Page 65 of Run with Me

“But I told you…” I was on the verge of a breakdown. It was coming, and I didn’t know how to stop it. “When were you ordained?”

“This past September. What happened to you? Where have you been all thistime?”

“I found good people who helped me. I… I almost died, but they helpedme.”

He shook his head, then clutched his hair with his fists. For a moment I saw a sign of the man I once knew flash across hisface.

“Please don’t cry,” he said softly. “Come here. Sit down.” John guided me to one of the pews, and just as fast as the man who used to love me appeared, he was gone. John was a priest. My daughter’s father was a priest. How could I tell him the truth now? But I had to. He had the right toknow.

“I didn’t think you’d give up on me, John.” My voice was shaking. “I thought you’d wait. I thought…”

“Anna, I never gave up on you, and I’ve prayed for you every single day and night, but I did think that I had lost everything. Everything I loved and cherished was suddenly torn away from me, and all I had left wasGod.”

“But I wasn’t gone.” My voice was so low that I could barely hearit.

“I didn’t know that. To me, I first lost Mikey and then I lost you. I couldn’t live with the pain. When the news of your death came two months after you left, I wanted to give up on life. I wanted to go out there, find your body, and bury you beside Mikey, where I could visit you both. Mikey was gone. You were gone. I… I had no oneleft.”

But there was someone else left. Except John had never known about her. I’d never gotten a chance to tell him that I was carrying his child. A child who was kept safe by a man who had kept his promise.

“I had no one left but God. I put my life into God’s hands. I let Him decide my future.”

I shook my head. This was not the way I’d planned our reunion. It was supposed to be different. I wasn’t supposed to be devastated. As I listened to him, tears streamed down my face. My heart had begun breaking in half the moment I saw that white collar on his shirt, and now I felt as if a piece of it was hanging by its last threads.

“I still love you,” he said. “I will always love you, but that love has changed for me. What it means to love has changed forme.”

“I don’t think I can do this, John. I don’t think I can live here, with you.” I shook my head. “It would hurt toomuch.”

John took my hands into his. He rubbed his thumbs over my palms. “I know this may hurt, but I think my choice of devotion would have remained the same. I didn’t recognize the signs until I thought I’d lost everything. I think eventually, I would have chosen the same path. And look at the beautiful woman you’ve become. You look the same, but stronger and more confident. Maybe you leaving was the best thing that could have happened to both ofus.”

He would have chosen God over me. It was the right choice, but it still made me feel crummy. Yet if there was anyone I could lose the love of my life to, God was a good choice.

“What happens now?” I whispered.

“You shouldn’t have come back, Anna. When you left, Ben was mad. He went crazy talking about stolen money and talked about hunting you for the rest of your life. He still talks about you as if you were alive, but no one knows you’re here, right? I’ll keep you safe at the church for now, and we can figure out what to do tomorrow morning. But we should go somewhere more private.”

“But I still don’t understand. Why did you think I was dead? How did that happen?”

“Because I told him youwere.”

The voice shook through me, vibrating my organs, setting the adrenaline in my body on high alert. Its lethal echo carried across the church. When I turned around, Ben was standing in the open doorway with a gun pointed ourway.

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