The last secret_ a novel - Mary McGarry Morris [37]
“No, no,” Father Grewley says. “It's my fault. I should have checked the copy. It's only right. They do so much.”
“But that's really all they care about, about their … their credentials. Like belonging to the right club. It's not about helping people.”
“But people do get helped, in spite of the motivation.” He smiles. “Flattery, vanity, guilt, whatever works.”
She opens her checkbook, scribbles the amount. Eight hundred dollars. “You're right.” She holds out the check. “Whatever works.” Hammond money. It never really mattered, now even less. If anything, it seems like a genetic flaw thinning each generation's moral fiber. She'd gladly give it away, every penny of it, just to be happy again. And to see her children strong.
“No, I didn't mean you, Nora.”
“I know. But I want to. Please.”
She hurries to her car. For all his wide-eyed naïveté, the young priest knows exactly what he is doing. She admires that. It is his mission to craft human weakness to a higher purpose. If only he could do the same with her. Confronting Robin last week brought a brief surge of confidence, a fleeting sense of control, but then her anger turned to guilt, which makes no sense at all. Seeing Robin's pain gave little satisfaction. Hurting her has only made Nora feel worse. Maybe there is no answer beyond forgiveness. It's all Ken seems to want, but she feels empty, with nothing left to give. Going through the motions takes all her energy.
Seven o'clock. Too late to start cooking dinner now. There is a pan of leftover lasagna, enough for Chloe and Drew, anyway. As she drives, she calls home.
“Mom!” Chloe answers. “Where've you been? I've been calling you!”
“A meeting. My phone was off, but Chloe, listen. In the fridge, on the bottom shelf, there's—”
“Mom.” Chloe's muffled voice. “There's someone here. He said he's an old friend of yours.”
“Who?” She turns onto the highway. “What's his name?”
“Ed Hawkins. But the weird thing is, he's the same one, that guy. The one that was looking for that street before.”
She sees him through the door glass. He is sitting at her table watching Chloe take plates from the cupboard. He stands up when Nora comes into the kitchen. For a moment she's surprised that he's older. He's thinner, not as tall as she remembers. There is a silvery blondness to his thinning hair and his eyes, the same pale blue but with a bright transparency she finds hard to look at.
“Nora! It's you! After all this time.” His arms spring wide, expecting what, she wonders for a queasy moment: an embrace, a kiss? She shrinks back. He offers his hand.
She can barely touch it. “I'll finish the table,” she tells Chloe.
His gaze holds, in full measure of her distress. He smiles. “I was just telling your beautiful daughter how much she reminds me of you. Same age as then, right?”
“Yeah, seventeen. Same as my mother!” Chloe answers, clearly enjoying being part of her mother's reunion with an old friend. She is unrolling place mats onto the table. “So'd you guys go to the same college?”
“More of a summer thing,” he says, and Chloe smirks, eyebrows raised. “We worked together,” he adds.
A lie. He'd hung around the hotel a lot, particularly the golf course, but he never held a job there.
“So what're you doing here?” she asks, for Chloe's sake, straining to sound unconcerned.
“I didn't know what happened. I always wondered.” He'd been in D.C. recently, on business, and what does he pick up but Newsweek. There's an article he's interested in, faith-based charities. Doesn't know why, but he kept looking at this one picture. “Took me a minute. Same face, same first name. Nora!”
Hands trembling, she slides the lasagna pan onto the oven rack. She tells Chloe she'd better get started on her homework. But she only has a little left, Chloe protests. “Then go finish it,” Nora says. Like her father, Chloe loves company. “Now, please.”