Just Like Heaven Read online

  “You don’t have to explain, honey.”

  “Yes, I do.” Tears streamed freely down her daughter’s cheeks but Gwynn didn’t seem to notice. “This is important to me, Mom, and it’s important to Andrew. He knows he isn’t exactly what you’ve been dreaming of for me. Don’t make it any harder, okay?”

  “I won’t,” Kate promised, enveloping Gwynn in her arms. “You don’t have to worry.”

  I’ll be worrying enough for all of us.

  Pinecrest Village Assisted Living—the same day

  For the last eighteen months Mark had been going steady with a woman named Charlotte Petruzzo, a ninety-something-year-old widow with dyed auburn hair and a sense of humor that nothing life threw at her had been able to suppress.

  It had been his privilege and honor to sit with her two afternoons a week and talk to her about everything from God and the probability of heaven to her great-grand-children’s exploits to why she didn’t believe in term limits.

  “Where is she?” he asked Charlotte’s next-door neighbor, a spry octogenarian named Max Remar who was a legend among the widows of Pinecrest. “I knocked and there’s no answer.”

  “She’s in the hospital wing,” Max said around his enormous unlit Cuban cigar. “Had trouble breathing last night and pressed the Life Alert button. You shoulda seen this place. Looked like a movie set.”

  “How is she?”

  Max made a so-so gesture with his hand. “She’s ninety-seven. How’s she gonna be?”

  “Ninety-seven?” Mark chuckled. “She told me she was ninety-two.”

  “Don’t tell her I told you. She’ll stop sharing her amaretti with me.”

  “I’m a priest,” Mark said. “I’ll consider it privileged information.”

  The hospital wing was a low white building situated near an artificial pond on the southwest corner of the Pinecrest complex. It was equipped to handle minor surgical procedures and a small number of long-term convalescent cases, but more serious problems were dispatched to the Medical Center at Princeton. He turned off his cell and pushed through the front door.

  “Mrs. Petruzzo is in 1-D,” the head nurse told Mark a few minutes later.

  “How is she doing?”

  “She’s ninety-seven,” the nurse said with a bittersweet smile. “I’m afraid it’s finally caught up to her.”

  He knew what that meant and it made him profoundly sad.

  “Can I visit with her?”

  “She’d be furious if you didn’t.”

  Charlotte looked the same as always. Impeccably groomed. Eyes bright with curiosity. She was decked out in her finest embroidered silk robe from her years in China with her late husband. Her gnarled fingers glittered with gold and silver rings heavy with jewels in every color of the rainbow.

  But something had changed. He knew it the second he walked into the room.

  “You’re late,” she said as he kissed her Estée-Laudered cheek.

  “Next time you move, make sure you send out a change-of-address card.”

  She laughed heartily, but it seemed to drain her of energy. She rested her head back against her pillow and closed her eyes for a moment.

  “So pull up a chair and stay a while,” she said. “I want to hear all about your weekend. Did you find your mystery woman?”

  Usually he listened while Charlotte told him tales from a life well lived but today her question opened the flood-gates and he heard himself telling her everything.

  “That explains it,” Charlotte said when he finished. “I knew something was different the second you walked in the room. You have that glow.”

  “Men don’t glow.”

  “Oh, they glow,” she said with a knowing laugh, “but you have to be very old before you can spot it. Imagine what the young ones could do with that knowledge. Society would be turned on its head!”

  Had she been this vital in her prime, this wise and wonderful, or was this all part of God’s plan to save the best for last?

  “You had yourself a weekend too, Charlotte.” He met her eyes. “I knew something was different the second I walked into the room.”

  She laughed and pointed an index finger at him. “I always said you were pretty funny for a priest.”

  “Seeing as how your average priest is a real stand-up comic.”

  She made a broad gesture that encompassed herself, the hospital bed, the room. “I imagine you have this all figured out.”

  “Maybe, but I’d rather hear it from you.”

  “I think it’s time.”

  He nodded. “That’s possible.”

  “I have this sense of—” She stopped for a moment, then shook her head. “I wish I could explain the feeling to you.”

  “Completion?”

  “Yes! That’s it. Completion. As if I’ve done what I was meant to do and it’s time to turn the page.”

  “How does that make you feel?”

  “A little disappointed,” she said. “I still had hopes that Sean Connery would find his way to Pinecrest.”

  It was an old joke but one that still made them both laugh.

  “Have you spoken with your doctor?”

  “What can he say that I don’t already know? I’m old. I’ve lived a long, full life. Sooner or later God calls you home.”

  “You sound like you’ve made your peace with it.”

  Her eyes flashed with remembered fire. “I’m not saying I want to go tomorrow,” she reminded him, “or even next week, but I will be going before too long. I don’t want you to be surprised.”

  He nodded, but the truth was that he was always surprised. Even though his faith was firmly rooted in a belief in the hereafter, he was never ready to see one of his own say good-bye. For all of his education, all of his training, he had yet to find a way to gracefully accept death as a fact of life.

  “When do you leave us for the north woods?”

  “The Thursday before Memorial Day.”

  She nodded. “Good. I’ll still be here so I can give you a proper sendoff.”

  “Balloons and a brass band?”

  “And a parade.”

  “I’m going to hold you to that, Charlotte.”

  “You’ve been in my prayers,” she said. “I hope going home again will make you happy.”

  “I need to go back,” he said. “I have some debts to repay.”

  “Or maybe you have some ghosts to put to rest.”

  “Could be.”

  “Quite a few of us had hoped you would change your mind and stay here in the Garden State.”

  He had two offers on the table from New Jersey parishes in search of a permanent rector, but he had committed himself to his old parish in New Hampshire.

  “I’m going to miss my friends,” he said. “It’s been a good few years down here.” He could have made a life for himself here if his old congregation hadn’t asked him back.

  “Seems a shame to pack and move right after you found someone interesting.”

  “Don’t read more into my weekend than was there. I talked to a woman in a parking lot. That’s all that really happened.”

  “Are you going to see her again?”

  “She invited me to lunch tomorrow.” He raised his hand at the look of delight on Charlotte’s face. “A thank-you lunch.”

  “You’re in my prayers every night,” she said. “You deserve some happiness.”

  “Your prayers have been helping. I think I’m finally on the right road, Charlotte.” He took her hands in his. “Let’s take this chance to pray together.” Charlotte bowed her head and he began, “Almighty God, we entrust all who are dear to us to Your never-failing care and love, for this life and the life to come, knowing that You are doing for them better things than we can desire or pray for; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.”

  And then he added one more silent prayer to God, asking that He not take Charlotte until she was ready to go.

  Mark turned his cell back on as soon as he cleared the hospital unit. The voice mail
alert sounded immediately.

  Three calls. All from Maggy Boyd.

  “Where have you been? Did you forget to turn on your phone?”

  “I was on a hospital visit. What’s up?”

  “A bump in the road,” she said. “Nothing major.” He heard the hesitation in her voice. “At least I don’t think it is but you need to know that Bishop Clennon hasn’t signed off yet on your contract.”

  “Why not?”

  “He has some . . . questions.”

  “Come on, Maggy. You’ve always been straight with me. It’s about the drinking, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” she said. “They had a problem down in Laconia with a rector that ended up in an ugly court case last year. I guess he’s feeling a little skittish.”

  “If he has questions, why didn’t he ask them during the negotiation?”

  “I don’t have an answer for that, Mark.”

  This wasn’t about his drinking at all, he suddenly realized. This was about something else entirely. “He’s found another candidate, hasn’t he?”

  He heard her sigh. “That’s the talk, yes.” A young, homegrown family man whose only baggage was a diaper bag and a laptop case.

  “So what can I do about it?”

  “Not much,” she said. “The vestry is getting together tonight and we’ll marshal our forces, but I have to tell you that you have competition.”

  He tried to force a laugh, but it wasn’t easy. “I hope I can back out of the house sale.”

  Maggy’s response was one word, definitely unprintable.

  “E-mail me tonight and let me know how it went.”

  “I’m really sorry, Mark,” she said. “None of us saw this coming.

  “We’ll win him over,” Maggy promised. “You’ve always been the right man for this job. Nothing can change that. Just hang tight a little longer.”

  He didn’t have a choice. It was in God’s—and Bishop Clennon’s—hands now.

  Ten

  “I’d say it went pretty well, all things considered.” Maeve tossed a red onion into the shopping cart and reached for a bunch of seedless white grapes.

  Kate, who had been inspecting the Fuji apples with the eye of a nuclear scientist, shrugged. “I never said Andrew wasn’t a nice guy.”

  Andrew Dempsey drove a pickup truck that made Mark Kerry’s beat-up Honda look like a Lexus. He wasn’t much taller than Gwynn but he made up for it with an impressive arrangement of muscle. His hair was sandy brown, bleached blond in places by sun and salt water, and his eyes were the faded blue that seemed to be the province of sailors and fliers. He came bearing flowers and a box of bakery cookies tied up with red and white string.

  He was awkward and painfully shy and left most of the real talking to Gwynn, who had been more than happy to fill in the silences with a résumé of his wonderfulness.

  All in all, it had been the longest eleven minutes of Kate’s life. She would have breathed a long loud sigh of relief when they drove away in that brine-seeped pickup truck if she hadn’t been bawling her eyes out instead.

  They had meds to keep her mending heart under control. Why couldn’t they invent something that would help her rule in these unfamiliar, pesky emotions?

  “I think this might be the real thing,” Maeve said.

  That caught Kate’s attention.

  “The real thing? I’ll believe it’s the real thing when she moves into his place near the docks and sees all of her dreams washed out to sea with the tide.”

  “Gwynn isn’t afraid of hard work.”

  Kate arched a brow in her mother’s direction. “Gwynn still brings home her laundry. She has trouble working four days straight at O’Malley’s without calling in sick so she can catch up on her soaps.” Both Gwynn and Andrew were in for a shock.

  “I think you’ll be surprised,” Maeve said. “You and I are both hard workers. I can’t believe that particular apple fell very far from our trees.”

  “Sometimes I think that apple fell from a tree outside the Gap at Short Hills Mall.”

  “I’ll admit Andrew doesn’t look like a Short Hills type,” Maeve said, “but those flowers were a very sweet gesture.”

  Kate didn’t want to feel tenderness toward the rough-edged young fisherman who had apparently claimed her daughter’s heart. “It was either that or a bucket of steamers. He made the right choice.”

  “Did you see the way he looked at her?” Maeve sighed as she dropped a bunch of grapes into a plastic bag. “It’s been a long while since anybody looked at me that way.”

  Kate rolled her eyes. “Nobody has ever looked at me that way and I’m still managing to walk upright.”

  “Oh, really?” Her mother added some broccoli crowns, radishes, and a bag of baby greens to the shopping cart. “I’d say your new friend came very close the other day.”

  She turned away and smiled into a display of insipid hothouse tomatoes that were a crime against the Garden State. “Mom, you always did see what you wanted to see.”

  “I know you’re smiling,” Maeve said.

  “How can you know that? My back is turned.”

  “I’m your mother. You can’t fool me, honey. I saw the look on your face when you got home last night and I know Paul wasn’t responsible. Thirty minutes in the parking lot with Mark lit a flame that thirty years of Paul’s friendship never could.”

  “No wonder your books sell like hotcakes,” Kate said dryly. “You really do have a way with words.”

  “Sexual chemistry is a wondrous thing,” Maeve said as they strolled toward the dairy department. “Especially when it’s forbidden.”

  “Okay, now you’ve gone too far.”

  “My little puritan.” Maeve laughed. “Admit it: didn’t you get just the tiniest thrill when you saw that clerical collar?”

  “Mom!” She glanced around, praying none of her neighbors were within earshot. “I was horrified when I saw that collar. I spent twelve years in Catholic school. If there’s one thing I know, it’s that priests are off-limits.”

  “So isn’t it lucky that he’s not Catholic.”

  “It doesn’t matter a bit to me if he’s a practicing Druid. I’m not interested in him that way at all.”

  With that she burst into tears over a pyramid of low-fat cottage cheese with pineapple and pretty much confirmed every suspicion Maeve had.

  Rocky Hill—Monday evening

  One of the things Mark had learned during this five-year odyssey back to a healthy, productive life was that he had a major problem with change.

  Life couldn’t be trusted. It threw curveballs at you when your back was turned, then laughed when you tried to pull yourself up again. Nothing stayed the same and the best thing you could do was keep moving forward.

  How many people had he dropped that load of crap on over the years? Stay strong. Things will work out in the long run. It all happens for the best.

  Some of the biggest lies known to humankind.

  The truth was that life didn’t always work out the way you thought it should. You could do all the right things and still end up with your heart broken and your soul in pieces. It was what you did about it that mattered.

  Booze didn’t work. He knew that for a fact. The pain still managed to find its way through the fog of vodka and whiskey. It managed to find its way into his dreams.

  He probably would have spiraled down into tragedy before the first anniversary of Suzanne’s death if his bishop and two parishioners hadn’t staged an intervention and pushed him in the direction of help.

  His faith had taken a beating during her illness. It took getting sober to reawaken his soul and remind him that God had given him the tools to rebuild his life. Faith gave him a stronger spine, a deeper resolve, the assurance that there was a plan hidden deep within the chaos and all he had to do was try a little harder, pray a little longer, and God would help him find his way to the finish line.

  He had gone to a meeting tonight across the street from the Medical Center at Pr
inceton because, for him, change was also a trigger for old behaviors. Charlotte Petruzzo’s hospitalization coupled with Maggy Boyd’s phone call awakened old feelings in him, bad ones, the kind of feelings that could send a man looking for old friends in dangerous places. It helped to talk about it with people who understood; it helped to put ego aside and work the program the way it was meant to be worked.

  Not as easy as it sounded.

  He rolled up the gravel driveway and shut off the engine. The house was dark and quiet, the SOLD sign Day-Glo bright in the moonlight. He should have turned on a light before he left, maybe switched on a radio against the silence. Once he was settled up in New Hampshire, he would find himself a shelter dog and—

  No point making plans just yet. Suddenly those plans were cast in shadows.

  He slapped together a PBJ on squishy white bread and scarfed it over the sink. He washed it down with a quart of skim. He flipped through the mail, paid his electric bill, checked his machine for messages, stripped, and showered.

  Unless he was in the mood to recaulk the tub, he had run out of ways to avoid switching on his laptop and downloading his e-mail.

  TO: [email protected]

  FROM: [email protected]

  SUBJECT: Friday’s meeting

  God bless the Unitarians. We’re set for Friday at their space. Sent a notice to the group. Hope everyone checks his/her e-mail between now and then.

  See you then,

  Ann

  * * * * * *

  TO: [email protected]

  FROM: [email protected]

  SUBJECT: great dinner, great conversation

  We had a great time last night. So that was the woman you were looking for? Looks like you have some competition. LOL. Wish you weren’t leaving so soon. We’ll squeeze in a bbq before you go, ok? Love, Marcy & Scott

  * * * * * *

  TO: [email protected]

  FROM: [email protected]

  SUBJECT: vestry meeting