Chapter 29 - Gabriel #2
The pew creaks beside me. Alma's familiar scent of coffee grounds and fry oil settles into the space before she does.
Her rosary beads click against the wood as she crosses herself—faster than protocol requires, the way she always has.
The edge of her apron peeks from her purse, hastily stuffed inside, still bearing a smudge of the day's special.
The diner keys jangle as she sets her bag down, the sound of a business closed hours before it should be.
She’s always known where lost boys go to argue with God.
“Woman troubles,” she says, no greeting, no surprise at finding me back here. “Never seen a worse case of it.”
I open my mouth to speak but she holds up one hand—the universal “shut up, I’m talking.”
“You’ve got yourself a good woman, and you’re sitting here like someone died.
” She turns to look at me properly—the woman who knew me before the collar, before Elena, when I was just Jorge’s boy who ate too many pastelitos at her old Miami diner and left excessive tips because my mother raised me right.
“I don’t have a good woman.” The words come out smaller than they should, shrunk by the holy hush of the nave.
“She packed a bag. Says she might as well leave me before I leave her.” My jaw is tight, my chest even tighter, like if I let a muscle go slack, everything inside me will pour out onto the cold marble floor.
Alma’s eyes swing up to the altar, the way you check the ceiling for leaks. “This is the part where you curse the sky, drink the sacramental wine, and then weep into your vestments, sí?”
I try to laugh, but I can’t. I imagine Sera in our apartment above the club, alone, the way she looked this morning—all bones and fire, talking like she already belonged to some future without me. Alma’s hand finds my shoulder. It’s warm and real, grounding the way she always is.
“Does she love you?” Alma asks, voice gentle now. It isn’t a question so much as a test.
I remember Sera’s face, the way the words slipped out of her like a wound: God, I love you and I watch you do it even here— She hadn’t meant to say it, but it was truer for having torn its way out of her.
“Yes,” I say. I taste the confession, stranger than any other I’ve given.
“And do you love her?” Alma asks. The words sit between us, solid as a communion wafer on the tongue.
I look at her, the way I never look at parishioners, at my own flesh and blood, at anyone. Her kindness is a force, her knowing something ancient. She gives me the smallest window to respond, just the span of one breath, before she moves to fill the silence.
Alma leans back, her rosary clutched in one hand, the beads clicking like a clock counting down.
“It isn’t a trick question, Father,” she says, her Miami accent cut with the steel of someone who raised three kids on tips and grit.
“And it isn’t one or the other. You can love God and love a woman.
Plenty of people do. You think God needs all this?
” She waves at the church, at me, at my bloody knuckles.
“This moping and suffering like you’re Jesus Himself? Maybe He just needs you to show up.”
I stare at my hands, the blood drying in the cracks of my skin. “I’m not sure I know how to show up for her. Or for myself.”
She sighs, the heavy, loving exasperation of every waitress who’s ever waited for a regular to finally get his life together.
“You think anyone does, at first?” Her voice drops to a hush.
“I’ve seen the way you look at that woman when you think no one’s watching. You carry her inside you like a relic.”
I want to protest, but the words won’t form.
Instead, a memory floats up: Sera’s laugh echoing down the church hallway the first time I let her help with the parish food drive.
The way she called me out for eating the donuts supposed to be for the kids.
The way my chest had filled with something so bright it felt like sin.
“You’re a good man, Gabriel,” Alma says, “but you’re not a saint. None of us are.”
“She deserves better than me.” A mobster. Raised on dirty money. Addicted to violence.
Alma shakes her head. “You want to abandon your woman, go ahead. Just know you’re not running from her, you’re running from yourself. And you’ll never be fast enough.”
I let the words settle, heavier than any Sunday homily, more honest than anything I’ve heard in years.
I close my eyes and try to picture a life not built on penance but on something like hope.
Sera’s voice in the kitchen, the warmth of her body in bed, the way even her anger feels like a kind of prayer.
Alma stands, gathering her things. She pauses, hand on my shoulder, gentle but insistent.
“Go on home,” she says.
I nod, stunned by the simplicity of it.
She walks down the aisle, each step echoing her authority, her faith in the world’s ability to heal. I watch until she’s gone, then sit a moment longer in the hush, the air thick with incense and possibility.
Maybe Alma is right. Maybe all God wants is for us to show up. Maybe that’s enough.
I push up from the pew, my hands still shaking, and step into the Homestead night, ready—terrified, but ready—to see if Sera is still waiting at home.