Page 29 of Thin Lines (Donati Bloodlines 2)

He hung up the call without saying goodbye.

A week later, Calisto found a spot in a familiar pewand let the comforting space of his church surround him. There was nothing likethe house of God to settle his mind, and let him think properly.

Well, that and his priest.

Calisto didn’t pretend to be a good man, or even onewith great morals, but he had his church and his priest. That was enough.

“Calisto, my son, what brings you through these doorson a beautiful Summer day in the middle of the week?”

The voice of Father Day relaxed Calisto in a way hecouldn’t explain. The man had counseled Calisto from the time he was a youngman, straight into his adult years. When a personal issue came up, his priestwas the best person to talk to. Father Day didn’t judge.

“Stress,” Calisto murmured, watching the rays ofsunlight dance in the stained glass windows. “What else?”

Father Day took a seat beside Calisto in the frontpew. “It’s always about some kind of stress with you. I’ve been telling you foryears to—”

“Let the little things go.”

“Precisely. It’s all the little things piling up onyour shoulders that make one huge weight for you to carry around.”

Silently, the priest handed Calisto his favorite item.It was a rope of black rosary beads, attached to an ornately designed goldencross. When he was just a child and following his uncle around, Calisto hadwatched Affonso go to the church regularly to confess his sins. To keep himfrom becoming bored during the ordeal, Father Day would let Calisto play withhis string of rosary beads as long as he promised to give them back and notbreak them.

Calisto never broke them. He always gave them back.

Now, as an adult, the string of beads sometimes helpedto soothe his nerves when he talked. The little things his priest remembered neverfailed to amaze him.

“Tell me what’s bothering you,” the priest demanded.“Let me take the little things, Cal.”

“I learned something this week, and I didn’t reactwell to it. I acted horribly, actually. My mother would be ashamed.”

“Shame is a heavy weight to carry.”

“It shocked me; that was all.”

The priest chuckled. “Are you excusing your behavior?”

“No,” Calisto said, frowning. “But I lost something,and it hit me like a ton of bricks.”

Father Day sat a little straighter in the pew. “What else?”

“Don’t you want to know what I lost, Father?”

“If you want to tell me.”

Calisto didn’t want to explain about the lost child,the one that never got the chance to see the world, to the man. It seemedunfair to burden the priest with that knowledge.

But the miscarriage had been plaguing Calisto for thelast week. From the moment he learned it had happened, it had constantly pokedat the back of his mind like a hot fire, charring his nerves at the alreadyfrayed ends.

It hurt him.

He felt like he was missing something.

The guilt quickly followed whenever he thought aboutit all. Calisto wasn’t sure he had any right at all to grieve for themiscarriage that he hadn’t even experienced. It wasn’t his body, it hadn’t beenhis blood spilling from his body.

It had been his baby.

He couldn’t let that go.

“I think it was the idea of something that I lost morethan the reality of it,” Calisto muttered heavily. “I don’t know how to grievefor the idea of something when it never had the chance to actually besomething. Am I making sense?”