Almost as if he had answers to some of the mysteries I so desperately wanted to solve. Subconscious answers, maybe. But had them, just the same.
“I’ve enjoyed talking with you, Eliza Crowley,” he said as we arrived at the heavy iron gate in front of St. Catherine’s.
“And I’m glad I met you, Nate Grady.” There didn’t seem to be much harm in admitting that. I was never going to see him again.
“My flight back to Boulder leaves tomorrow evening,” he said unexpectedly as I slipped through the gate and shut it behind me. “Any chance you could get away before then? Maybe we could take a walk.”
Looking at him through the iron bars, all I could get out was, “I…”
“I’m sure you’re on a pretty rigid schedule.” He seemed to take pity on me. “It’s okay if you can’t. I won’t be offended.”
“I’m…I have…an hour free after lunch.” I finally stumbled over the words. Who on earth was this woman uttering them? “We could meet down at the corner and walk through the gardens.”
They weren’t owned or tended by the sisters of St. Catherine’s, but because the city park was so close, many of the sisters went there. I’d be in plain sight. Protected.
This could in no way be considered a date.
And until I moved out of college student housing into the main house, I was free to come and go. Curfew aside, of course.
“Great,” he said. “What time?”
“One?”
“I’ll be there.”
I spent the next two hours lying awake in the long room I shared with seven other college students—three of them, like me, soon to be postulants—my nerves buzzing with energy and life. And with guilt…Going to that bar had been so completely out of character for me. And everything that had followed even more so.
My favorite fictional heroin flashed into my mind, a woman whose inner strength and sense of right and wrong had always spoken to me. My mother had read Jane Eyre to me as a child, and since then, I’d reread it often. Did the feelings I was trying so hard to comprehend bear any likeness to those experienced by Jane Eyre when she first met Mr. Rochester? I hoped not.
My attraction wasn’t physical or romantic. At a time when I felt lost between past and future, when I was no more than an in-between, having left behind who I was and not yet arrived at who I was going to be, Nate Grady saw a person.
I wanted to talk to him one more time.
Chapter 2
One Sunday a month, the novices at St. Catherine’s were permitted visits from their parents and siblings. That next day was one of those Sundays and with all the extra people milling around in the grounds, my departure went unnoticed. I wasn’t required to stay on the premises—not until I moved from the dormitory—but on Sundays I rarely left, choosing to study with the sisters rather than involve myself in secular activities on God’s day of rest.
Still, I wasn’t doing anything wrong in meeting Nate and didn’t really understand my relief at being able to escape unseen.
He was waiting at the entrance to the park, dressed in dark slacks, a white shirt and long, skinny black tie. His hair was neatly parted and combed to one side.
“I feel kind of silly, shivering in this sweater while you’re not even wearing your jacket.” He’d slung it over his shoulder in a way that looked casual and rakish—sexy—at the same time. I rejected that thought immediately.
“It’s nearly seventy degrees,” he said, falling into step beside me without so much as an inappropriate glance at my knees, revealed by the navy plaid jumper I’d worn to Mass that morning. Granted, I was wearing my usual dark stockings. “I can’t remember January ever being this warm. Not in my experience, anyway.”
“One year, when I was about twelve, it hit ninety-five in January. My folks cooked hamburgers on the grill and all my older brothers and sisters were there. We played Marco Polo in the pool in our backyard.”
“It’s going to be about twenty-five degrees when I get home tonight.”
His words stopped the smile on my lips—and calmed my heart. He would be leaving soon.
And I was never going to see him again.
“Did you bring anything memorable with you from Mass this morning?”
We’d been talking for almost an hour and I was beginning to feel as if Nate was an old friend. Still, the intimate query into my spiritual life threw me.
And yet it thrilled me. Other than the sisters, no one had ever engaged me in conversation about this most personal aspect of my life.
I had no idea how to answer him.
“My Bible,” I finally said, inanely.
“I meant from the sermon.”
I glanced up at him, careful to lower my eyes before I met his. I wasn’t yet under the tutelage that would require me to keep custody of my eyes, but I knew I would be soon. As a novice, I would be required to keep my gaze low, to refrain from direct eye contact. I wanted to practice it now, I told myself.
Either that, or I was afraid of liking him too much.
“Are you Catholic?” I asked him, instead of answering his question.
“I was born Catholic.” He slid his hands in his pockets and we moved around a bend filled with brightly colored blossoms. “But I’m divorced and when the Church wouldn’t recognize that, I felt kind of hypocritical staying. I’d done what I knew was right for me, but the Church expected me to remain in a marriage that wasn’t working anymore.”
I barely got through the rest of his words, stuck back in the divorced part.
“How long were you married?”
“Two years.”
“When?”
“Before Keith shipped out.”
A couple with two small children smiled at us. I felt an urge to tell them that Nate and I weren’t a couple, but held my tongue.
He’d been married at least four years ago. I would’ve been, at most, fifteen. “Why did you split up?”
“She was still at university and got involved in antiwar protests. Pretty soon they were consuming her life and I hardly saw her.”
“She was protesting the war your little brother was fighting?”
Nate didn’t say anything for a few minutes and I walked silently beside him.
“I never blamed her for her beliefs,” he said slowly as we passed an elderly man walking a dog. “I supported her right to have them.”
“So what happened?”
“She couldn’t accept the fact that I wouldn’t join her. Said she couldn’t live with someone who promoted violence. About a year before Keith was killed, she left me for a fellow student and antiwar activist. They’re married now and just had a baby.”
“I’ll bet she’s got Dr. Spock’s book,” I said to cover my unexpected desire to comfort this man. I was completely out of my element. “He was indicted last week for conspiring to help others avoid the draft,” I added when Nate said nothing.
“I hadn’t heard that.”
“I’ve been listening to the news a lot lately.”
“Because you’re interested or because you know you won’t be able to after next week?”
Could the man see straight