“I want you to know I never forgot about you,” Allison said. “I would have come back if I hadn’t been too scared to. Sometimes I dreamed about...”
Roland took her hand again and twined his fingers within hers, hers within his, and rested their joined hands on his chest.
“Tell me what you dreamed of,” Roland said.
She smiled and looked up at the gray late-evening sky. The first stars were peeking out from behind the dark curtain of night, and she was alone on the beach with the first boy she ever loved, holding his hand with no witness but the ocean.
“I dreamed you’d come and find me,” she said.
“Why me?”
“Wishful thinking,” she said. “You were always my favorite.”
“Favorite sibling?”
“Favorite person. Ever. On earth. I was a little in love with you. And maybe a little in lust...”
Roland did a double take.
“What?” she said. “Twelve-year-old girls think about sex. News at eleven.”
“I’m stunned. Stunned, I tell you,” he said.
Allison tried to punch him in the arm, but he caught her hand before she could make contact and then held it a moment before suddenly letting it go as if he realized he was doing something he shouldn’t.
“You can hold my hand,” she said teasingly. “I’m not going to jump on you and start grinding again.”
“Too bad.”
She went to punch him again, and once more he ducked and caught her hand, and with one impressive show of strength he swooped her up into his arms and carried her to the edge of the water.
“No, no, no! Don’t you dare!” She screamed and laughed and laughed and screamed.
“You’re going in the drink,” he said.
“I’m wearing suede!”
“Fine,” he said with a sigh, and then dumped her on her feet on the dry sand. “But only because of the suede. You probably need a dunk in cold water. Not that it helped last time,” he teased.
“It’s not my fault you were so sexy at sixteen. I lost my head. I won’t do it again, I promise,” she said.
“Good.” He pinched her nose. They were having the conversation they should have had thirteen years ago. Better late than never.
“Unless you want me to do it again,” she said, grinning.
“Behave, twerp. I’m...unavailable.”
“Ten minutes ago you told me you weren’t married and you had no kids,” she reminded him. “And don’t call me twerp, jerk.”
He laughed and her heart danced a little in her chest. She was too happy. Happiness like this scared her.
“This is...a little different.”
“Now I’m intrigued,” she said, more nervous now than curious.
“I’ll tell you, but you have to promise you won’t act weird after I tell you,” he said. “Everyone acts weird after I tell them.”
“I will not act weird,” Allison said. “Promise. I’ll tell you my weird thing if you tell me your weird thing. Deal?”
“Deal,” he said. They shook hands to make it official.
“Now tell me.”
“Before I came back here to help take care of Dad, I was living...in a monastery,” he said.
“You were living in a monastery? Okay. Why?”
He smiled at her, almost apologetically.
“Same reason anyone who lives in a monastery lives in a monastery,” he said. “I’m a monk.”
Chapter 7
“Holy shit.”
That was either the most wrong thing for Allison to say or the most right. She couldn’t be sure.
Roland lay on his back on the sand, hands twined behind his head, and quietly smiling. He must be used to reactions like that. One didn’t normally suspect ruggedly handsome men of about thirty to be monks. At least, she didn’t. She laughed but it wasn’t a happy sound. Fifteen minutes ago it seemed like the only things that had changed since she left were their heights and weights and ages. But as Roland lay there on the sand waiting for her to say something else, something not stupid...she realized everything had changed. Absolutely everything. She had no idea who this man was.
“I didn’t know monks were, you know, still a thing,” Allison said, trying to hide her shock behind flippancy.
“We’re still a thing,” he said.
“It’s just... I’ve never met a monk before.”
“Have you ever been to a monastery?” Roland asked. “Because that’s the best place to meet them. Often the only place.”
“You’re laughing at me.”
“A little. But quietly and on the inside.”
“You’re really a monk. An actual reallive monk.”
“I really am. I belong to Saint Brendan’s. It’s a couple hours down the coast.”
Roland’s choice of verb stung. He wasn’t a member of Saint Brendan’s. He didn’t live there. He belonged to them. A tiny part of Allison had once thought he belonged to her. A bigger part of her once dreamed she belonged to him.
“So what’s it like being a monk?” she asked, talking over the pain. “Can you work miracles? Recite a Bible verse? Sing a monk song? Monks sing, right? They sing and swing that smoky ball thing?”
“Don’t take this the wrong way, kid, but you were born to be the baby sister.”
“Hurtful,” she said, shaking her head. “Very hurtful.”
“I shocked you, didn’t I?” he asked. He rolled up off the sand and looked intently at her.
“Yeah,” she said with real feeling. He had shocked her, and like an electric shock, it had hurt. “I could probably shock you, too, if I wanted. Which I don’t.”
Why should she care if he was a monk or not? It was an interesting job, yes, but what did that have to do with her?
“A monk,” she said again. “That wouldn’t have been in my top one hundred guesses. Are you currently a monk? Or an ex-monk?”
“I’m a monk on abbot-authorized medical leave.”
“So you’re planning on going back? I mean, after your... When you can?” she asked, and she wanted him to say, No, of course not.
“That’s the plan,” he said. “Though I’m trying not to think about it. The longer before I go back, the better.”
She nodded. “Right.”
“Are you upset?” he asked.
“Why would I be upset?”
He turned his gaze to the ocean waves. “Same reason Dad was upset. You think I’m wasting my life on a fairy tale. You think it’s medieval. You think I’d be happier doing a thousand other things with my life...” Allison could tell he’d heard those arguments a thousand times. “Dad’s not religious. He worships science. I broke his heart when I joined.”
“It’s none of my business what you do with your life,” Allison said. Roland looked at her, furrowing his brow as if she’d said something wrong.
“That’s the sort of polite thing strangers say. We’ve got too much history to be polite strangers.”
“What can I say? Roland, I was an English major. Most people thought I was throwing my life away on that, too. I’m not going to judge you.”
“No vows of celibacy and poverty with being an English major,” he said.
She chortled a dramatic, mocking chortle. “Oh, trust me—English majors and poverty go back as far as monks and celibacy.”
“Are these fake diamond earrings, then?” He tugged her earlobe and she batted his hand away, still playing the part of the annoying baby sister.
“These were a gift,” she said. “I couldn’t afford them on my own. I spend all my money on books.” It was McQueen who’d bought all her jewelry and her clothes including the ones she was wearing—suede boots, designer jeans, a leather jacket that cost McQueen as much as a small used car and La Perla underwear. If she were trying to pass for a starving artist, she wasn’t doing a very good job of it.
“I can believe that,” Roland said. “We’d have to take your book out of your hand to get you to eat. You loved them more than anything.”
“You don’t become an English major because you love books. You do it because you need books. It’s a codependent relationship.”
He grinned. “Very poetic. Spoken like an English major.”
“Why did you become a monk?”
“Guess for a similar reason you were an English major. I didn’t love God, but I needed God.”