The 39-Year-Old Virgin

“No, just someone who doesn’t believe.” He squinted slightly as he tried to make out a street sign. This was the old development. He’d grown up here, but it had been a long time since he’d been back. His parents had moved shortly after Claire had left to join the order and he had had no reason to return.

“In confession?” she asked, although she had a feeling that his meaning was broader.

The next moment, her fears were confirmed. “In anything.”

There was loneliness in his words, whether he knew it or not. It horrified her that Caleb felt so alone, so adrift. But telling him that would only make things worse.

Still, she didn’t want to just drop the subject, either, so she tried to make light of it and hope that he’d wind up wanting to talk. “Well, that certainly is a sweeping statement.”

Where was all this coming from? He didn’t usually talk, much less open parts of himself up. Had to be because of what day it was, he thought.

I miss you, Jane. “Sorry, didn’t mean to get this serious.”

She hated to see any creature in pain, she always had. “If you ever want to talk, you know where to find me.”

“I don’t,” Caleb told her sharply. “Want to talk,” he clarified. “There’s nothing to talk about.” Pressing down on the gas pedal, he made short work of the last half block. “We’re here,” he announced.

Pulling up in the driveway beside the vintage vehicle her father had left her mother, he put his car into Park, but didn’t turn off the ignition. The car continued to hum quietly, like a tamed cheetah, waiting for the time it could stretch its legs again.

Claire got out of the car. She sensed that he wanted to make a quick getaway. Even so, she asked, “Would you like to come in for some coffee?”

Despite his desire to escape, he was tempted. For oldtimes’ sake. But he knew it was for the best if he just got going. So he shook his head. “I’m already pretty late.”

So he’d mentioned earlier, she thought. “Right. I’m sorry, I’m keeping you from your son and your wife.”

His expression darkened for a moment, as if something painful had gripped him in its claws, but he made no comment other than “G’night.”

The next second, he was pulling out of her driveway and speeding away.

Chapter Four

“So you’re really going through with it.”

Looking up from the bureau, Claire saw her mother standing in the doorway of her room. In a hurry to get ready and out the door, and more than a little anxious about her first day at Lakewood Elementary, she hadn’t heard her mother until she was almost inside the room.

Claire’s eyes met her mother’s in the mirror. “‘It?’”

Margaret nodded as she walked across the threshold. Gone were the trim business suits she used to favor. She’d slipped on aqua-colored sweatpants and a matching sweatshirt, both of which provided a vivid contrast to the rich red hair she’s always been so proud of.

She didn’t look like a woman who was ill, Claire thought. Maybe God still had one miracle left with her name on it after all. Mentally, she crossed her fingers.

“You know.” Margaret frowned as if the very word she was about to utter tasted bitter. “Teaching.”

Claire was somewhat surprised that, when she woke up this morning after a not-so-restful night, she was in the grip of first-day jitters. She supposed it had something to do with wanting validation for the decision she’d made about the new direction of her life. Whatever the reason, the jitters were worse than she’d expected and her mother’s disapproving expression wasn’t exactly helping.

She glanced at her mother over her shoulder. “Yes, Mother,” she replied patiently. “I’m really going through with it. In approximately—” she glanced at her watch, “—an hour and ten minutes, I’ll be taking over what would have been Mrs. Butterfield’s fourth-grade class if she wasn’t about to deliver at any minute.”

Claire turned back toward the mirror to check over her appearance one last time. And perhaps locate her confidence, as well.

Margaret sighed and shook her head. “Why are you doing this?”

At the last moment, Claire had decided to wear her hair up. She thought it looked more authoritative that way. Besides, to be honest, she wasn’t all that accustomed to seeing her hair loose like this. Swiftly, she began to strategically place pins in it to ensure that it stayed in place.

“Because, for one thing, I need a job.” And we’re going to need the money, Mom, she added silently.

“No, you don’t,” her mother contradicted. “You already have a job.”

The last pin in, Claire quickly surveyed her handiwork. “You mean taking care of you—” Was her mother trying to tell her that she felt weak? That she needed her around in case she suddenly began to go downhill?

But before she got a chance to ask, her mother had already waved a dismissive hand at her, silencing any words that were about to emerge. “No, I can take care of myself, Claire,” she declared with dignity. “I’m not an invalid—at least, not yet,” she qualified quietly.

Finished, Claire turned away from the bureau. This was as good as it was going to get, she thought. Worrying about the way her hair looked and if her clothes were sending the wrong message was an entirely foreign concept to her. So was experimenting with makeup, but she felt she’d done a fairly admirable job of it for someone new to the game. The application was subtle, the results pretty.

The next second, she admonished herself for being vain. It was hard being stuck between two worlds, not feeling as if she belonged in either.

“Then I don’t know what you’re—”

Again her mother cut her short, this time with more than a trace of impatience. “Your job. Your vocation.” The frown mingled with a plea. “I’m talking about your being part of the Dominican order.”

Not now, Mother. Not today, please.

She’d known the moment the idea of leaving the order had occurred to her that the transition wasn’t going to be easy. For either of them. Not for her because she’d been part of the order for so long, she was going to have a difficult time redefining herself in different terms, and not for her widowed mother because she knew that Margaret Santaniello was convinced that turning her back on the order was tantamount to committing a mortal sin and thus putting her soul in jeopardy.

Getting her mother to come around would require treating both the subject and her mother with kid gloves. And, she’d already learned, it was also going to require a great deal of repetition.

She tried to focus on another time, a time when she and her mother had been in harmony instead of at odds. “Mother, we’ve gone through all this already. I’m not Sister Michael anymore.”

A note of desperation entered her mother’s voice. “That’s like saying you’re not tall anymore.”

“I’m not,” Claire pointed out calmly. She didn’t have time for this.

“You know what I mean,” Margaret insisted. “All right,” she conceded, “bad example. It’s like saying you’re not Italian anymore.” She nodded her head in triumph, as if feeling that she’d chosen her example well this time. “Saying it doesn’t change things. You can’t stop being Italian.”

“Not the same thing, Mother, not the same thing at all.” She saw tears suddenly gather in her mother’s eyes. Guilt assaulted her at the same moment. She placed her arm around her mother’s shoulders, or tried to. “Mother—”

But her mother shrugged her arm aside, moving away from her as if she had a contagious disease. “I’m going to die.” Her tone was oddly resigned.

Her mother wasn’t going to lick this thing if she’d already surrendered to it. She needed hope, Claire thought. A lot of it.

“No, you’re not,” she countered fiercely.

“Yes, I am. Because of you. You know this kind of thing doesn’t go unpunished.”

For one moment, Claire felt as if she’d been physically slapped across the face. Stunned, she focused on the larger subject. “You don’t believe that.”

“Yes, I do.” There was no arguing with her mother’s tone of voice.

If she couldn’t talk her mother out of it, she could still elaborate on her own beliefs, Claire reasoned, hoping that, in time, it would make her mother come around. “Well, I don’t. I don’t believe in a petty God who insists on going tit for tat.” She and God might not be on the same wavelength at the moment, but she still believed in His existence, still believed that He wasn’t a vengeful God. Why would her mother even think that? It was her mother who had taught her everything she believed in.