I heard a pause, the desk clerk debating with himself. “Hold on,” he said. My mind was racing, and I could not still my thoughts. Then the clerk came back and said, “We had a guest here by that name, sir, but she canceled her reservation after one night. She checked out Tuesday morning.”
I closed my eyes, a stabbing pain in my chest.
“Is there anything else I can help you with, sir?”
“No,” I said, disconnecting, my heart continuing to sink.
In my mind, I replayed our conversation when I’d asked Mickie to marry me. She’d said she couldn’t, that she had given away a part of her she couldn’t get back, that I deserved someone better. And then she had clung to me as if she would never see me again. I wondered if Mickie had already made plans to leave but couldn’t bring herself to tell me, if that had been the reason she’d clung to me. She’d stayed to help me get through the heartache and pain of my mother’s and father’s deaths, but Mickie was still Mickie, at times rash and unpredictable. Marriage frightened her, which meant I had frightened her, and Mickie no doubt rationalized that she could never make me completely happy, and therefore she was doing us both a favor by leaving.
I shut the doors and turned off the lights. I contemplated calling Ernie, but he and his family were in Europe to celebrate Mr. Cantwell’s seventieth birthday. My mother and father were dead. There was no one. I was alone.
I slumped on the couch, grief stricken and anxious. Douglas and Blue, sensing my anguish, curled up beside me.
And then I heard her—my mother.
Have faith, Samuel.
I raised my head, almost expecting to see her standing in my living room. “Have faith in what?” I asked. “Have faith in what, Mom?”
But the voice in my head would not be silenced.
Have faith, Samuel. We don’t always know God’s will.
“Is his will to make me miserable?” I asked.
But this time there was no answer.
I went upstairs and sat on the bed, uncertain what to do, feeling my anxiety starting to spread. My eyes were drawn to the top drawer of my dresser, but I fought the urge to open it. I had contemplated putting my mother’s rosary in her casket, but at the last moment I held on to it, remembering how she had walked across the courtyard at the baths in Lourdes to hand it to me, her dying act.
I lay my head back against the pillows. Blue and Douglas entered and immediately jumped onto the bed, tails wagging. My eyes were again drawn to that top drawer. This time I stood and crossed the room. On the dresser was the Bible Sister Beatrice had given me as an eighth-grade graduation present, and wedged in the mirror was the card of Saint Christopher and the Irish blessing that our pastor, Father Brogan, gave me the night he expelled David Bateman.
I opened the top drawer. The beads were well-worn and misshapen; the gold crucifix and the links between the beads had lost their luster. I held my mother’s rosary in the palm of my hand, staring at it, debating with myself, realizing I’d never won a debate with my mother in my entire life, and I knew I wouldn’t now, either.
I pinched the cross between my thumb and index finger and began as she had taught me when I had been just a little boy. “I believe in God, the Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth . . .”
In between each prayer, I asked God not to take Mickie from me. I asked my mother to intercede, to ask the Blessed Mother to bring Mickie home to me.
Have faith, Samuel.
I started the second decade, then the third. I was having trouble breathing, getting the words out, but I would not give in. I plunged from one bead to the next, thinking again of my mother and begging her to intercede, bargaining with her.
“I won’t question God’s will again,” I said. “Mickie is all I’ll ever want or need. I’ll take up your mantle, your devotion. I’ll offer my pain up for some poor soul in purgatory. I’ll return to church. Just please, Mom, please don’t let him take Mickie from me. Whatever second thoughts she might be having, whatever it is she thinks makes her not good enough, please let her see how much I love her.”