Excerpt
Mother Ross paused, looked at her hands, at the finger with the missing ring. “Those were your father’s words, of course. Your father gave to every man, to every woman, the right to live their own lives in their own way. In fact, he regarded it as a duty more than a right. ‘You have one life and one life only,’ he used to say. ‘Decide what you want to do with it and do it. Do it without shame, without malice, without harm to others, without denying to anyone else the right to do the same. And if you find you don’t like what you’re doing, change it. There is no harm in that. The harm lies in not changing. In being miserable.’”
“I wish he were here today, Mother Ross.” Caitlin rustled across to the window and gazed out at the grey clouds. A few raindrops struck the window pane. She pushed the open, lower panes shut. “Happy the bride that the rain falls on.”
Mother Ross detected bitterness in Caitlin’s voice. She felt more miserable than ever. She wished the day had never dawned.
“He’s lying down there, Mother Ross,” Caitlin said. “He’s lying down there and despising me.”
“Caitlin, how can you say such a thing of your own father?”
“Because it’s true,” Caitlin shouted, pounding the window sill with her fists. Then she calmed herself and leaned her head against the cool pane. “I should never have agreed to it. I have betrayed all those I hold dearest in the world. I have betrayed my father. I have betrayed Michael. I have betrayed Padraig. I have betrayed you, Mother Ross. I have even betrayed myself.”
“Caitlin, you are overwrought.” Mother Ross looked anxiously at the young woman in her white wedding dress. She and Caitlin had both uttered words that should never have been said, that under normal circumstances neither of them would ever have said. “The worry and tension are getting you down. You’ll be fine when you get to the church. When you see Michael. When you see Padraig.”
Caitlin watched the raindrops slip jerkily down the window pane. She felt cold inside. “I’m pregnant, Mother Ross. You know that already, I’m sure. I’m walking to the church, to the altar, to be married in white. In a white dress. Purity. Virginity. What a joke. I lost my virginity when I was sixteen. I didn’t even lose it; I gave it away willingly. Now I’m twenty-eight. After a dozen years I’m pregnant. And I’m pregnant as I walk to the altar to be married.”
Libros Libertad 