Free Forever Waiting by DeVa Gantt

can stop there. In either case, I must get back.”
    “Would a bit more money help?” John asked, certain his friend was working himself into the grave.
    “You’ve been far too generous already, and it’s better if I keep busy.”
    “Busy with work or with killing yourself?”
    Michael’s brow lifted. “Is it that obvious?”
    “I’m surprised Marie hasn’t insisted on a bit of leisure,” John said with a twinkle in his eye, perplexed when the priest’s face went white. “Michael?”
    “Marie is dead,” Michael pronounced. “I thought you knew, John. I thought everyone knew. It’s been over two years now.”
    “Dead?” John murmured, nonplussed. During his brief visits to the refuge, he hadn’t thought to ask for her, taking it for granted she was alive and well. Two years and he hadn’t seen her! He was immediately angry with himself. Was he so absorbed in his own misery he overlooked his friends? Marie had been a savior, a sympathetic confidante who had helped him through the worst times of his life—the months following Pierre’s conception and birth. “Dead,” he reiterated as the truth set in. “But how?”
    “It was terrible—” Michael struggled to explain.
    John shook his head, for he knew the priest, this good man, this equally good friend, had loved Marie. “Michael, I’m sorry, so sorry.”
    “She was a very special woman, John.”
    “Yes, Michael, she was.”
    Words exhausted, they pondered the finality of death. The bleak mood was broken when John strode into the small library and rummaged through his desk drawers. He found what he was looking for and walked back to the hallway, studying the envelope in his hands.
    “Funny,” he said, “Marie gave this to me years ago, and—” he looked up at Michael “—she asked me to give it to you should anything happen to her.” He gingerly extended the missive to the priest.
    Michael accepted the letter, cradling it as if it were a precious gift.
    “Aren’t you going to open it?”
    Michael broke the seal, removed the single paper, and began to read. His hands were trembling by the time he’d finished. He looked up at John, tears in his eyes. “I have a daughter,” he whispered. “Dear God … a daughter.”
    Burying his face in his hands, he slumped into the nearby armchair. Now he knew why Marie had deserted him twenty years ago. He believed it was because of that one intimate encounter. For nearly six years, he’d worried over what had become of her and chastised himself for having shamed her. When she did return one bitterly cold day, she had a young girl with her—her daughter. She was married, she was happy, she told him. She and her husband had started a family. Marie kept him at arm’s length, so Michael believed her story. They never talked about what had happened between them, but he wondered if she thought about it as often as he did.
    Suddenly, he was furious: furious with himself—the priesthood—God. He should have turned his back on the ministry when he knew he loved Marie. She would still be alive if he had walked away!
    “Are you all right?” John asked, shaken by the man’s expression.
    “I’m not certain where she is,” Michael said, his anger gone, enervation seeping in.
    “Perhaps Marie placed her with a good family. She’s likely surrounded by brothers and sisters.”
    Michael looked up at him quizzically. “No, John. She’s a young woman now—nineteen or twenty.”
    John was surprised once again.
    “I knew Marie for many years,” Michael explained. “She was orphaned and raised at St. Jude’s. I was young when I was assigned there, and she was beautiful, inside and out. It’s no excuse for what I did, but I did love her. I still love her.”
    “I know that. So why berate yourself? You loved her, and she you.”
    “That ‘love’ forced her into a loveless marriage.”
    “Marriage?” John puzzled. “She never mentioned a husband to me.”
    “She rarely spoke of her life outside