His stomach dropped. Bile filled his mouth.
“What’s wrong?” Tommie asked.
Carlos claimed that he’d gotten them back in record time, but to Maurice, it felt like an eternity. He bounded up the stairs from the dock to the street, two at a time.
Maurice looked up, trying to track her movements. She walked as if every step cost her. His chest tightened as he approached the intersection where their paths would cross.
She saw him.
Just a few dozen yards sat between them, but the distance felt just as tall as it was wide.
She took a step toward him, and then another until she reached the hotel entrance. She paused and looked back at him.
Déjà vu. Monique pushed her way inside.
She didn’t look back again.
He stayed where he was, there in front of a four-hundred-year-old hotel. Petrified.
Maurice stood on the curb until his watch buzzed with a wedding alert. He went to his room to shower and dress.
The clerical collar pressing against his neck served as a reminder of his place, his function. He’d deviated too far this week, forgot himself. But he couldn’t regret any of it.
Twenty more minutes before he needed to be downstairs, and Maurice stood outside Monique’s door. He knocked and waited.
The door opened.
She stood there, silhouetted in the setting sun, wearing a light pink dress that made her skin look luxurious. His mouth went dry at the sight of her. There were jewels in her hair and in her ears. She looked like a goddess.
But her eyes were sad, hollowed, puffy.
“Have you been crying?” he asked in a rush of worry.
“Maybe,” she said, stepping aside and opening the door wider. “You coming in?”
“What happened?”
“I got a call this morning that Chickie—a girl from my cancer support group—was transitioning, and I didn’t take the news well.”
“That’s understandable.”
“Is it, though? Ever since I met her, she’s been preparing us for her death. I was such a bitch to everybody.” She put her head in her hands. “I made a scene.”
“I’m sure they understand.”
“I’m not sure that I understand.”
He sat with that. Both of them not knowing. “Monique,” he said softly, his hand aching to touch her hair. “Do you want to tell me about her? Your friend? Sometimes…” He hadn’t told her his whole story. Not about the counseling. Not about the anti-recidivism work and the fullness of Returning Home. He needed her to know everything.
He sat at the foot of the bed.
She sat beside him. “Sometimes what?”
He took a deep breath. “Sometimes I have talks like these with my guys.”
“You mean the guys in Deb’s program?”
He nodded.