LMS5XP, if the guesses in the reviews had been a gambling pool, you'd have won. Well done!
"Talk about your safe bets," Niamh said smoothly as the red-faced pair shook apart. "Did you never think to latch the door? I could've been a burglar! Or a journalist." She latched it now.
Assumpta folded her arms, gripping an elbow, covering her face with her fingers. "Niamh..." she pleaded into her own hand.
Niamh put up a finger to silence her. "You can save the not-how-it-looks speech. I already knew."
Peter's eyes were wide with alarm, his cheeks hot with embarrassment. "Knew what? We hadn't..."
"Please. Why do you think I booked the christening so soon? You've been running down the clock, everyone knows."
"What?!" Peter again reached for his collar, as if it might have disintegrated in the last several minutes.
"All right, no one knows," Niamh conceded. "But everyone suspects something." She looked back and forth from one of them to the other. "Father? A word?"
"What're you doing here?" asked Assumpta.
Niamh marched to the coat hook and fished her chocolate lip balm out of an apron pocket. "Forestalling temptation. You might try it sometime." With a blistering look, she led Peter out the door.
Assumpta watched them go, then shakily moved to the pub and poured herself a generous measure of brandy. Sipping it, she contemplated the potential merits of an ice-cold shower.
She decided against it.
Peter's head was still spinning from a thorough interrogation as Niamh examined the mite box on his kitchen table. "I am right, then?" she asked, her eyes like skewers.
Peter swallowed. "You're not wrong."
"Does Assumpta know?"
He inhaled heavily. "I don't think so."
"But you'll make your announcement Sunday morning."
He paced the tile floor. "I've been trying to decide how best to-"
"It wasn't a question."
Peter shivered. She was so like her father.
"You will," she reaffirmed.
"I understand if you'd rather I didn't-"
"Oh, nothing in the world will spoil this christening. You can be sure of it. You'll do it yourself. Make your announcement. Not a word before then to my father, and as few as you can to Father Mac; I'll do what I can to keep them in the dark." She put on her coat. "Oh, and for the love of God, keep your distance from Assumpta in the meantime."
He nodded, wondering when it was he'd begun to answer to Niamh Egan.
"Better get home, before Ambrose wakes and starts to wonder where I've gone. See you at church," she said.
It sounded like an order.
Peter had a different dream that night, a dream that his kiss with Assumpta continued uninterrupted. Beneath their feet, the pub transformed into that same unfamiliar bedroom he'd dreamt before.
This time she didn't ask what he was giving up. Maybe she knew, now that he knew. This time they were fully-dressed at the outset, carefully undressing each other a little at a time. This time, nothing interfered; they made tearful, wordless love; he tried to remember every second of it.
Afterward, they lay together in the same brushed cotton sheets; she begged him to stay with her forever. He had only to tell her what was coming.
He couldn't make a sound.
He awoke with the dawn.
Gard Egan had an uneasy feeling about the red coupe ahead of him on the bridge. It looked unfamiliar, certainly not someone from in town. As he closed in, he noticed the sticker from a hired car company in the rear window, and he clocked the speed at considerably under the limit. I'll give the usual tourist warning, he thought,signalling the driver to pull over. The driver complied, slow at this as well.
He approached the darkly-tinted driver window with his usual due caution. It rolled down to reveal a familiar pursed mouth.
He smiled from the cheeks down. "Mother! Aren't you early?"
"Mr. Kearney?"
The Lanigan girl's tiny hand shot above her flaxen plaits, almost as an afterthought.
"Yes, Caitriona?"
"Why is it passion when Jesus dies on the cross, but also passion when two people fall in love?"
A predictable titter arose from her classmates. Triona had a way of bringing up things her peers were too proud to ask; she had once brought in her mother's fitness magazine and asked how many calories were in a "bogey." She was an odd duck to be sure, no sense of propriety, no filter between her brain and her shrill voice.
Naturally, Brendan had a bit of a soft spot for her. "That's a great question. Do you have any guesses before I explain?"
Triona gnawed on her pencil for a moment. "Is it sort of like how a stool is both a tall chair and also a stinky-?"
More laughter from her classmates. Brendan had enough trouble keeping a straight face of his own. "All right, all right," he grumbled, "simmer down." He sat on the front edge of his desk, wringing his hands a little. "Now, you all remember how in English, we get all our words from lots of other languages?"
A few small heads nodded at this.
"A lot of them, we get from Latin. And passion is one of those words. It comes from a Latin word that means to suffer. So Jesus' being put to death on the cross is that original meaning: suffering. You know the word compassion?"
More nodding now.
"Well, cum is Latin for with. Compassion means suffering with. If a schoolmate falls and drops her tray in the canteen, even though the pain's not yours, you suffer with her, you're sorry it happened." A smattering of chuckles suggested the need for a deeper example. "Fine, forget that. If you feel for what people are going through in the North, even though they're a long ways away and they might not believe the same as you, then you have compassion for them. When someone hurts them, it hurts in your heart as well."
"But when you're in love, you're supposed to be happy," said Ned Brady, much to the teasing amusement of his comrades. His prominent ears glowed red at the sound of their laughter.
"Ah," said the teacher. "But you're not always. You've heard of being lovesick, right? You might even be happy in love, but you're not necessarily comfortable. You lose sleep, you get butterflies in your belly, you wonder what people might say about you, it's all you think about. And," he added, trying to judge with care the line between teaching and preaching, "if you love someone, truly, you'd do anything for them, right? You'd suffer for them if you had to."
Small lights went on in their eyes now. Caitriona Lanigan beamed as if she'd schooled them all herself.
Brendan found himself thinking about Jesus, but also about Siobhan, and about Peter, and Assumpta. It made him uneasy; he longed for a subject change.
He rose from his perch. "Now, if we're all reasonably comfortable with this, let's get back to the maths. Okay?"
And now we all know why I don't often try to write adorable children. Feedback always adored; more to follow soon!