Mixed Messages (A Malone Mystery) (12 page)

“Is he ill
?
I hadn’t heard anything like that from Louise.”

“No
.
Well, yes
.
Father, can I be honest with you?”

“Well, Ann, of course
.
What is it
?”
he
asked
.

“David has a drinking problem
…
and a gambling problem and
…
a problem with losing his temper
.
We
…
we’re not doing very well right now
.
Really, we haven’t been doing good for a long time.”

“I’m sorry to hear that
.
Why didn’t you come to me sooner?”

She
shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess I thought, if I just tried harder, I could make my marriage work.”

“Sometimes, Ann, you have to admit you need help.
Have you considered counseling?”

“I would, Father
.
I would go but David
…
David would never
.
I’ve pretty well reached the end of my rope
.
I don’t know what to do anymore
.
If things don’t get better soon
…
well, I don’t know how much more I can take.”

“You’re not considering divorce?” the priest asked.

Ann shook her head up and down.
“Yes,” she whispered.

He
leaned
forward
and pointed a finger at her
.
“
Divorce is not an option
!
That’s not what God intended for you when you took the vows, promising to
love
, honor
and cherish your husband in sickness and in health.”

Ann looked up
at him.
“But, Father, what else can I do?” she
asked
, a tremor in her voice.

“Pray
!
Sometimes prayer is the only answer
.
Ask God to help you and He will.”

“I have prayed
.
I do pray
.
I still don’t know what to do.”

“Then it’s not time for you to know yet
.
It’s all in God’s time
.
Not yours
.
Do you read your Bible
,
Ann
?
Do you remember the words of
Acts 1:7? ‘And he said unto them, it is not for you to know the times or the seasons, which the Father hath put in his own power.’
When God believes you are ready, He will show you the way
.
Here,” he said, sitting back and reaching into his desk drawer and handing her a business card
.
“Take this
.
Perhaps this woman can help you
.
I’ve heard she’s very good.”

She dropped the business card into her purse.
“Thank you, Father
.
”

He
sat
back in his chair and took a deep breath
.
“Well, we’ve gotten
off of
the subject, haven’t we
?
I have a simple application for you to complete, for our records, you understand
.”
He reached into his desk drawer and pulled out a sheet of paper
.
“As long as
the hours and the pay listed on the top of this sheet are acceptable to you, I see no reason not to
offer you the job
.
” He handed her the application.
“
Would you be able to start tomorrow?”

She
sighed
, barely glancing
at the hours and pay
on the paper
.
“Really
?
I’ve got the job
?
Yes, tomorrow is fine.”

He handed her a pen and
observed
her, with his hands folded behind his head, as
she
began filling in the blanks on the form
.
When she finished,
she
handed the paper to
him.

“Nine a.m. then
?
I’ll give you a tour and get you set up,” he said, rising from his chair.

“Wonderful
.
That’ll be great
.
Thank you, Father,”
she
said, standing.

As Father Andrew opened the door for Ann and
went
out into the hall with her, he saw
Louise Kern, her back to them, dusting a table a few feet down the hallway. You old busybody,
he thought, you’ve been eavesdropping again. He grasped Ann’s hands in his, looked down at
her and smiled
.
“God works in mysterious ways,” he said
.
“You’ll see.”

* * * *

After Ann left, Father Andrew went back
in
to his office
.
He began to pace the length of the room
.
Not for the first time, he wondered what was wrong with people
.
How could they not be grateful when they had a spouse, a family? All the things he didn’t have, had never really had and never would have.

No one
is
perfect, he knew, only God
.
But people expected their loved ones to meet all
their expectations, to be exactly what they wanted
.
How totally selfish
!
Like this Kern woman, for example
.
She had two beautiful children, a family
.
She had a husband who provided for her
.
She hadn’t even had to work for the past ten years and probably didn’t have to work now
.

Did she see this job as an escape, a way to run away from her family? Did she even begin to
know how blessed she was
?
No,
evidently
not
.
She planned to leave her husband and destroy her family
.
And for what
?
A
life of loneliness
?
Like mine, he thought
.
Always being the outsider
.
Never being part of a family.

He remembered his childhood all too vividly
.
He remembered how cold his mother had
always been and how demanding his father was
.
They had expected him to be the All American boy, excelling in sports
,
academics and popularity but he’d fallen way short of their expectations
.
Both of his parents had been so engrossed in their jobs and their social standing
that they had no time for their two children
.

So, Andrew and his sister, Mary, had only each other. Like him, Mary wasn’t what their
parents had wanted. They expected her to be a cheerleader type: thin, pretty and popular. But
Mary was overweight and extremely shy. He could still hear their mother’s voice, “Mary, you
have such a pretty face
.
If you’d lose some weight and put on a little makeup, the boys would be lining up at the door for you
.”
He and Mary were very close and always confided in each other
.
Mary was so sweet, so sensitive and so vulnerable but she was also prone to depression
.
She was only sixteen when he lost her.

It was the end of Andrew’s senior year
.
He’d never dated in high school
.
It wasn’t that he didn’t want to but attending an all boys’ school hadn’t afforded many opportunities to
meet girls
.
Most of his classmates either played sports or at least attended the football and basketball games
and they met girls that way
but, on the few occasions he’d gone to games, Andrew had felt awkward and out of place
.

He remembered standing alone along the sidelines, hoping to find someone he knew to
talk to. He watched as guys from school walked by him, some nodding, barely acknowledging
him, while others pretended not to see him. There were girls there too from the neighboring girls’
Catholic high school
.
They giggled as their eyes scanned the crowd, looking for boys they wanted to meet
.
They too passed right by him
.
It was always like that.

Then, in May, right before graduation, announcements were sent out for Prom Night
.
The boys’ Catholic high school, Elder, and the girls’ school, Seton, collaborated to host the seniors’ celebration
.
Andrew’s mother, who was constantly trying to fix him up with the daughters of her friends, daughters who wanted nothing to do with Andrew, managed to persuade her best friend’s daughter, Amanda, to go to the Prom with him
.
How she’d convinced the girl, he never
knew until that night.

He’d pulled into Amanda’s driveway in his father’s brand new Cadillac. He turned off
the ignition and wiped his sweaty palms on his pants’ legs.
Taking
a deep breath, he got out of the car, went up to the door and rang the bell.

“Why, Andrew, don’t you look nice?”
Amanda’s
mother commented as she ushered him into the entryway. “Mandy will be right down.”

He stood there waiting for several minutes, shifting his weight from foot to foot. Finally, his date came down the stairs.

“I … I got this for you,” he’d managed to say, handing her the purple corsage
that
his mother had picked out specifically to complement the color of her dress.

Amanda’s
mother took the corsage from her daughter and pinned it on her dress. “Wait just one minute,” she said. “Let me get my camera.
Before you leave,
I want to get a picture of the two of you.”

“Mother!”
Amanda
protested
. “That really isn’t necessary.”

“Now, don’t be silly,” her mother said, scurrying out of the room. She was back within
seconds. “Andrew, move closer to Mandy,” she instructed, snapping the picture. “This is an
important night for both of you. You’ll want to remember it.”

But all these years later, Andrew wished he could forget it.

He’d tried to make small talk on the way
to the Prom
but
Amanda
ignored him, staring out the window.
When they got
there
, she left him standing alone and went off to find her friends. He watched her, talking with the other girls and flirting with other boys, for a long time.
Eventually
, he got up the nerve to ask her to dance.

“You’ve got to be kidding me!” she said, laughing. “I only came with you tonight
because my mother promised me a
trip to Cancun
this summer
if I did.”

A group of
Amanda
’s friends overheard the conversation. They huddled together, giggling and pointing at him. Andrew’s face turned bright red.

When the evening was over,
Amanda
reluctantly got into the car to go home with him.
She had to fulfill her end of the bargain with her mother, he reasoned.
They drove in silence for a few minutes. To this day, Andrew didn’t fully understand what made him pull off
of
the road into an isolated field. He only had flashes now of what happened
;
most of it was a blur.

In the end, he was accused of attempted rape and
Amanda
’s parents had agreed not to
press charges if his parents sent him away immediately
.
That one evening, those few minutes, had changed his whole life
.
He remembered the talk he’d had with his sister the night before he left
.

“You know I don’t want to go,”
he
told her
.
“I don’t have a choice.”

“But, Andy,”
she
had pleaded, “I can’t make it here without you.”