Perfect Match Read online

  It's about all I can take, the incredible level calm of his voice. I drive my hands through my hair. "For God's sake, Patrick. Will you just stop being such a ... such a cop?"

  "You want me to tell you that I feel like beating him unconscious for doing this to Nathaniel? That then I'd beat him up all over again for what he's done to you?"

  The fury in his voice takes me by surprise. I tilt my head, playing his anger over in my mind. "Yes," I answer softly. "I do want you to tell me that." He rests his hand on the back of my head. It feels like a prayer. "I don't know what to do."

  Patrick's fingers cup my skull, separate the strands of my hair. I give myself up to this; imagine that he's unraveling my thoughts. "That's why you've got me," he says.

  Nathaniel balks when I tell him where we're going. But if I stay inside for another minute, I am going to lose my mind.

  Light falls through the stained-glass ceiling panels of St. Anne's, washing Nathaniel and me in a rainbow. At this hour, on a weekday, the church is as quiet as a secret. I walk with great care, trying not to make any more of a sound than is absolutely necessary. Nathaniel drags his feet, scuffing his sneakers along the mosaic floor.

  "Stop that," I whisper, and immediately wish I hadn't. My words reverberate against the stone arches and the polished pews and come running back to me. Trays of white votives glow; how many of these have been lit for my son?

  "I'll only be a minute," I tell Nathaniel, settling him in one of the pews with a handful of Matchbox cars. The polished wood makes a perfect racetrack--to prove this, I send a hot rod speeding to the other end. Then I walk toward the confessionals before I change my mind.

  The booth is tight and overheated. A grate slides open against my shoulder; although I cannot see him, I can smell the starch Father Szyszynski uses on his clerical shirts.

  There is a comfort to confession, if only because it follows rules that are never broken. And no matter how long it's been, you remember, as if there is a collective Catholic subconscious. You speak, the priest answers. You begin with the littlest sins, stacking them like a tower of alphabet blocks, and the priest gives you a prayer to knock them all down, so that you can start over.

  "Bless me Father, for I have sinned. It has been four months since my last confession."

  If he's shocked, he does a good job of hiding it.

  "I ... I don't know why I'm here." Silence. "I found out something, recently, that is tearing me apart."

  "Go on."

  "My son ... he's been hurt."

  "Yes, I know. I've been praying for him."

  "I think ... it seems ... it's my husband who did this to him." On the small folding chair, I am doubled over. Sharp pains move through me, and I welcome them--by now, I had thought myself incapable of feeling anything.

  There is such a long silence I wonder if the priest has heard me. Then: "And what is your sin?"

  "My ... what?"

  "You can't confess for your husband."

  Anger bubbles up like tar, burning my throat. "I didn't intend to."

  "Then what did you want to confess today?"

  I have come to simply speak the words aloud to someone whose job is to listen. But instead I say, "I didn't keep my son safe. I didn't see it at all."

  "Innocence isn't a sin."

  "How about ignorance?" I stare at the latticework between us. "How about being naive enough to think that I actually knew the man I fell in love with? How about wanting to make him suffer the way Nathaniel's suffering?"

  Father Szyszynski lets this statement stand. "Maybe he is."

  My breath catches. "I love him," I say thickly. "I love him just as much as I hate him."

  "You need to forgive yourself for not being aware of what was happening. For wanting to strike back."

  "I don't know if I can."

  "Well, then." A pause. "Can you forgive him?"

  I look at the shadow that is the priest's face. "I am not that godly," I say, and exit the confessional before he can stop me.

  What's the point; I am already living my penance.

  He doesn't want to be here.

  The church, it sounds the way it does inside his head--a whooshing that's louder than all the words that aren't being spoken. Nathaniel looks at the little room his mother has gone into. He pushes a car down the pew. He can hear his heart.

  He sets the rest of the Matchbox cars into their parking spots and inches his way out of the pew. With his hands burrowed under his shirt like a small animal, Nathaniel tiptoes down the main aisle of the church.

  At the altar he kneels down on the steps to pray. He'd learned a prayer in Sunday school, one he was supposed to do at night that he usually forgot. But he remembers that you can pray for anything. It's like a birthday candle wish, except it goes straight to God.

  He prays that the next time he tries to say something with his hands, everyone will understand. He prays that he will get his daddy back.

  Nathaniel notices a marble statue beside him--a woman, holding Baby Jesus on her lap. He forgets her name, but she's all over the place here--on paintings and wall hangings and more stone sculptures. In every one, there's a mother with a child.

  He wonders if once there was a daddy standing on that pedestal, in that painting, portrayed with the rest of the holy family. He wonders if everyone's father gets taken away.

  Patrick knocks on the door of the cabin that the manager of Coz-E-Cottages has pointed out. When it swings open, Caleb stands on the other side, red-eyed and unshaven. "Look," Patrick says right away, "this is incredibly awkward."

  Caleb looks at the police shield in Patrick's hand. "Something tells me it's a little more awkward for me than for you."

  This is the man who has lived with Nina for seven years. Slept beside her, made a baby with her. This is the man who has had the life Patrick wanted. He had thought that he'd come to terms with the way things had worked out. Nina was happy, Patrick wanted her to be happy, and if that meant that he himself was out of the picture, so be it. But that equation only worked when the man Nina chose was worthy. When the man Nina chose didn't make her cry.

  Patrick has always believed Caleb to be a good father, and it stuns him a little, now, to realize how badly he wants Caleb to be the perp. If he is, it immediately discredits Caleb. If he is, there is proof that Nina picked the wrong guy.

  Patrick feels his fingers curve into fists, but he tamps down on the urge to inflict pain. In the long run, that's not going to help either Nina or Nathaniel.

  "Did you put her up to this?" Caleb says tightly.

  "You did this all by yourself," Patrick answers. "Are you willing to come down to the station?"

  Caleb grabs a jacket from the bed. "Let's go right now," he says.

  At the threshold of the door, he reaches out and touches Patrick's shoulder. Instinct makes Patrick tense; reason forces him to relax. He turns and looks coolly at Caleb. "I didn't do it," Caleb says quietly. "Nina and Nathaniel, they're the other half of me. Who would be stupid enough to throw that away?"

  Patrick does not let his eyes betray him. But he thinks, for the first time, that perhaps Caleb is telling the truth.

  Another man might not have felt comfortable with the relationship between his own wife and Patrick Ducharme. Although Caleb had never doubted Nina's fidelity--or even her feelings for him--Patrick wore his tattered heart on his sleeve. Caleb had spent enough dinners watching Patrick's eyes follow his wife around the kitchen; he'd seen Patrick spin Nathaniel in the air and tuck the boy's giggles into his pockets when he thought no one was looking. But Caleb did not mind, really. After all, Nina and Nathaniel were his. If he felt anything for Patrick, it was pity, because he wasn't as lucky as Caleb.

  Early on, Caleb had been jealous of Nina's close friendship with Patrick. But she was a woman with a number of male friends. And it quickly became clear that Patrick was too much a part of Nina's past: Asking her to remove him from her life would have been a mistake, like separating Siamese twins who grew out fro