their baby. And as she listened, Gabbie looked at him in amazement. It was almost like the reverse of Joe. She had lost Joe, and their baby. She wanted to tell him about it now, but she didn't dare. A love story between a priest and a postulant was still a lot for most people to handle. She hadn't even admitted that to Professor Thomas.
“I felt the same way when Joe died,” she admitted. “We were thinking about getting married, but we had a lot of things to work out.” And then, with huge sad eyes, she looked at him across the table, and decided to lay down at least one of her burdens. “He committed suicide in September.”
“Oh my God… oh Gabbie… how awful.” Without thinking about it, he reached out and touched her hand, and she didn't stop him.
“Looking back at it now,” and it had only been three months, “I don't know how I lived through it. Everyone felt it was my fault, and so did I. I'll never be able to tell myself it wasn't,” she said sadly. It was one more guilt added to all the others, but this was by far the worst one.
“You can't blame yourself. When people do things like that, there are a lot of reasons. They're usually under a lot of pressure. They stop seeing things clearly.”
“That's more or less what happened. His mother had committed suicide when he was fourteen, and I think he blamed himself. And his older brother died when he was nine, and Joe was seven, and he felt responsible for that. But I can't absolve myself completely. He basically did it because of me. He didn't think he could live up to my expectations.”
“That's a tough thing to put on someone.” It didn't sound fair to him to blame her for that, but he didn't want to say that to her. She had had a hard time, they both had. And as they walked back to the boarding-house, he put a gentle arm around her shoulders, and she didn't resist him. It was Christmas Eve, and they had shared a lot of confidences. It was amazing how much they had in common.
He left her on the stairs up to her room, he didn't want her to feel pressured by him, and he waved to her as he went into his own room. She thought about him for a while that night. He was a nice man, and he had been through many of the same agonies that she had. But as she still did too often now, she sat down on her bed and cried as she reread Joe's letter. If only she could have talked to him, if she could have been with him, everything might have been different. If she had, she might not have been alone tonight, sharing her sorrows with a total stranger, and telling him how much she and Joe had loved each other. It still seemed so unfair, so wrong of him to have done it. But she wasn't angry at him anymore, she was past that now, she was just sad. And when she went to bed that night, she dreamed that she saw him, still waiting for her in the convent garden.
Chapter 19
MRS. BOSLICKI MADE one of her turkey dinners for them on Christmas Day, and this time Steve joined them. He told a lot of funny stories and made them laugh, and everyone exchanged small presents with each other. She had gone out and bought Steve a bottle of aftershave the day before, embarrassed that she didn't have a present for him, and he said he loved it. He said he had just run out and couldn't afford to buy another bottle.
And Professor Thomas was crazy about the books she'd bought him. He couldn't believe she'd found them for him, and she told him that was how she had found her new job, shopping for him. It all seemed very providential, as did her meeting with Steve. They spent a long time that night talking to each other, and the Professor noticed it and was pleased, although Gabriella spent a long time talking to him too, and as usual he beat her at dominoes. And after the first game, he invited Steve to join them.
Gabriella was worried about the fact that the professor wasn't looking well, he still had the flu, and had been dragging the same cough for weeks now. Mrs. Boslicki made him drink