With the Father Read Online Free PDF

you,”
he said.
    Oh, good Lord. They were ganging up on me. “I’ll follow you, too,” I
huffed and turned again toward my car.
    “No way,” she said. “I don’t trust you. We’ll get halfway there, and
you’ll turn off and go home and crawl into bed.”
    No one knew me better. “Fine,” I said. “Are we just going to leave my
car here?”
    “It’ll be okay here,” Father Paul said, returning from locking the
gate. “No one will mess with it.”  
    I shrugged. I didn’t care if they did.
    I trudged through the gravel to the passenger side of Kate’s car and
slid into the plush leather seat that fit her personality to a ‘T’. Even though
she didn’t plan on staying in Merriville , she’d
spared no expense on her car.
    My sister lived a totally different lifestyle than I did. I’d gotten
married young and had kids. She’d spent the last ten years traveling the world
with nothing tethering her. She’d done well as a travel writer, and now she had
her pick of assignments. She could go pretty much wherever she wanted.
Presently that meant moving back to our hometown and hovering over me.
    “Well, isn’t this nice?” she asked, sliding behind the wheel. “I can’t
believe his Holy Hotness is coming with us. Does he eat meat?”
    “Geez, Kate, he’s Catholic. Not a vegetarian.”
    “Well, yeah, but I wondered about the whole animal cruelty thing. Saint
Sexy looks like he likes animals.”
    “Again. Affiliated with the Catholic Church. Not PETA. You’re a moron.”
      “Do you see what’s
happening here?” she asked as she stopped at a light.
    “What?” I asked, looking out the passenger window so I didn’t have to
look at her.
    “We’re having a normal conversation.”
    I remained silent. Nothing really felt normal. No matter what I was
doing, no matter who I was doing it with, it was all
varying degrees of abnormal. Going for a burger like I was anyone else felt
highly abnormal.
    “We’re here.” She pulled into a parking spot and turned off the car.
“Are you going to be okay?”
    I stared blankly at her.
    “Seriously. I know I’m yanking you out of your comfort zone, but I just
…” She grabbed the hand that was resting in my lap. “I just don’t want you to
forget.”
    “Forget what? Trust me. I haven’t forgotten anything.”   I looked away again because I didn’t
want to cry before I had a burger with my crazy ass sister and the town priest.
    “Forget how to live,” she said, squeezing my hand again. “I know you’re
not ready, but every now and then, I feel like I need to remind you how to
live. Jonathan wouldn’t want you to be sad forever.”
    I thought about what he’d said about my dad the night
he’d died. She wouldn’t want him to live like this. She would want him to
move on. He’s too young to stop living.
    I knew he wouldn’t want me to stop living just because he couldn’t be a
part of my life any more, but that didn’t make it any easier. I let go of her
hand and sighed an audible, exasperated sigh. I got out of the car and walked
toward the front door of the restaurant without looking back at her.  
    I didn’t have to tell her. She already knew. I didn’t want to live.

 
    _________________________

 
    Minutes
later, we were seated at a booth in the corner. I was pretty sure that she’d
specifically asked the hostess to put us as far away from other people as
possible. She might be trying to remind me how to live, but she was doing so
with baby steps. I was still angry at her for having
forced me into this but at least she was trying to make my reintroduction into
the world as bearable as possible.
    Father Paul was
right behind us and slipped into the other side of the booth looking a little
less priestly than he had a few minutes ago. He’d taken both the black shirt
and the collar off, and he was wearing a tan V-neck t-shirt with his usual black
pants. He didn’t look at all like the Father Paul I knew, and I wondered if it
was