The Night Mark(99)

“Good thing I’m not one, then,” Faye said.

“Are you all right with this?” Pat asked.

“What? Being pregnant with the child of a man I don’t love? Wouldn’t be the first time.”

“Faye, tell me the truth.”

“You wouldn’t understand,” she said.

“Try me.”

“I feel the same way I felt when I found out I was pregnant with Hagen’s baby three years ago. Scared to death.”

“Scared to have the baby of a man you don’t love?”

“No.” She put her hand on her stomach. “Scared I was going to lose it again.”

Pat took one step forward and folded her into his strong, young arms.

“Unmarried and pregnant in South Carolina in 1921,” Pat said as he rubbed her back, kindly as a priest, tender as a friend. “I’m half-tempted to throw you over my shoulder and drag you back to our time kicking and screaming.”

Faye pulled back and poked him in the chest with her finger.

“I’m staying, Pat. You could stay, too, you know,” Faye said.

“I like penicillin too much.”

“Nobody even prescribes that anymore.”

“Fine,” he said. “I like amoxicillin.”

Faye reached out and took Pat by the hand. She lifted his arm into the air and straightened it. It stayed right.

“No tremor,” she said. “Isn’t that a reason to stay?”

“One reason, but not enough of a reason.”

He lowered his arm again.

“I know,” she said. “I just... If I’m here for a reason, I can’t help but think you are, too.”

“Maybe the only reason I’m here was to save you and convince Carrick of the truth. Maybe I should be getting back.”

“And yet...here you are.”

Faye stepped closer, searched Pat’s face.

“Are you sure you don’t want to stay?” she asked.

Pat laughed. “It was hard enough being a gay priest in the 1960s. And the 1970s. And the 1980s. At least gay people are allowed to exist in 2015. I don’t get to exist in the 1920s. I like existing.”

“Pat. Oh, my God, I’m sorry. I’m so clueless. I usually pick up on these things. You’re such a flirt.”

“Flirting with women is a gay priest’s number one survival skill.” He waved his hands dismissively. “And there’s no reason to be sorry. You had no way of knowing.”

“Does Carrick know?”

“He will in 1965,” Pat said.

“You told him?”

“He was dying,” Pat said. “You’re never so close to anyone as you are when the Angel of Death is in the room with you. I’d visit Carrick at the hospital. At first it was just out of pity, visiting this old war hero, this old sailor dying alone. What I thought would be a ten-minute courtesy visit turned into an hour. I went back the next day and stayed two hours. One day I asked him why he never got married. He told me about the girl he’d loved, the girl we all know of as the Lady of the Light. He told me her real name and how she’d trusted him, and how she’d died and how Carrick had buried his heart in her grave. I mentioned someone to him I’d loved but couldn’t be with when I was a very young man, another seminarian. I thought old Carrick would be shocked. He wasn’t. You know what he said?”

“What?” Faye asked, smiling.

“He said it was hard to a shock a sailor.”

“I can hear him saying that,” Faye said.

“And I can still see that handsome weather-beaten old face of his smiling up at me from his hospital bed, the gleam in his eyes, though he was too sick to laugh by then,” Pat said, grinning through his tears. “He said I was a good priest and a good man, and that’s all that mattered to him, and he was damn sure that’s all that mattered to God, too. His friendship was a beacon during a very dark time in my life.”

“You could be friends with him here,” she said.

Pat shook his head. “This time isn’t for people like me.”

“And it is for me?”

“You’re white. You’re straight. You’re well educated, healthy and beautiful. Every time is for people like you.”

“That’s not fair,” she said.

“Of course it’s not fair. That’s my point.”

“I know,” Faye said. “I know you’re right. But I want to help. If I stay, I can make things better. At least a little bit. Better than nothing, right?”

“You sound like the idealist I used to be.”

“It’s been a long time since I felt something like hope,” Faye said. “Don’t ask me to give it up for Netflix and a Prius.”

“No priest worth his salt would tell you to abandon your hope. Hope is something God gives us. Hope is...” He turned his face toward the lighthouse beacon. “Hope is a bright light on a dark night. If your hope is guiding you into this shore, then this is where you should drop anchor. I only want you to understand what you’re doing. I don’t know what you’ll do by staying to the timeline, but I do know this—Carrick will still die in a few decades, and so will you.”

“I know,” Faye said. “But for now we’ll live.”