Chapter 26
The smell of citrus soap clung to the air, like it had been baked in the asphalt.
Children ran with dripping sponges, and Jack, with his other idiots, strutted around in their tight polyester.
They all acted as if they’d personally invented public service.
The cruisers gleamed under the afternoon sun, hoods propped up, and lights flashing for dramatic effect.
All the kids were enjoying themselves…except poor Ronan.
Miranda had him locked against the wall, his bleary-eyed gaze, forcing him to collect money from people as an “extra incentive.”
What the fuck happened to her?
The Miranda Saint Clare I had known since coming here wasn’t this. She was broken and meek, but still had some fire. We did counseling sessions for a while. I still couldn’t comprehend her actions a few months back, and my skin burned when she looked at me.
Bishop Matthews made me feel like a prisoner, leading me by my back to some area away from the chaos of the fundraiser. I kept trying to catch Sayuri’s gaze. I needed to decipher what had hurt her so badly in Miranda’s fucked up nonsense.
Bishop Matthews finally steered me to a table with one of my partioners I recognized immediately. Betty Leantner.
She was…expressive.
Matthews all but threw me behind the folding table like a donation jar for a woman who laughed too easily.
I couldn’t see Sayuri. The sea of people swallowed her. And I was out here like a floating boat, drifting further and further away from my anchor.
“And what made you choose the priesthood?” Betty said before I had time to answer the other question.
The way her head tilted seemed unnatural and downright painful.
God help me.
It had been an hour of this shit, and the Bishop continued holding me hostage, accepting Betty’s random dollars she pulled from her purse periodically.
I kept my smile thin. “It wasn’t a choice. It was obedience.”
“To what?”
“Conviction. And purpose.”
She blinked as that answer bored her, her hand pausing on her wallet. Bishop Matthews’s smile felt cold, and there was the slightest hint of threat in his too-bright aqua eyes.
Across the lot, looking like an action figure from a distance, Sayuri wrung out a sponge and continued to wash the cars alone. Her movements were precise and efficient…controlled. Everything I wasn’t right now. Miranda’s voice echoed again in my head.
‘Don’t touch my son. You aren’t a mother.’
Sayuri hadn’t defended herself with her cruel comments. She hadn’t retaliated or tried to de-escalate the situation.
She’d gone silent.
It was like she concaved in on herself, and the wall I spent months chipping away at was erected back to a height even above what was there originally.
That silence unsettled me more than anger would have.
“You seem distracted, Father,” the donor pressed.
“I am observing the volunteers.”
She leaned closer. “Or one volunteer?”
I ignored that.
The tap of wood hit the table legs near my foot, measured and demanding.
Bishop Matthews sat beside me, his posture immaculate. Tailored black shirt fitted across a lean frame. His salt-and-pepper hair was cropped tight on the sides and swept back on top. He held his cane upright, resting his palm over the gleaming onyx gem handle like a king surveying a board.
“Engage,” he murmured without looking at me.
“I am,” I mouthed back to him.
“Not sufficiently.”
I swallowed my irritation.
The donor giggled. “He’s very serious, Bishop. I like this wirily one.”
“He should be,” the Bishop replied smoothly. “He is beneath me, and I don’t hold weak leaders.”
Across the lot, Miranda hovered near Sayuri again. But this time, she ducked away and left the area. I followed her along the tree line, hoping she’d see me.
Why had Sayuri folded with Miranda’s words?
Why that word in particular?
Why mother?
It wasn’t an insult most women would crumble over.
Sayuri was not fragile. She was not sentimental, so why had that struck so deeply?
Did she lose her mother, perhaps?
Betty touched my arm again, and I jolted, feeling incredibly uncomfortable at her gaze over my exposed flesh. It was a car wash fundraiser, but the Bishop should have let me grab my damn shirt. “Do you ever think about what your children would look like?”
My stomach tightened unexpectedly.
“I have no children, and as a priest, there are no children in my future.”
“But if you did.”
“I do not.”
She smiled like I was playing coy.
Across the treeline, Sayuri was pulled by something unseen. One minute she was walking in the clearing, and the next a hand reached out and snatched her.
She had looked so defeated, not humiliation but grief. A quiet, internal kind that consumed her. My thoughts shifted to the figure pulling into the trees.
Were they silly children?
Children…
Had she wanted children?
Had she tried?
I didn’t know if she had been married or anything about her past.
I exhaled slowly. Kaito flashed in my mind, and I felt my teeth grit. She said they had an agreement.
Was that…child custody?
They did not have love for each other. It was only fear and anger.
Had that once been love?
Or…had he taken that from her?
The idea lodged uncomfortably in my chest, and I looked more intently at the tree line, trying to see Sayuri again.
Kids had yanked people into the wooded area all day, the screams and ghost stories filling the fundraiser’s diameter, and making all the adults roll their eyes.
It had to be the children playing a prank.
Sayuri loved the kids. She always had such joy when watching the center with me. Maria and Elias loved her, and even Decan had a soft spot for her. Perhaps she had miscarried her own child, or maybe she couldn’t conceive.
That word had reopened something private and devastating in her eyes, and I could guesstimate all day, but I needed to ask her.
The thought unsettled me more than jealousy ever could because loss was sacred.
And I had not known…
How can I love this woman so much that I do not truly know?
“You are drifting again,” the Bishop said softly.
“I am listening.”
“You are analyzing something you should not, Father.”
I met his gaze, and he moved his body to block my view of the trees.
“What is your problem, Bishop?”
“There are no problems, Father Franklin. However, your daydreaming becomes one when it interferes with duty.”
“I am fulfilling my duty.”
His eyes flicked to Sayuri’s area, still hidden in those lines of trees, then back to me.
“Hmm, yes. See that you continue to.”
A warning.
Miranda’s voice cut through the noise again, shrill and erratic as she ran toward the area we were in. The laughter around her was uncomfortable and forced. Jack sidled up next to her, and their conversation was so loud it overpowered the awkward back and forth of Betty and me.
“What is up with you, wife? You are bat shit crazy. Don’t make a scene.”
“Don’t act as if you know me, Jack-off. Go plump the secretary and stay away from me.”
Jack growled and smacked her across the face. She went down like a sack of potatoes, and the scene made me jolt upright. Only the Bishop and I could see. Betty had her back to them.
“Sit, Father,” Matthews demanded, and I gaped at him.
“But Bishop—”
“Like one who grabs a stray dog by the ears, is someone who rushes into a quarrel not their own, Jed.”
My mouth fell open as Jack gripped Miranda’s still form and hoisted her over his shoulder.
“Bishop—”
The sharp bite of his cane slammed into my shins and made me wince.
“Let us remember a scripture, shall we? Mrs. Leandt, what is the rest of this passage? ‘For the wages of sin…”
“Is death!” the old croon clapped proudly.
Bishop Matthews eyed me as he nodded, those bright eyes darker than the stone on his cane.
I bit my tongue, watching Miranda and Jack disappear back into the crowd. Ronan looked worried with his mother draped like a blanket over Jack’s shoulder, but Jack shrugged him off, leading him to their car.
Sayuri appeared again, re-emerging from the trees.
She didn’t seem like herself. She kept looking around at the woods, spinning around to try to face all directions.
The Bishop saw her and gestured for her to come over.
The concern I felt must have shown on my face, because Bishop shook his head at me as Sayuri approached.
“Good evening, child,” he said, fake calm and charm oozing from him. “Are you faring well at this wonderful charity?”
Sayuri looked like she had seen a ghost, and her body was dirty.
What the fuck happened in those woods?
I tried to catch her gaze, but she wouldn’t look at me.
“I…I am feeling ill, Bishop. Thank you for allowing me to attend this event. However, I shall see myself out now.”
Where was she going? Back to the parish residence?
“It is a great honor to see you. I trust that you can find your way home.”
She looked so…cold. Zero emotion on her face, and her eyes were darker than ever.
“I’m glad that brings you fulfillment. Good night.”
The cane dug into my shins as I tried to get up, but she walked away. That restraint disturbed me more than fury would have. Her lack of response made me feel like I was drowning.
Betty leaned closer. “That woman seems icy.”
“She is not,” I said before I could stop myself, gripping the cane and shoving at its blockade.
“I need to—”
“Now now…” the Bishop cut me off, digging that damn cane harder into my knees.
I clenched my jaw.
“She appears unaffected by the presence of such holy people,” the donor continued.
“She is my acolyte,” I replied through gritted teeth.
“No,” the Bishop said with a dangerous smile. “She is the church’s acolyte.”
Fuck. You. She is mine.
But her icy expression and lack of emotion toward me made me falter in my thoughts. I knew that wasn’t entirely true.
Was she mad at me for leaving her?
Did she know I didn’t have a choice?
Unbothered people didn’t freeze like that.
Unbothered people didn’t go hollow for a fraction of a second and not meet my gaze.
Was this me, or Miranda’s comment?
I could see so many emotions in her eyes, yet nothing at all.
Violence.
Stress.
Fear.
The possibilities spiraled.
And what disturbed me most…
Was that I didn’t know?
I had prided myself on seeing through her masks, on understanding her subtleties. Yet there were entire rooms in her past I had never stepped into because…she didn’t want me to.
“You must separate yourself,” the Bishop murmured.
“From what?” I responded through gritted teeth.
What the fuck was this cane made out of? I couldn’t move.
“Personal concern,” the Bishop said.
“Concern is not attachment.”
“It becomes attachment when it agitates you,” the Bishop’s face held a snide look.
“I am not agitated. And I care for all my flock.”
“Hmm. You are.”
I inhaled slowly, letting his threat roll off of me. Across the lot, Sayuri reached the edge of the parking area near the cars.
She paused.
For a moment, I thought she might look at me like I had for her.
But…she didn’t.
She left me.
The donor sighed dramatically. “I suppose I’ll have you all to myself now.”
That should not have irritated me, but it did, not because of jealousy. But because I had not been standing beside Sayuri when she needed someone to stand beside her. I didn’t know what the hell happened in the trees.
And I did not know why she had needed me to be there.
The ignorance gnawed at me.
What happened?
Did someone scare her?
Did she see Miranda and Jack’s disturbing confrontation?
“Unless the Lord build the house, the builder’s labor is in vain, Father.” The Bishop’s voice came in a low, measured tone.
I kept my gaze on the road where Sayuri had disappeared.
“Faith by itself, if not accompanied by action, is dead, Bishop.”
The Bishop’s eyes narrowed, and he smiled at Betty.
“This concluded the service. Thank you for all your charitable donations to the good Lord. May you have a blessed day, my child.”
Betty got up and shook both our hands. Before she had left the area, the Bishop dropped the pretenses of his role and looked at me.
“You have changed, Jedidiah, and I intend to find how this shall mold your crown.”
I didn’t answer.
I couldn’t focus on his threats because I was consumed by the look in her eyes when she went quiet and cold…
That was not pride wounded.
That was something taken.
And the fact that I did not know what it was…disturbed me more than anything Miranda could have said.
I loved this woman, but now, more than ever, I realized a glaring fact I had missed.
I didn’t know who I had fallen for.
My career, safety, and life, as I know them, could all end because she would not let me beyond her walls.
And I didn’t truly know what lies behind them.