Part 23 (1/2)
”Beats me,” whispered Hugh.
”The man I'm looking for is married and has kids. Jack Kettyle can't be Father Jack. What if it's all been a lie?”
”Then we'll start over.”
”How? This is the only name I have, and I've looked everywhere.”
”h.e.l.lo,” came a voice from the door.
Dana turned. Recognition was instant. The face was more mature, the hair more silver than blond, and the black pants, black short-sleeved s.h.i.+rt, and white clerical collar a far cry from madras and jeans. But this was definitely the man in her picture.
His smile lingered, though he seemed puzzled. ”Mary was right,” he said in a kind enough voice. ”You look exactly like someone I know, only she's in San Francisco. I talked with her just this morning.”
Dana forced herself to speak. ”I'm Dana Clarke, and I was looking for Jack Kettyle, only I don't think he's a priest.”
”He is,” the priest confirmed, still kindly.
”You're Jack Jones Kettyle?”
”Whoo. Someone's done research. That's right.”
”A priest? But I was told you were married and had children.”
”I do. Six of them. But my wife died ten years ago, and our children are all grown, so I decided to do something different with my life.”
Hugh joined the conversation. ”I didn't think married men could be priests.”
”I'm a widower. Given the shortage of clergymen, I was accepted. Men like me have experience in marriage and parenting. That makes us an a.s.set to a parish.”
”Don't priests need a degree in theology?” Hugh asked.
”Yes. I spent four years in the seminary. Then I spent a year as a deacon, helping out on weekends. At the end of that year, I was ordained. I was fortunate,” he said, smiling again. ”Not all priests get their own parish right away, but my home parish was losing its priest, and since I already knew so many of the paris.h.i.+oners, it was a logical appointment.”
His explanation did nothing to reconcile the priest with the playboy. Dana wasn't convinced she had found the right man. ”Where did you go to college?” she asked.
The priest folded his arms and leaned against a high-back chair. ”Undergraduate? University of Wisconsin.”
”Did you know a woman named Elizabeth Joseph?”
”I sure did. She stole my heart, then up and left school.”
”Why did she leave?”
”She missed home and figured she could finish up there.”
”Do you know what happened to her?”
More serious now, he said, ”She drowned. It was a long time ago.”
”How do you know that she died?”
”I b.u.mped into a mutual friend who had heard about it.” He seemed to realize that the questions weren't idle ones.
”Did you ever try to contact her family?”
”No. Like I said, she stole my heart. But she didn't love me, so I married someone else. I realized that thinking about Liz wasn't fair to my wife. So I stopped. The choice was between pining forever over a relations.h.i.+p that wasn't to be, or moving on. Putting Liz behind me was the only way I could survive.” Quietly, he said, ”You knew her.”
Dana nodded. ”She was my mother.”
His face brightened for a second. In the next instant, his color drained away.
Dana had had time to prepare. She wasn't shocked to be facing her father, only startled to find that he was a priest.
”How old are you?” the man asked.
”Thirty-four. I was born seven months after my mother left Wisconsin.”
As he stared at her, his eyes filled.
”You really didn't know?” she asked.
He shook his head. Then he pulled himself together and turned to the baby. ”She's yours?”
”Yes, and she's the reason I'm here,” Dana said. ”I don't want anything from you, don't need anything from you, so if you're thinking I've come asking for money or something, you're wrong. I'm only here because my husband and I-”
”Hugh Clarke,” Hugh said, offering his hand, ”and this is our daughter, Elizabeth.”
The priest took his eyes off the child long enough to shake hands with Hugh. Then he looked at the baby again. ”Elizabeth. I'm glad.”
”Lizzie,” Dana specified, ”and since she has some obvious African-American traits, we wanted to learn where they came from.”
The priest drew back. ”She isn't adopted?”
”No, nor was there a mix-up in the lab or an affair with a friend,” Dana said to rule out further speculation. ”My husband knows everything about his family, but I know little about mine. Are you African American?”
The priest blew out a puff of air and, smiling sheepishly, scratched the back of his head. ”Whoo. This will take some getting used to. I didn't ever suspect that Liz had a child.”
Dana was impatient. ”She did, and I'd like you to answer my question.”
”No. I'm not African American.”
”You seem sure.”
”My sister needed a bone-marrow transplant a few years back. We scoured the family for a compatible donor and finally found one in a second cousin, but in the process, we mapped out the family tree in great detail.”
”Why did she need the transplant?” Dana asked, curious in spite of herself.
”Leukemia. She's fine now, a miracle of modern medicine.”
Dana was glad, both for the woman and for herself. She couldn't deal with the thought of Lizzie inheriting a potentially lethal illness. ”So you have no relative of African descent,” she repeated. When the priest shook his head, she looked at Hugh in bewilderment. ”Lizzie's bronze skin had to come from somewhere.”