This whole enterprise is really moving at a snail's clip, isn't it? Sorry! (Shameless self-promotion: Lent is right around the corner, and you can always revisit "Six Weeks Without Sundays" for something a bit more brisk/seasonally fitting! Ugh, I tried.)
This chapter is lots of Talking About Our Feelings, but I hope it's still enjoyable. As always, let me know what you think!
Peter recognised the noise Assumpta made as she pulled her cardigan closed. It was the same gasp of horror that had escaped her mouth when he'd told her a quartet of smug-faced clergy were spying on their play rehearsal.
He turned and shuddered to see one of that gang now, just as smug, pressing a torch against the glass.
"Oh, would you mind your own business?!" Peter cried, grabbing at the placket of his own shirt.
Moments later, he stood outside to face his old boss once more.
"You know," Father Mac burbled, looking over the miniature keychain torch, "Donal says these new LED contraptions last ages longer than the traditional sort." He clumsily pointed the beam into his own eyes and immediately recoiled. "Then again, traditions die by the minute nowadays, don't they?" The old man seemed to find this hilarious.
Peter finished tucking his shirt back in, and reached back through the hatch for his pullover. "Father, what's the matter with you?"
Donal sprinted into view. "New medication's got him a bit daft," he called, bounding toward them. "Herbal variety," he murmured as he closed in.
"Ah."
"Y'should've had a look at Kathleen Hendley, Father. Totally paranoid. Thought the Gardai were trailing us all the way. Didn't relax until they parked in front of Fitzgerald's."
Peter shuddered.
Inside the car, Assumpta buried her face in her hands.
"Is that herself in there?" Donal finally connected.
"Miss Fitzgerald, in the flesh!" sang the parish priest, sounding eerily spry. "Hi!"
"No doubt you are," she grumbled.
Peter suspected she longed for some privacy to fasten her bra, and he closed the hatch again, stepping in front of it.
"Donal, good to see you," he stammered.
Donal glanced at Peter again, and then the Astra. He looked to be doing the social arithmetic in his head, at about his regular speed.
"Donal, will you get Father Mac home safely, please?"
Donal nodded. Then he leant in with a whisper: "Don't worry. Liam's told me what it's like. Sure he'll never remember."
"You'd be surprised," Peter murmured, more to himself.
BALLYKISSANGEL
The drive back to the pub was quiet until the moment Peter parked.
"I'm sorry," Assumpta murmured.
"I'm not," Peter realised.
"It's that simple?" she said, her smile incredulous. Looking at the dashboard clock, she interrupted herself. "We're near our curfew, young man." She gathered the evidence of their supper and let herself out.
Inside, they found Niamh cornering Oonagh at the front desk. The older woman threw up her hands. "I can't help them; we're fully committed."
"Well, they're neither one of them in any shape to drive," Niamh hissed back.
"They're both of them old enough to know better. And you, ordering me around as if you own the pla-" Oonagh caught herself, though not early enough.
"Oh, will you get them a cab, then? In the middle of nowhere, on a weeknight?" Niamh spotted Assumpta and Peter out the side of her eye. "Father!" she cried, throwing her arms around him.
"Hiya, Niamh," Assumpta muttered.
Peter let the hug run its course, then glanced at Oonagh. "What's the matter, then?"
Niamh nodded at the two inaebriated vets presently resting their heads on the bar. "No room at the inn for Siobhan and her old...friend."
Peter remembered the keys in his pocket. "Where's Ambrose?"
"Up in ours with Kieran. Pulled out the trundle for him; they're out like lights."
"Well, then, his room can hold the wingman for the night," Peter said, jingling the key.
"Just leaves Siobhan," Oonagh said.
"Speaking of vet matters, I'd better walk Fionn once more," Assumpta said softly, giving Peter a knowing look.
"I'll put up Siobhan," Peter said blandly. Assumpta bent her head down to bury her grin.
"And where'll you sleep, then?" Niamh asked.
"I'll think of something," Peter bluffed. He already had.
Watching Assumpta retreat, Niamh's eyes went wide, but she only said, "Better give our dog one last excursion as well."
Siobhan was still pouting as Peter arranged her in his room. "Have you become the sort of priest we can count on to spoil all the fun, so?"
"Easy now, Siobhan. That'd be the wine talking. You know very well I was never any fun in the old days."
She shrugged, kicking off her shoes. "Sight for sore eyes, all the same."
"Seems you've had a few such sights this evening."
"Benny? Ah, just an old friend from the Dick Vet. Running an ultrasound on The Cat tomorrow."
Peter blinked. "Which cat?"
"Never mind, Father. Thanks for this."
He set a glass of water on the nightstand, resisting the urge to tuck her in. "Get some sleep."
Outside, the two younger women waited for their respective pets to finish their business. Assumpta felt a stare settle on her.
"Niamh-"
"I wasn't going to say anything." Niamh glanced at Fionn. Thinking quickly, she drew a plastic bag from her pocket, handing it to her old friend.
Assumpta accepted it, groaning as she stooped.
"Anyway," Niamh went on - just as she always had after promising not to say something. "I'm well outside of anyplace from which to pass judgment."
Assumpta stopped short of bagging the mess, and looked back up. "Niamh-"
"Got what I wanted all along. Having it both ways. Only if I'd known, Assumpta..."
Assumpta stood again. In the heady wash of pub neon and moonlight and streetlamp, she saw a bleakness in Niamh's eyes. The same self-blame as after the miscarriage; the same lost look as the night Ambrose broke the engagement; the same hollowness as the afternoon Mrs. Quigley collapsed in the kitchen and no one could revive her.
No one could revive her.
Shame flooded Assumpta's veins again. "I should've been there for you."
Niamh nodded, looking away. "My bridesmaid."
"I know."
Niamh grimaced. "Mightn't have helped anyway. I was such a fool. And you, anyway what would you have known about..."
"Oh, about keeping a marriage intact!" Assumpta roared - then, quieter: "No. You're right, Niamh, I don't know."
Niamh dropped her gaze, nodding again.
"But I like to think if I'd felt as unsure about you and Ambrose as I felt about Leo and me, I'd have never stood witness for your vows." She swallowed. "And I like to think if you'd come to me about Sean Dillon, I'd have heard you out."
A breeze whipped a forelock into Niamh's face, but she didn't control it. "I like to think if I hadn't still been mourning your death, I wouldn't have gone looking for a distraction from the pain," she muttered, leading her dog back toward the pub.
Assumpta felt an urge to sink to her knees. She succumbed to it, and picked up the mess.
Opening the door quietly as she could, Niamh looked at her son on the daybed and his father on the trundle. They were almost in mirroring poses, almost breathing in unison.
She tried not to smile or cry. Loosing the dog into the room, she prayed the disturbance wouldn't wake them. Lucky. Soon there were three snoring beasts on three different mattresses. Across the eldest and longest, she draped a cotton blanket.
She noticed someone had turned down the bed linens for her. She slipped in and dimmed the bedside lamp, little by little, delaying the final CLICK as long as possible.
As Fionn curled on his long-lost afghan, Assumpta looked nervously across the room at Peter. Down to his t-shirt and shorts, he looked strangely vulnerable. Civilian, almost.
"Um," she blurted.
"We won't," he said quickly.
She frowned and collected the stack of post she had left on the duvet.
"I'll want to, very badly, but we won't. We've proven we could manage before."
Assumpta felt a burn in her cheeks. She looked down at all the junk adverts, the catalogues and pizza coupons Oonagh had dumped on her. Something like a greeting card caught her eye - a more sophisticated come-on of some kind, probably. Even looked hand-lettered.
She pretended to be fascinated with it.
She heard the creak of the box spring and looked up. "Well, make yourself at home, then."
"I have. Come on." He patted the bed.
"What, just lie beside you and talk all night?"
He shrugged, deadpan. "Old time's sake."
"Hardly." She looked at her pyjamas, draped over the back of a chair. Fine, she thought, wriggling out of her cardigan once again.
The darkness seemed too risky, too easy an opportunity to focus again on smell and touch, and so they'd agreed to leave one miserably dim table lamp glowing.
Still, Peter couldn't fully ignore the warmth and weight of another person, nor the way the aging narrow mattress seemed bent on keeping them pressed together in its middle. They would have to keep talking until someone fell asleep.
"Good to see Niamh again," he tried.
Bad try. Assumpta was seething now.
"What happened?"
"She blamed me for everything that happened with Ambrose."
"Sean Dillon?"
"My fault for abandoning her. Letting her believe I died. Putting thoughts in Ambrose's head to do the same."
He caught something in the wobble of her voice, something begging for reassurance. In his mind, he lay the violet stole across his shoulders.
"You think she's right?" Father Clifford guessed.
The woman in his arms sighed, seeming to deflate.
Stole off again. Peter let out an exasperated sigh of his own. "I wonder if you'll ever believe that you might've actually been missed?"
She didn't answer, only stared at a corner of the room. Maybe a memory lingered there. A ghost.
He imagined putting the stole back on. He was Father Clifford again. "Assumpta, if you can't see it from your perspective, try it from hers. You were always the one talking her down from ledges. After you'd gone, she found herself up on another one, with no one to talk to."
Assumpta burrowed under the blankets now. "I never confided in her!"
"No?"
"Not about you."
Stole off once more, Peter brought the linens back down to reveal her face.
"Well, that was something she spoke of."
Assumpta blinked. "When?"
"Morning after you 'died,' I think. It broke her heart that she'd never known. Leo tried to shake both of us down for some kind of truth. Had you loved the priest."
"He learned soon enough," she mumbled.
"And neither of us could say, because you never-"
"I never thought it would be fair to burden you with that kind of truth, Peter."
"Your untruth was worse." His voice broke now.
She rolled away. He put a stubborn arm around her.
"I knew what would happen, Peter. The first decent priest this town ever had, and I was going to bring him down. The one thing I thought the Church couldn't ever give us, and here was I, the only thing standing in the way of it. I didn't want to be tempted to come back-"
"I didn't stay."
"But how could I have known that?"
"No," he breathed.
"Father Mac was right."
He frowned.
"Ireland is full of my kind! Peter, somewhere in this town in 1998 there was surely another Assumpta Fitzgerald growing up. There always is. Awkward and distracted and only just learning how badly things in the world fail to make sense sometimes, and the adults in her life were almost certain to let her down when she started asking why not. I wasn't about to take from her the only shot she had at keeping any sort of faith. You know how much I wished I could still believe by the time both my parents were gone?!"
She must have heard herself, heard how horribly nearsighted that sounded. She peeked out to face him again.
He swallowed. "I know. I know exactly."
"I'm sorry. Your mother."
He shook his head. "You. I threw my collar in the river that night. Then before I left, Niamh begged me to do the christening. I've simply been pretending ever since."
"And now?"
"Now you're here. It's easy now." His voice grew huskier, more hoarse: "Not a terribly strong conviction, then, is it?"
Her face fell now, in the realisation of just how much she had cost him.