Page 37 of Hold Fast

She looked at her hands in her lap. “There is nothing to forgive. I… appreciate the kindness for what it was.”

They sat in silence for several minutes. In his periphery, Ewan saw her chest rise and fall with her quiet breathing. Her hands were folded in her lap as she glided the pad of one thumb up and down the length of the other. He had a sudden urge to rub his own thumb down that track of skin. He wondered if it was as soft as it looked.

After a time, Una asked, “Do you come here often? To the chapel?”

A threat of a smile tickled the corner of his mouth. “I cannae say I do.”

“You are nae a devout man then?”

Ewan snorted. “Nay. Does that offend you?”

She took her time answering, and though the light was dim, he saw her eyes flick toward the cross over the altar.

“It doesnae offend me at all. My own notions of religion are admittedly… unorthodox.”

“Unorthodox?” Ewan repeated, loving the experience of saying that word.

“Aye. Likely heretical, if I were to be technical.”

“A healer and a heretic,” he mused, giving in to that threatening smile for a moment. “You have captured my curiosity.”

He didn’t look at her, and she didn’t look at him. They were simply two people sitting on a hard pew in a cold chapel in the early morning hours staring at a bare altar.

She sighed. “I struggle to reconcile what I amtoldis true with what Ibelieveis true.”

“And what do you believe to be true, Una?”

“I believe it’s far simpler than we try to make it. I believe that we are here to ease one another’s suffering, to prevent it where we can. I believe in focusing my sights on this life, not what lies after it.”

“You dinnae believe in heaven then?”

She shrugged. “Who can say? I dinnae ken for certain if heaven exists, but I dislike it when we are told to live our lives as if heaven is all that we should care for, as if what we do every day doesnae matter more than as a means to an end.”

He made a noise of agreement in his throat.

“I suppose I do believe in heaven. I’ve seen enough of it, after all,” she continued. “When a lovestruck groom first sees his bride. When a mother first holds her bairn in her arms after the laboring is done. When the heather blooms on the hills and the wind blows it in waves. I dinnae ken what lies beyond this, but this life is filled with heavenly things aplenty.”

Ewan was struck. Heretical indeed, but he couldn’t disagree with her either. He’d seen it too. Sunrises over the snowy peaks, waves crashing against rocky shores, the look on Rabbie’s face when he held the new lambs. They had reminded him of precisely how small he was, how insignificant in the grand scheme of things, no matter how strong and important he might have once felt.

“And hell?” Ewan asked, his voice catching.

“I certainly believe in hell,” she whispered fervently, her voice nearly a hiss in the silence.

He reached out to lay his hand over her clasped ones but stopped, his palm hovering over hers. She held her breath.

“Una,” he said, feeling strangled by his own words, wanting to say something but having no idea where to begin.

“Please, Ewan,” she said her voice breaking. “Please dinnae ask me.”

For a heartbeat, it seemed like she might say more, like she would unburden herself. But then she fairly jumped to her feet.

“I must see to Connor. I bid you good day, Ewan,” she said with a hasty curtsy before side-stepping down the pew and sweeping out of the chapel. A cold gust of wind blew down the aisle as the door closed behind her. Ewan remained in his seat, his fists clenched so tightly that his knuckles cracked.

As the sunrise cast its brilliance through the chapel windows, illuminating floating, shimmering dust, Ewan dropped to his knees on the chapel’s cold stone floor. Bowing his head, he prayed. For Connor. For Una. For himself.

CHAPTER14

As Una made her way across the courtyard, shrugging against the icy wind, she couldn’t help but think of Ewan’s hand, hovering over hers. He’d meant to offer her comfort. It was a gesture that she practiced at nearly every healing, squeezing her patient’s hand to reassure them that all would be well.