The long road home - By Danielle Steel Page 0,62

grateful for the fact that they had survived. They had sought refuge in the church, and were comfortable where they were, just as they were comfortable sitting side by side now in the garden of St. Matthew's. The sun was warm as she looked up at him again, and was struck by how handsome he was. It still seemed hard to believe that he preferred being a priest to being out in the world, but as he looked at the young postulant he was coming to know well, he had the same feelings about her.

They sat and chatted for a while, watching the other nuns talk animatedly to their guests, and it struck both of them at the same time, that neither of them had another soul in the world except the nuns and priests they lived with.

“It's odd, isn't it?” he said quietly. “Not having a family. I used to miss it terribly on holidays, for the first few years at least, and then I got used to it. The Brothers at St. Mark's were so good to me. I always felt like a hero coming home from the Seminary to visit. Brother Joseph, the director of St. Mark's, was like a father to me.” It was a common experience they shared, which went beyond the Masses he said for them, or his kindness to her in the confessional. It was something each of them understood perfectly, and which no one else seemed to share. It was a kind of solitude and loneliness which formed a silent bond between them.

“I was just glad to be away from the beatings when I first came here,” she said softly. He couldn't even imagine it, except that he had seen that and worse when he worked as a chaplain in the hospital as a young priest. It used to make him cry to see the damage people did to their children.

“Did they hurt you very badly?” he asked gently. She thought about it silently, then nodded and looked into the distance.

“Sometimes,” she said in barely more than a whisper. “I wound up in the hospital once. I loved it there, people were so kind to me. I hated to go home, but I was afraid to tell them. I never told anyone. I always lied about it to everyone. I thought I had to protect them, and I was afraid that if I didn't, my mother would kill me. If she had stuck around for a few more years, she probably would have. She hated me,” she said as she looked up at the young priest who had become her friend now. They had shared a multitude of confidences about their childhoods, and it suddenly seemed like a kind of glue between them.

“She was probably jealous of you,” Father Connors said reasonably. He had asked her to call him Father Joe by then, and she had told him that her name was Gabriella, even though all the other postulants, and some of the old nuns, now called her Sister Bernie,

But his suggestion didn't make sense to Gabriella. “Why would she be jealous of a child?” She looked at him with eyes filled with memories and questions.

“People just are sometimes. There must have been something very wrong with her.” Gabriella knew better than anyone that it was an overwhelming understatement. “What was your father like?”

“I'm not sure. Sometimes I think I never really knew him. He looked a lot like you,” she smiled up at him again, “or at least I think he did, from what I can remember. He was scared of her. He never stood up to her, he just let her do it.”

“He must feel terribly guilty about it. Maybe that was why he ran away from her. He probably just couldn't face it. People do strange things sometimes, when they feel helpless.” It reminded them both of his mother's suicide, but Gabriella didn't want to bring up painful memories for him and ask him about it. It was a nightmare she couldn't even begin to imagine. “Maybe you should try to find him one day, and talk to him about it.” She had fantasies about that sometimes, and it was odd that he should mention it. But she didn't know where to begin looking for him. All she knew was that twelve years before, he had moved to Boston.

“I don't suppose he ever knew that I came here. I don't think she would have bothered to tell him. I

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