galaxy and I will love you till my dying day.
Patrick took an unsteady breath. "Shelagh... Will you..." But no, the timing was not right, it was too soon after she had left her old life, and Timothy was upstairs, and the words were all jumbled in his head. He tried for the next best thing when will you marry me failed to fall from his tongue. "Will you dance with me?"
As quickly as her smile had come so it disappeared, and a look unlike any he had seen on her face appeared. Was it fear? Confusion? Distrust? He wondered, instantly regretting having asked her, watching two small creases appear between her eyebrows as she turned her head away and looked at her feet.
"No, I'd rather not, Patrick."
He loosened his grip on her hands - he hadn't realized it was so tight - and said, "I'm sorry, Shelagh, I didn't mean to... Forget I said it." Silly as it was, Patrick felt as though a much bigger question had been turned down, though Shelagh had no way of knowing. There was a boulder in his gut that he knew was ridiculous.
She looked at him again - oh, those eyes would be the source of his undoing - and her gaze remained vexed. "Patrick, it's just that..."
And at precisely that moment Timothy bounded into the room in his bathrobe and pajamas and wet hair and exclaimed, "All right, I'm all clean! Who wants to read me a bedtime story?"