Chapter 5

Jarrod took the early train to San Francisco and was entering his house by early afternoon. He debated whether to check into his office before going to Grace Cathedral, but decided he would go see Bishop Kip first. His mind would be too much on how he was going to talk to Bishop Kip for him to accomplish much at his office beforehand. Maybe after talking to the bishop, he'd have his thoughts more settled and would go by the office afterward.

But then, as he approached Grace Cathedral, he wondered what he was going to say to Bishop Kip anyway. This wasn't a trial where he could lay out his argument uninterrupted. This was a conversation with a trusted advisor. He would be doing a lot of listening as well as talking, and he wasn't sure who was going to end up steering this discussion – him or Bishop Kip.

The bishop was alone in his office with some kind of paperwork on the desk in front of him, but hearing Jarrod come in, he looked up and smiled. "Jarrod! It's good to see you!" He turned the papers over, stood up and reached across the desk.

Jarrod shook his hand. "It's good to see you too, Bishop. How are you?"

"Very well, thank you, how about yourself?"

"Well, I need to bend your ear a bit. May I?"

Bishop Kip motioned him to sit and sat down behind his desk as Jarrod sat down in front of it. "About a client?"

"No, no," Jarrod said. "About me."

"Oh," Bishop Kip said and waited.

Jarrod had trouble starting and ended up saying, "This is complicated and difficult to explain. I suppose I'll just jump right in and tell you what precipitated everything. I have two dear friends, a married couple, and I suspect you'll know who they are as soon as I describe the problem. They moved to Stockton from San Francisco not that long ago, and they were parishioners here."

"The Josephs," Bishop Kip said with a nod. "Yes, I'm quite familiar with them."

"You remember Neil's carriage accident a while back?"

"Yes."

"I don't know if what I'm about to say is a surprise for you, but it must be kept strictly confidential. Everything I tell you now must be kept confidential."

"Of course."

"Neil came to me a couple days ago and told me that accident left him incapable of fathering a child."

Bishop Kip sighed. He didn't say he already knew that, but Jarrod was certain from that sigh that he did.

It didn't really matter. He knew now. Jarrod said, "Neil asked me if I would be willing to father a child for Clair."

Bishop Kip didn't look surprised.

And that surprised Jarrod. "You seem to be expecting me to say that," Jarrod said.

Bishop Kip smiled a little. "I can't discuss what I know or what I expected, but it's not important. What's important is how you're taking the request, and I get the feeling you're not taking it well."

"For more reasons than just the morality of begetting a child with a woman who's married to another man," Jarrod said.

"Let's just assume the morality of it is not an issue. Tell me your other reasons."

Jarrod hesitated, trying to form the words. "You know I'm widowed and the circumstances were horrible. You know all of the circumstances." Jarrod had talked to the bishop the first time he came back to San Francisco after Beth, after Rimfire. "We talked a lot about it and I thought I was adjusting, but when Neil came to me – and then Clair came to me too – asking me to father their child, I just – " Jarrod shook his head. The words had left him.

"It brought back memories and showered you with lost opportunities," Bishop Kip eventually said. "Maybe 'opportunities' is too casual a word. You thought of lying with Clair and knew she wouldn't be Beth for you to have and raise your children with, and to put it bluntly, it ripped your heart out."

Jarrod smiled a little. "You do have a way of cutting to the quick, Bishop."

"I take it they didn't realize you were taking it that way."

"No, and I was quite rude to Clair when she told me she herself had been conceived that way." He stopped, afraid he'd disclosed a confidence.

But the bishop nodded. "The Josephs talked to me right after Neil was injured. They told me about Clair's history, but that's all I'm willing to say about our conversations."

"Of course," Jarrod said. "The Josephs and I have had a long talk and I've apologized about my reaction and tried to explain it, but it still hangs over us and it's really been hanging over me."

"Of course it is. You're still recovering from your own losses – the loss of your wife, the loss of the future you'd planned, even the loss of your identity. That's what you lost when you went after the man who killed Beth. You ceased to be the man you thought you were."

"Yes," Jarrod agreed. "When the Josephs asked me to father their child - I had an avalanche of feelings come over me. I missed Beth so much again. I thought about how right now I should be happily anticipating the arrival of our first child, and I frankly felt that old ugliness come over me again."

Bishop Kip frowned. "You felt like committing violence again? Against the Josephs?"

"No, no, not that," Jarrod said. "I felt no urge to commit violence against anyone, not even Cass Hyatt, but I felt the ugliness. I felt like – " He struggled for the words and could only come up with, "I felt a combination of not wanting to have a child I could have nothing to do with, ever, and not wanting to have a child because I didn't deserve one. Because I have that streak of violence in me, and my own child might inherit that."

Bishop Kip leaned back in his chair. "It hasn't been very long since Beth was killed, Jarrod. You really can't expect to have adjusted completely yet. You're going to feel ugly now and then whenever you remember what happened, and you're going to feel the loss of your wife and the loss of your own children. You need to remind yourself of that, and forgive yourself not only for what happened but for having so much trouble adjusting. I'm sure the Josephs didn't realize what feelings they were stirring up in you when they asked you to father their child."

"No, they didn't, and I tried to explain it to them," Jarrod said. "I'm not sure I really did, but we're trying to smooth it over. None of us wants to lose our friendship."

"Take that as part of your adjusting process," the bishop said. "I assume you did turn them down."

"I did," Jarrod said, "but since I did – well, the morality of it sneaks back in here now. On the train here, I started to wonder. They're good people and it breaks my heart that Clair can't have her own child because her husband is incapable. They came to me and I turned them down for a whole list of reasons, but on the train here, I started to wonder."

"Jarrod, if you have to wonder, it's something you were right to turn down," Bishop Kip said. "You can't wonder about something like this. You have to be certain you've considered all the implications and decided you accept them. And you haven't accepted them."

"No," Jarrod said, "and I don't think I can."

"Then your decision is made. The problem is all the bad feelings and memories just being asked has stirred up for you."

Jarrod sighed. "Yes. I guess that's the gist of it."

"What do you need God's forgiveness for?"

Jarrod raised an eyebrow.

"That's why you're here, isn't it? That's why you came to see a clergyman rather than a family member or another lawyer."

Jarrod quickly shook his head. "This is something I can't take to the family, and lawyers – well, morality can be the least of a lawyer's thoughts when you come to them with any problem."

Bishop Kip chuckled a little. "Well, you ought to know how things like that line up. But I ask again – what do you need God's forgiveness for? For turning the Josephs down, or have you never accepted his forgiveness for your behavior five months ago?"

"Maybe both," Jarrod said, hanging his head. "I just don't know."

"Your feelings are in a great tangle," the bishop said. "The past is the past, Jarrod. You've atoned and there's not a doubt in my mind you have God's forgiveness and all you need to do is accept it and continue to lead a good and moral life."

"Which begs the question – would fathering a child by another man's wife be a moral thing to do, or is it something God would frown on?"

Bishop Kip shrugged. "I'd say it would have something to do with your motives. It's one thing to lie with another man's wife when it's a betrayal of him. It's quite another when you've been asked to do it so that the other man can have a child."

"Is it?" Jarrod asked, surprised at that idea.

"When God made man, He knew very well that inbreeding would be a problem. If He can accept a man lying with another man's wife to avoid inbreeding – as the more aristocratic families in Europe do – I don't think He'd have a problem with a man lying with another man's wife to give the other man a child he and his wife dearly want but can't have."

"Is that the church talking, or just you?" Jarrod asked.

"I don't think the church has given the idea a lot of thought, and the Church of England I suspect has chosen to at least look the other way when a royal family decides it needs fresh blood. You should take my opinion as my opinion alone but I think your other reasons for turning the Josephs down are the reasons you can't do it, not the morality of the action. Those other reasons are the ones you need to deal with."

Jarrod thought on that. "I think I have."

"I think you have too, at least for now. You just need to forgive yourself for turning them down – and for your actions in the past that you haven't forgiven yourself for."

"Just when I think I've forgiven myself, something like this comes along, and I haven't forgiven myself."

"Adjustment is a process, Jarrod, not a moment in time. Forgiveness is the same. For now, I think you've made the right decision, not lying with Clair Joseph. You're definitely not ready for it. Your adjustment process is only partly completed."