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Sierra
Saint Andrew’s Parish was smaller than any church I’d been to back home. The exterior walls were white-washed and the window trim was painted a pale green. The windows themselves were made from stained glass, but nothing like the towering windows that spanned several stories like at the cathedral back home.
I’d put on my Sunday best even though it was Tuesday evening. Parishioners mingled outside on the lawn while a few funneled through the open double doors leading into the church.
I paused at the steps, looking up into the darkness beyond the threshold. My purple floral dress rippled around my calves in a soft breeze that seemed to push me closer to the church—beckoning me forward.
I hadn’t been to church in so, so long. Months, in fact. The last time I’d stepped foot in one was shortly after leaving home and going on the run, but it had been a small, rundown church on the side of the highway somewhere in Kentucky, and no one hadbeen inside as I sat down at one of the dust-covered pews and wondered what the hell I was going to do next.
I’d almost gone back home that night. I’d stayed in that little church—a denomination I wasn’t sure of—and fought for the courage to get back in my car and keep driving.
Inside that little church, I’d thought of Pete, of that memory of our night at his bar when we’d first met, how everything between us had been easy.
Much easier than now,I thought, considering Pete and I had been forced into this situation and now were slowly crawling back to the sudden, clear-as-day familiarity that had sparked this thing, whatever it was, between us.
I sucked in a breath and walked into the church. It was a while before mass started, and I sat toward the back in a pew that remained mostly empty through the service. I didn’t hear what was said or done. I didn’t stand up and take communion. I never did. I didn’t consider myself Catholic by any means. I wasn’t really sure who I was or where I belonged.
All I knew that was here, in this church, and maybe even in this town and the arms of the man I was trying not to fall in love with… I’d felt more whole than I had in my entire life.
Mass flew by in a blur as I sat there and watched without paying attention. My parents weren’t religious. I’d never been taught to pray, or the bible. I’d gone to confession only once. It had been in the days leading up to my flight from my old life.
The priest asked what plagued me and I told him everything. I told him my whole life story in the same way I’d told Pete the night I came back here to stay.
The priest listened to every word without speaking. I could practically hear his soft smile at the end of my confession when I admitted I wasn’t Catholic and wasn’t sure what I was even doing here.
“People seek solace in lot of ways. You’re finding yours in the shelter of our church, in the shelter of a God who loves you regardless of where you fall in his flock.”
But when I asked him what I should do, he had no answers for me. It was silly, looking back at it now. I’d been looking for answers in all the wrong places my entire life. I’d wanted freedom to make my own decisions about my life. I wanted freedom from the theoretical chains that had bound me to my parents and their hefty expectations. I’d wanted the choice to choose who I loved and married.
Shortly after that confessional, I’d run, seeking solace elsewhere.
Seeking it here and finding it with the man I loved.
Because I loved him. These past three weeks had been the best I’d had in my life. Falling asleep in his arms—naked and spent—had a dream come true.
But Pete was only doing this because I was pregnant.
This wasn’t about me.
Pete was a good man despite what he’d admitted today. He fiercely protected those he loved and fought for them every second of every day. I was lucky he was the guy who got me pregnant. Taking care of me hadn’t been a question to him. He’d been on my side from the beginning.
Out of duty, and not much else.
Sure, we were sleeping together. We spent out nights rolling through his sheets. But our days were spent in a heavy, routine silence that was slowly eating away at me.
Would that change when the paternity test results came back? Would things be easier, or at least feel easier, once he knew I wasn’t lying?
I hadn’t realized mass was over. I wondered how long I was sitting there in that pew by myself before I gathered up my purse and made my way outside.
I felt lighter. I always did after something like this. The music and soft words of the priests and the attendants always lulled me into a deep, meditative stupor.
When I reached his truck, I knew without a shadow of a doubt that I needed to talk to him about this. He’d laid his past on the table for me like an offering and I should have laid out my overwhelming feelings and fears in return.
I wanted him as much as I wanted this baby. I wanted this life with him, but I wanted him to want this life with me not because I was pregnant, but because he felt the same feelings I did.
I couldn’t force him into that. I couldn’t beg or plead for him to love me.
But for the first time in my entire life, I felt like I had something to lose. Something special, something rare, and something almost sacred.
