Page 80 of The Catch

He laughed quietly at her astonishment. “What, Catia?” he asked. “You think an old man can’t feel these things?”

“It’s not that.” She thought of Josh’s question that night they’d stayed up until morning, talking and touching until she was sure she’d revealed every thought she’d ever had to him. He’d asked her that night if her parents were happy and the question had set off a wildfire of new ones, about them, about her, about how any of that was supposed to look.

“You think then that we don’t show it.” He shook his head. “That has never been my style, or hers. Josh is brave; he shows all his cards. I saw that from the start, and I saw the way it caught you off guard. Maybe that is our fault, the example I set. I’ve always had a harder time baring my soul, but I worked hard for your mother and you girls. I was there for everything that has ever happened to that woman, standing beside her, and her me. Things maybe you don’t even know about. There are different ways to give love, Catia. Even for those of us who are afraid. You’ll find yours.”

She hung her head in deference to her father’s knowing eyes. There was no sense in trying to deny it this time. She was afraid. He knew it just like Josh had. She was afraid to let someone else hold her whole heart, and she was afraid to look away, even for a moment, and lose sight of who she wanted to be. The problem was lately, without Josh, she didn’t recognize who that was anymore. “Maybe I’m not cut out for it,” she said. She traced the cold metal mug with her fingers as she considered that possibility and what it really meant. Not a silly bet with her friends, or proving something to the world after Micah. What it really meant was heartache. Permanent loneliness.

Carlos leaned on the bar on his forearms, his looming proximity giving her that familiar feeling of shrinking back in time whenever she was in this house. “You are so much like your grandmother, Catia,” he said. “When she wanted something, nothing could stop her. Some people thought she was stubborn, but she wasn’t. She was tenacious. The difference between the two is being able to understand that the journey unfolds as you go. You need to be willing to change course when the path emerges and it looks different than you expected. You’ll remember a very important time when she made that choice. Your sisters have done the same at times.”

“Maria gave up everything she ever wanted for her husband’s dream.” Even as the judgment came out of her mouth, she knew between the last time she’d made it and now, her own desires had shifted exponentially.

“Catia, you tell your grandmother’s story to people like it is a badge of honor on your name, but you question your sisters for their similar paths. Tell me why.”

“It’s different.”

“How?

“Aba didn’t give up anything. She accomplished way more as Grampy’s wife than she could have with her vows of poverty.”

“Maybe it was more in your eyes, Cat, but you know how important her faith was to her.”

Cat pressed the heel of her hand to her eyes. The lack of sleep and the constant threat of a deluge of tears made them burn.

“Maria and Olivia are happy, no?”

“Yes.”

“Sometimes, our journey changes along the way. But know this, it doesn’t mean you were wrong. It just means you haven’t come far enough yet to see the next turn. You’re so afraid of being somebody’s fool, Catia, that you forget you get nowhere in this world alone.” He settled back on his heels, his expression softening. “I think that’s a lesson Josh has already learned.”

Cat turned away, sipping from her drink to hide her reaction. She was sure her father had meant for that to be a pep-talk of sorts. They all thought this was one of Catia’s silly little moments. That she’d put Josh out over something trite and that she had the ability to fix it by being a little more reasonable. This was what they thought of her, and she couldn’t decide whether it was better or worse than what she’d actually done. Instead of pushing Josh away like everyone expected, she’d kept him close and hurt him. They had no idea that he was the one who left her, or that she deserved it. The truth was, whether she learned the lesson or not, she’d already lost Josh in the process.

Thirty-three

The day after Christmas wasa terrible time to hold a ground-breaking ceremony. In fact, the entire month of December would have been off of Josh’s list if he’d been in charge. It was cold, there had been a threat of a snowstorm that had to be monitored up until it went out to sea just in time, and everyone was fresh off of celebrating with their families, their minds still sipping eggnog and relaxing. Everyone except him.

His holiday with Shawn’s family had been over by lunch, and he’d spent the rest of it in bed. Christmas Eve had been even more pathetic: a movie and a microwave lasagna that was meant to be a tribute to the Italian feast his mother made when he was a kid, but ended up being more of a mockery. And as if he needed another reminder of how he should have spent the holiday, the cold he caught the night he and Cat broke up was still hanging around his neck like a cheap souvenir.

A stiff wind whipped down the corridor streets making his eyes sting, and the pain in his chest when he coughed was like ice shattering. Somehow, despite his windpipe frosting over with each breath, his forehead and cheeks were on fire. He could even feel a fine sheen of sweat forming on the nape of his neck behind the turned-up collar of his jacket.

“Jim!” Josh called to a group of contractors huddled around the coffee station that had been set up for the guests. Jim trotted over to where Josh was leaning over a podium, flipping through the final version of the plans he’d drawn.

“You look like absolute shit,” Jim said, as he looked down at the drawing Josh was pressing his index finger into.

“Hey, thanks.” Josh wiped at his brow, and his vision tunneled as he tried to focus on the sheets of paper. “What happened to the front doors? Why are they back to steel? I specified restoring the originals.”

Jim pulled out his phone and started scrolling. “Looks like the client didn’t want to pay for it,” he said, reading from an email. “Steel saves a few hundred bucks.”

“Take it out of my contract fee.”

“Seriously, man?”

Dylan would probably say the same thing, but he would deal with that later. “Yeah, seriously. Clear it with the client, then adjust the invoice. Be persuasive.”

“All right, Josh. Whatever you say.”

Satisfied, Josh closed the packet and looked at his watch. Ten minutes to start. “Let’s grab our seats. The quicker we get this over with, the quicker you can get back to your kids, and I can get back to bed.”

“No complaints here.” Jim gestured to the row of folding chairs behind the ones ribboned off for the politicians. The congressmen and senators were all on break—another testament to the shit timing—so the seats would be filled with city councilors and the mayor. It’s not like they had been working on this for over a year, Josh thought with a sneer he wasn’t sure he hid from his face. The least the city could do was give it a proper ground-breaking. He guessed not everyone could get excited about the local history of an old convent in a city full of national treasures.

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