“Listen,” he said.
There was a church at the north end of the park, and in the stillness they could hear a Christmas carol.
“Choir practice,” Nellie whispered. “For the services on Christmas Eve.”
“Christmas,” Jace said softly. “Last Christmas I don’t even remember where I was, but I got drunk and stayed that way for two days.”
“Because of your wife?”
Jace sat up and looked at Nellie, looked at her lovely face, then put his hand on her cheek, then touched her hair. He looked down at her body, at her big breasts, her waist over hips that he’d like to put his hands on. He wondered if her thighs were as white as the skin on her neck.
It sudde
nly occurred to him that he hadn’t had a woman since Julie. In the four years of his wandering no woman had appealed to him. When he’d looked at women, all he saw was Julie, and every woman paled in comparison to her. But now, looking at Nellie, he wanted her so much that he found his hand was trembling.
“Let’s go listen to the music,” he said at last. He had to get her away from the quiet solitude of the park or he didn’t know if he could control himself.
Nellie had no idea what was going on in his mind, but she knew she didn’t want to leave the park. No man had ever looked at her as he just had, and although it frightened her, it also excited her. She was sure that today was a one-time event and that tomorrow there would be no strolls with a handsome man, so today she had to take all that she could.
“Nellie, don’t look at me like that. I’m only human, and a man can take only so much.”
She hesitated.
Jace rocked back on his heels and groaned.
The groan made Nellie laugh. She wasn’t sure what was going on, but the look on his face made her feel powerful—and beautiful. “All right, let’s go listen to the carols.”
He helped her stand, and it seemed that his hands were all over her body at once. Nellie’s heart leapt to her throat; her blood pounded in her temples.
“Let’s go,” Jace said, grabbing her hand and pulling her forward.
The pretty little white church stood out against the dark sky. The double doors were open, and golden lantern light spilled out into the cool night air. Jace put his arm around Nellie, and when she shivered he led her inside the church. They stood at the back and watched and listened as the choir leader took the men and women through Christmas carol after carol. Some of the choir members smiled at Nellie and looked in question at Jace, who stood protectively near her.
Nellie leaned against the back wall of the church and knew she’d never felt so good in her life. Her clothes brushed against his and, behind the cover of her skirt, he slipped his fingers into hers and squeezed.
They listened to the lovely music for some time, content just to be near each other, fingers entwined, and to do no more than listen.
It was when the choir leader directed the singers to change from carols to hymns that Nellie felt Jace stiffen.
“What is it?” she whispered.
“We have to go,” he said urgently.
Some instinct told her that under no circumstances should they leave the church. She tightened her grip on his hand and said, as though to an unruly child, “We must stay.”
Jace didn’t move but stayed where he was, and Nellie tried to figure out what had upset him so. The choir began to sing “Amazing Grace,” and at the first notes she felt Jace’s hand in hers begin to tremble.
The choir had just begun to sing when Jace dropped Nellie’s hand and stepped forward into the center of the church aisle. Nellie watched as he closed his eyes and began to sing the hymn. He had a beautiful, rich tenor voice, and the perfection of his tone showed his years of training. One by one the choir members stopped singing and listened.
Jace didn’t hear the words he sang; he felt them.
The last time he’d sung the song was at Julie’s funeral. He’d stood over her grave, dry-eyed, bareheaded in the frigid cold of Maine in February, and felt nothing. He felt neither the cold nor his deep sorrow. He imagined his pretty little wife in her coffin, their tiny son wrapped in her arms, and he’d felt nothing.
He had sung the song, and while others had wept he had shed not a tear. For four years now he had felt nothing, had moved, had eaten, had slept, but he had felt nothing. For four years he had not laughed or cried or even been angry.
Now, as he sang the old, mournful words of the hymn, he remembered Julie, remembered her laughing, remembered her as she struggled to give birth to their child.
It was time to say goodbye to the woman he had loved so much. At long, long last tears came to his eyes. Goodbye, my Julie, he thought. Goodbye.