There’s a frenzy when the waves wash in, all bustle and white water and chatter like the noise of seagulls. Then silence for long stretches of time as the next sets builds.
“Your mother and Lola are on their way,” Jack says from somewhere behind me on the dunes. “I left Ray a message. I’m sure he’ll come too.”
Neither of us has compared this to Lola’s accident, but Jack’s eyes tells me what he fears. He comes around to the other side of the bed to hold Cassie’s needle-punctured hand.
“You don’t have to be here when they arrive.” He knows that I can’t handle someone else’s initial shock, that I can’t relay the story without breaking apart against it. “I can let them know what’s going on. Why don’t you take a break?”
I nod and let go of Cassie’s hand, still feeling the cool of her skin against the heat of mine. Jack hands me my phone and says he will call when it’s ok to come back or if something changes.
I leave the ICU and wander the halls of the hospital until I see a sign directing me to the chapel. I take out my phone and make a call.
I hear the whoosh of the chapel door opening behind me. I don’t need to turn around to know that it’s Oliver. An aura of peace surrounds him like the sweet incense from the censers in the basilica. I stand up and step into the aisle. He doesn’t stop when he reaches me; he just folds me into a hug. I rest in his arms for a moment and then pull myself free.
“Thank you for wearing jeans,” I say in greeting.
“I don’t often go out in public without pants,” Oliver says. “Sometimes, but not often.”
He smiles at me, and I know he knows what I mean.
He motions to the pew, and we sit down. It’s nice to be close to him again. I thought it would be awkward, but it’s just easy.
“Tell me what’s happening,” he says, his voice soft and soothing. He holds my hand between both of his. He doesn’t speak; he just listens.
“I let Cassie go to the Teen Swim without me, and she slipped on the pool deck and hit her head. She fell into the water and took fluid into her lungs.” I try to say it very clinically so that emotion doesn’t find me. “They’re worried about the fluid, but they’re more worried about the head trauma. She hit really hard.”
Oliver nods at me and squeezes my hand. Go on, he says with his eyes.
“I wasn’t there,” I say, emotion finding me anyway. My heart is beating so hard it chokes my breath, making my words come out like strangled whispers. “I wasn’t there. I let her go on her own, and I went into town to have dinner with Jack. We were talking about patching things up, maybe. I don’t know—I think we were just fighting again.”
“About what?” Oliver asks, coaxing the confession out of me.
“About everything that went wrong.” I sigh heavily as the truth makes its way to the surface. “A while ago, I lost a baby in a late-term miscarriage. Nineteen weeks. A boy. I never got over it. I forgot the family I already had and set out to have another baby like some crazy person on a mission. I drove Jack away, and I made Cassie feel like she wasn’t the sun around which I orbited. She was, they were—both of them—but I got lost in space, I guess.”
I chuckle at my bad analogy to keep from crying, but my voice is shaking so I stop talking.
Oliver presses his hands tighter around mine. “I know telling you that this accident isn’t your fault doesn’t help you in this moment, that your being there would not have stopped it, but guilt and worry are evil cousins. For now, we focus on Cassie getting better.”
“Ok,” I say, nodding my head pitifully.
“Do you want to do something you and I have never done together?”
I look up at him and see a peace in his eyes that stills me. “What’s that?” I ask, apprehensively.
“Pray,” he says.
Yes, please. My throat tightens, and I want to answer him, but I can’t speak. He doesn’t need my words though. He leans over and runs his thumb over my cheek where tears have slipped from my eyes.
He prays. His voice falls across his lips in a low timbre so soothing it slows my heart and breath, and I am calm.
When he is finished, he pats my hand, and I look up at him.
“Can I confess something to you?” I ask.
“I’m not technically able to receive confession,” Oliver says and winks. “But we are always able to confess ourselves to each other.”
“Ray, Lola, and I tried to contact my father with a Magic 8-Ball on Halloween,” I say quickly and sigh out the guilt of it.
Oliver chuckles and then covers his mouth. “I’m going to have to work on my reactions, aren’t I? Did you get ahold of him?”
I shake my head.
“You know what you need?” Oliver pulls something from his back pocket. “It’s not as spectral as a Magic 8-Ball, but it’s a whole lot more effective. And it fits into your pocket.”
In his hands, he holds a small, black Bible. It looks like the little book I saw him buy at the bookstore. Already it’s worn from reading.
“It’s just the New Testament,” he says and cocks his head a bit. “Well, not ‘just,’” he clarifies. “You should read the rest of it, too, but it’s not so bad to start this particular book further in.”
He hands it to me. I look at him, suspiciously, as if he’s handing me a snake—but I guess that’s the other guy.
Oliver nods at me to go ahead and take it. “You called me, after all. I don’t believe in coincidences, but I do believe in divine
