a little levity to what they both knew was a painful subject, and probably always would be.
“It was a full-time job for me staying alive in those days. The only real holidays I remember were here. I've always loved the Fourth of July picnic.”
“So do I,” he said, looking at her with a tenderness that surprised her. “When I was a little kid, we used to go camping with friends. My brother and I used to try and buy sparklers as kids, to take with us, but no one would ever sell them to us.”
She looked surprised then as she glanced over at him. “You never told me you had a brother.” In the four months she had known him, he had never once mentioned a sibling.
Father Connors paused for a long moment, and then met her eyes firmly. “He drowned when I was seven. He was two years older than I was… We went swimming down by the river, and he got caught in a whirlpool. We weren't supposed to be there…” Tears filled his eyes as he talked to her, and he didn't even know it, as without thinking, she reached out and touched his fingers, and something almost electric passed between them. “I watched him go down the first time, and I didn't know what to do… I tried to find a branch to hold out to him, but it was summer, and everything was green, and I couldn't find anything long enough. I just stood there while he went down again and again, and then I ran for help as fast as I could… but when I got back…” He couldn't go on and she wanted to take him in her arms and hold him, but she knew she couldn't. “He drowned before we got back to him… There was nothing I could do… nothing I could have done… but I always felt my parents blamed me for it. They never actually said it, but I always knew it… His name was Jimmy.” There were tears slowly rolling down his cheeks as she touched his hand again and this time held it gently.
“Why would they blame you? It wasn't your fault, Joe.” It was the first time she hadn't called him “Father,” but neither of them noticed.
He hesitated before he answered, and then took his hand away from hers to wipe the tears from his cheeks. “I begged him to take me to the river. It was my fault. I shouldn't have asked him.”
“You were seven years old. He could have said no.”
“Jimmy never said no to me. He was crazy about me… and I was crazy about him. It was never the same after he died. My mom just kind of lost her spirit.” Gabriella wondered if that explained why she had taken her own life after her husband died so suddenly. Maybe it had just been too much for her, after losing her son seven years before. But it had been a cruel thing to do to Joe, and left him an orphan. To Gabriella, it seemed unthinkably selfish, though she didn't say it to Joe as she listened.
“It's hard to understand why things like that happen. We should know that better than anyone.” There were so many times when all of them had to defend God when people asked questions about situations like this one.
“I hear about things like this all the time,” he admitted, “but that doesn't make it any easier for the people I talk to, or for me. I still miss him, Gabbie.” It had happened twenty-four years before, and the pain was still fresh whenever he talked about it. “In some ways, it affected my whole childhood. I always felt so responsible for what happened.” Not to mention the loss of his parents dimming the bright light of the rest of it. But she understood perfectly what he meant about feeling responsible. She was all too familiar with those emotions.
“I always felt as though everything that happened in my family was my fault,” she admitted, “or at least that was what they always told me. Why are children so willing to take on those burdens?” She had never doubted for a moment that her parents abandoning her, and everything that had happened before that, was entirely her own fault. “You didn't do it, Joe. It wasn't your fault. It could have been you, instead of him, who drowned. We don't know why these things happen.”