Thirsty Pelican: Chapter 7 - 2020

This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance by any character or situation to any actual person or event is purely coincidental. All characters presented in this narrative are over the age of 18.

Last Call at the Thirsty Pelican

CHAPTER SEVEN:

2020

By Royce F. Houton

Butterbean's pregnancy was the nudge Sarah and I needed to tip us in favor of moving to Atlanta for the new job I had already begun. It made no sense either for Sarah or me not to be in cities where we had major offices, but it was impossible to consider being that far from the first grandchild.

But Birmingham is very hard to leave. Most of my adult life played out there. It was where Butterbean and Perry were born and grew up. It's where one marriage disintegrated and where I met and fell in love with Sarah and another marriage took root.

Sarah and I spent a full work week in Atlanta in mid-January working at our companies' mother ships by the day and scouting homes and neighborhoods in the afternoons and evenings. We said we would settle in one of the city's northern suburbs, but one look at the traffic on Interstate 75 during the morning and evening rush hours underscored the folly of our plan. We roughly estimated that over the course of each work week, we would spend the equivalent of a sixth eight-hour shift sitting in Atlanta's notorious traffic.

So we made an offer on a 2,800-square-foot condo in an in-demand townhouse development that dates to the mid-1950s just outside Buckhead, very near our workplaces and also Neil and Butterbean. Our Realtor, managing expectations, warned us that there would likely be a bidding war with some buyers swooping in with all-cash offers.

"I think I can be competitive," I confidently told the agent. That's because I had told Bobo Mitternicht about it and he handed me a signed letter on AmeriBank stationery that was as good as cash and maybe better. It informed sellers' agents that I had one of the nation's largest banks behind me should this become a de facto auction.

Sarah and I were on Interstate 20 driving back to Birmingham when the call came that our offer had prevailed and we were the new owners-elect of the Buckhead townhouse. Among the bidders we beat out, our agent confided, was reportedly one of America's best-known rap/hip-hop artists who was trying to buy the property for his mistress.

Other than a high-five, there was no celebration in the car. We were about to be in the business of telling friends and people closest to us in The Iron City that at some point by late February, we would only be occasional visitors, no longer a daily part of their lives. Sure, it made all the sense in the world, but no amount of mental gymnastics and rationalization would persuade our hearts that we were losing something. We were not looking forward to calling yet another real estate agent in Birmingham on Monday morning to list my downtown apartment -- a bachelor pad losing its former bachelor.

Except for the the BBC newscast we settled on as Sarah surfed Sirius/XM, we finished our drive to my downtown Birmingham condo mostly in silence. The exception was a story out of China about some strange, new virus that scientists were freaking out about because humans had no immunity to it.

"Why do they always make things seem like some Godzilla sighting?" I said, dismissively shaking my head. "Ratings, I guess."

Sarah nodded. "I guess. And on that happy note..."

She began scanning Sirius/XM for something happier and settled on a 1980s rock music channel and the words of David Bowie.

"Let's dance! Put on your red shoes and dance the blues.

Let's dance! To the sound they're playing from the raa-di-oh."

▼ ▼ ▼

By Valentine's Day, Sarah and I had achieved two significant milestones.

First, we had set the date for our wedding: May 30, just over three months away. It would be a small, private event for family and closest friends in Birmingham's Kelly Ingram Park, the spot downtown where I met privately for the first time with Sarah who had lived for weeks in terror that the massive federal investigation of the LoanFast scandal and the worldwide news of it would eat her alive. Looking back, it's clear to me now that she owned my heart from that day on, and the connection we made there proved unbreakable.

Second, we had left our separate dwellings in Birmingham and were new residents of Atlanta.

Word of our pending nuptials swept through Birmingham like a brushfire, but the pace of things left us no time to bid a proper farewell to our community there. That's where my best friend and Anchor Bank colleague Ron Casey and the Birmingham Tide Club's immediate past president and full time busybody, Darlice Dunton, insisted on a send-off party like no other.

I asked Ron to take the lead on it, mainly to keep Darlice from running wild.

"I have to be back in March for closing on my downtown apartment, so I'll bring Sarah and plan an overnight and we can do it then," I told Casey. "Looks like early to mid-March. Let me press the title company for the exact date and I'll get back to you, OK?"

"I can work with that. Pelican sound like a good spot?"

"Where better. All we need is a date."

It took a day to pin down Iron City Title & Surety on a date, but I texted it to Ron as soon as I got it: Wednesday, March 11.

▼ ▼ ▼

"I'm not going to even pretend that I'm happy about this," Little Carly Butcher said after climbing atop a chair in the midst of the floor of the Thirsty Pelican. "Oh, I'm happy for my friend of more years than either of us likes to imagine, Kirk, and his lovely bride-to-be, Sarah, who met for the first time right right over there at Table No. 8 during a Tide Club watch party a few years ago."

He was pointing to a table almost spitting distance from where he stood. I suspect Darlice had asked him to say that.

"I'm also happy at the way things turned out for Kirk and Sarah after that ordeal they went through with the feds investigating every step they took during that LoanFast ordeal and that unhinged attempt to scapegoat them by Kirk's ex-boss, now the most popular new inmate up at Limestone," he continued, referring to Waymon McClendon's 10-year sentence being served at Alabama's largest penitentiary.

"But I'm not happy worth a damn that I won't be seeing Kirk here on ballgame nights and Tide Club gatherings and just whenever he felt like sipping a brew and talking to friends," Little Carly said, turning toward me.

"I wondered if I was good enough a friend of his to take his beer mug down from the rafters and give it to him as a parting gift, something to remember us by. But I couldn't do that. No, that mug will stay in those rafters as long as there's a Thirsty Pelican and I'm running it, just waiting for him to come back and visit. And so will this one that I had made up just for Sarah, which will go right beside Kirk's," he said before he turned to his right and took a giftwrapped box from one of the Pelican's servers.

"But I did have two exact replicas made for Kirk and for Sarah to take with you so you can remember us and lift a mug for the friends you'll always have here," he said, presenting the package to Sarah. "That way, it's never last call at the Thirsty Pelican no matter where y'all are."

The room erupted in an appreciative roar as I tried to blink away tears and find a way to push words of gratitude past the huge lump in my throat and my quivering bottom lip. Somehow, I did, standing on the same chair to tell all those in attendance that I am touched beyond words and saddened to be taken from their midst, but that neither distance nor the passage of time would diminish the love Sarah and I hold for these people and this place.

Until I stood on the chair, I hadn't noticed that the crowd was not as big as it seems when you're in the eye of the swarm, the recipient of all the back-slapping and hugs and beer-fueled bonhomie. It was also clear to us that not many people wanted to linger. Instead, they headed through the raw, late-winter wind to their cars and back home.

"I guess it's just another weeknight," I commented to Carly.

"I wish it was as simple as that. Business the past few weeks has been down by about one-third for this time of year," he said. "This new China virus is starting to get people rattled. Folks are turning up dead now in this country and nobody seems to know how to stop it."

He was echoing one of the words the president himself had applied dismissively to the novel coronavirus that had recently become a household term: COVID-19. Mr. Trump was also fond of the term "Kung Flu."

"They had to rush a former Chi-O sister who lives in San Francisco to the hospital this morning and put her in the ICU on life support. They don't have the tests back yet, but her family's been told it's the COVID," Darlice said, absent her usual effusiveness.

Then from farther back in the bar: "Holy shit, Carly, you need to see this."

Someone was pointing to one of the monitors where ESPN was playing. Under the banner "Breaking News," an ashen anchor was reporting that two Utah Jazz players had been diagnosed with the virus and that the NBA was canceling the remainder of its season.

"Sweet Jesus," Carly whispered, his face slack as he stared at the screen. "Turn up the audio."

That may have been the news that got the attention of everyone at the Thirsty Pelican that night. But it was subordinate to what would become one of the biggest headlines to date of the 21st century, also on March 11: The World Health Organization had declared COVID-19 a global pandemic, the first in 100 years.

Sarah tightened her grip on my hand. "I think we should probably go," she said softly, a stricken look taking hold on her face. Seconds later, Carly left us no choice.

"Folks, I hate to end the night's festivities, but we need to close up for the night, head home and figure out what's next. I hope we'll see y'all again real soon, but please go ahead, settle up your tabs and have a good night," he said.

We checked in as scheduled to the Embassy Suites because we were well past the hour when we could cancel a reservation without forfeiting the full night's payment. The scene in the lobby was other-worldly. Front desk staff were fielding calls from guests panicked by the pandemic news and wondering if they were trapped in their rooms. Some people were arguing that the news voided their reservations -- and their obligation to pay for it -- because it was an act of God. Sarah and I were the only two attempting to actually check in.

"You scared?" Sarah asked me as I turned off the bedside table lamp and she spooned herself into me. "I am."

"We'd be fools not to be," I whispered into her mass of soft, fragrant auburn curls.

"If nobody has immunity to fight this thing off, what's to keep it from wiping us all out?" she said.

"That I can't answer, angel. Way beyond the knowledge of a mortgage banker."

Eventually, fatigue out-muscled fear somewhere around 2 a. m. We both were awake by 7 a. m. and on our mobile devices with our respective offices in Atlanta, where it was already 8 o'clock. There were various reports about talks involving our CEOs and boards of directors trying to figure out how to keep business moving while minimizing the risk of exposure to a pathogenic grim reaper we knew little to nothing about.

"It's insane here," Sarah's executive assistant told her as she described the panicky chaos unfolding before her in the Atlanta office of WAS Solutions. "I don't know whether to stay here or go home and lock myself in the basement."

Sarah told her to use her best judgment and not put herself in harm's way, even if that meant leaving the office.

Bobo Mitternicht hadn't left home. He was in nonstop conference calls and Zoom conferences with the AmeriBank's top leadership, struggling to wrap its arms around the brand new crisis for which emergency contingencies had never been contemplated. He advised me to do the same until he had clearer guidance.

So it was that Sarah and I ditched our return flight tickets for the 30-minute puddle jump back to Atlanta to avoid the milling masses at airports which seemed to be the greatest common factor in the virus's spread to date and instead rent a car back for the drive back.

We had been on the road for more than an hour when Sarah wondered aloud if we should postpone the wedding.

"No," I said without hesitation. "The only thing that scares me more than the idea of this pandemic is the idea of going through it without us being married."

She smiled. "Better or for worse... sickness and in health, right? What if we have to put that to the test?"

"Then so be it. I want you, better or worse."

▼ ▼ ▼

"Worse" and "sickness" came fast. And in triplicate.

In the first week of April, Butterbean called in sheer panic from the ICU of Grady Memorial Hospital where Neil had just been admitted. Barely 24 hours earlier, he had reported symptoms of shortness of breath, dizziness, fever. Now, he was hooked up to a ventilator that pumped a high concentration of oxygen into his lungs to keep him alive. But what made it worse, isolation protocols prohibited Meghan from even being on the ICU floor, much less at his bedside.

How do you reassure your firstborn that her healthy, young husband would prevail over a disease scientists were nowhere close to understanding? How do I allay her very real fear that she might raise the child she would bear in just three months without a father?

I couldn't. No one could.

Sarah had lived the part about raising a child -- a special needs child -- without a father. Just talking to Sarah helped Butterbean hold it together. She didn't have to invoke lessons to Meghan her 19-year labor of love with Derek. My daughter never lost sight of that. And for that, I was grateful.

In the final week of April, my mother contracted the virus. Typically headstrong, Elizabeth Weeks had considered considered the warnings of doctors and scientists to be alarmist overkill and continued her weekly in-person bridge games with her oldest friends in Huntsville. Making the games "virtual" via videoconferencing apps such as Google Meet, Microsoft Teams or Zoom was unthinkable for all of them. Thus, when three of the four were stricken by the virus, the games as they had known them ended for good. Two of the three would die.

Mom resisted admission into the hospital until my sister Kathryn, who lived in nearby Athens, Alabama, checked on her after she failed to answer the phone and found her in bed barely able to breathe. An ambulance rushed her to the hospital where she, too, was intubated in the intensive care unit with a grave prognosis. She battled the disease for two weeks until -- true to her stubborn nature -- she essentially refused to die, as most in her age cohort had and as her doctors assumed she would -- and resumed breathing on her own.

Neil and mom both survived COVID-19, but the disease weakened them in ways that required months to put behind them. Mom never fully regained her cognitive sharpness; Neil would find ordinary chores he once finished easily, such as mowing the lawn, now required two or three rest stops, and that was in mild weather, not the heat of the summer.

Then Sarah tested positive.

We had been vigilant in our social distancing. When circumstances required venturing into public places such as the supermarket, we wore the N-95 masks that the medical establishment, including a mild-mannered little man named Anthony Fauci, exhorted us to wear. We also wore gloves and wiped down everything we purchased with antiseptic cloths before bringing them indoors.

Even so, the airborne contagion found my Sarah and sickened her on the last day of April.

She resisted hospitalization. News reports of refrigeration trucks backed up the the loading docks of hospitals and nursing homes and pressed into service as makeshift morgues terrified both of us. But when it became clear that breathing would require mechanized assistance, she tearfully relented.

I drove her to the emergency room -- she flatly refused an ambulance. I held her hand the whole way and kissed her before the hospital intake process medically segregated her from me and everyone else except doctors and nurses cloaked head-to-toe in personal protective wear.

Unlike Butterbean, I could at least look at the love of my life in her ICU cocoon through protective glass. Her face was drawn and devoid of is color and mirth. She she was sedated -- placed in a medically induced coma -- so her body could concentrate its full energy on fighting the virus that had claimed her as its host, a place to replicate before infecting others. I knew that the longer the coma persisted and the virus raged, the greater the chance that organs such as her liver and kidneys would fail, doing irreparable harm if not killing her.

One evening, at the end of the 15 minutes they allowed me twice a day, I found myself in solemn, tearful supplication to a God who had become a stranger to me. I begged the Lord to see my Sarah through this, to restore her to me. Through my tears, I bartered with the Almighty: give me my Sarah and I'll do whatever you want. Name it. My tomorrows are yours.

On this day, I became aware of a presence over my shoulder and looked up. There stood a man clothed in black but for his white clerical collar.

"Father, can you put in a good word," I asked in a broken voice.

"I already have," he said, "but it's just Charlie. Charlie McCutcheon. I'm the pastor at Peachtree Road United Methodist. I'm not a priest."

"Charlie... Pastor McCutcheon... am I doing this right? My name's Kirk, and I don't have a lot of experience at this. Been years since I've seen the inside of a church. I know moments of crisis aren't the best time to draw near to my maker, but here I am. How can I do this better?"

Charlie nodded. "You're doing it as right as anyone can, Kirk. You're speaking your heart to the Lord who knew and loved you before you were born and always will, no matter how often or how seldom you sit in a pew or kneel in prayer. He's not keeping score, but he's glad you've remembered him and come to him."

"Sarah there," I said, pointing to her unconscious form, "she's my fiancé. Second marriage for me; first for her. We're supposed to marry the end of this month. I've told God that if he can bring her back to me, I'll do whatever he asks of me. And I mean that. I don't know what else to do."

Charlie pursed his lips and carefully considered his next words.

"Kirk, God understands, but it's important to remember in our prayers to beseech God's will, not our own. That's why The Lord's Prayer stands as the model for how we should do it. 'Thy kingdom come, thy will be done.' That part is important," the pastor said, emphasizing those seven words in the middle.

"We can and should ask God for favor, but I don't think he's into bartering for services," Charlie said. "He already knows what you will and won't do anyway, even surer than you know in your heart."

"So I messed up?"

"No, Kirk. There's no way to 'mess up' when we earnestly talk to God. His mercy and love are greater than any mortal can ever grasp. But mercy has to be paired with a penitent heart that truly seeks forgiveness and is, in turn, willing to forgive. If that's not in your prayers, it should be. Jesus knows we're mortal. He knows firsthand what being mortal is like, so he's ready to forgive our sins. All you need do is ask."

By the time he finished, I was squatting against the wall weeping as I have not since I was a child. Everything came pouring out. My pride. My conceits. My guilt. My fear of losing Sarah. I couldn't rein it in if I wanted to, and right now, I didn't want to. This was so long overdue.

I felt Charlie's hand on my shoulder.

"Now you're speaking to the Lord in His language, with your heart fully open."

He knelt and took me in his arms, the coronavirus notwithstanding, as I bawled. Medical professionals walked quietly and respectfully by as though scenes such as this were something they've seen routinely of late. And it didn't matter, either to Pastor McCutcheon or to me. A weight that had been part of me my whole adult life was lifting off me, and in its place was a peace that comes from realizing that a Higher Power has my back, and all my schemes and fear and worry can't change anything about it.

Charlie stayed there throughout my emotional and spiritual moment of reckoning, even though we had trespassed well beyond my allowed 15 minutes. His arms never left me, and I will be grateful to him the rest of my life for it.

"Kirk, can I help you wrap this up?"

I nodded.

"Then take my hands and repeat after me," he said. I grasped both of his hands, and he led off, "Our father who art in Heaven..."

▼ ▼ ▼

My own bout with COVID-19 was short and uneventful. It was like a cold with a fever, a dull headache and a loss of the ability to smell or taste. The same was true of Butterbean, who found Neil on the mend and her unborn baby unaffected.

But testing positive meant I could not visit the hospital for a week to 10 days, during which Sarah's struggles worsened in spite of my prayers. Her blood oxygen levels continued to drop, even as the oxygen mixture into her ventilator increased. A nurse did me the courtesy of FaceTiming me every day to update me and allow me to view my bride-to-be, now looking emaciated with dark circles around her eyes. All of which left me to pray harder.

I kept in touch with the Rev. Charlie McCutcheon, speaking regularly by phone over the days after our literal come-to-Jesus moment. I was impressed that he wasn't trying to proselytize me into his church's congregation but, rather, encourage me to explore where I felt the work I had pledged to do for God was leading me.

When I told him I was a mortgage banking executive overseeing half the South for AmeriBank, he asked if my gifts might benefit efforts to shelter the homeless. Instantly, a number of possibilities shot through my mind, from helping those on the economic margins qualify for home loans to corporate assistance in financing causes such as Habitat for Humanity.

"Kirk, I think you've found your sweet spot," Charlie said. "Let me make a few calls."

It was a moment of fulfillment, helping me cope with my concern for Sarah and the helplessness I had felt exacerbated the past few days by my inability to visit the hospital and be near her, even if I could not touch her.

The call came around supper time on the seventh of May. It was the hospital.

I had made the nursing station at Grady's ICU an emergency contact in my phone and given it a particularly loud and alarming ringtone to ensure I didn't miss any call. I answered the call with my heart in my throat.

"This is Kirk," I said, my mouth dry and my voice shaky.

"Mr. Weeks, this is Charisse, shift supervisor at the nurses' station. There's been a change in Miss Zanone's condition, can you hold for a moment?"

My chest constricted and breathing felt impossible. My mouth went suddenly dry and my stomach felt as though it had filled with ice cubes and ball bearings. My knees and hands trembled as I waited for the next voice to come onto the line with whatever crushing news it might impart.

"Hello, Mr. Weeks?" a man's voice said.

"Yes."

"OK, you can go ahead," the man said in a muffled voice as hands fumbled with the phone. I winced and clenched my teeth, braced for what might come next.

"Kirk?" It was a weak, whispery voice, but its source was unmistakable.

"Sarah! Sarah, baby is that you?"

"Yes," she said. "I love you, Kirk."

I could tell that those six words required Herculean effort on Sarah's part.

"I love you too, Sarah. More than I can ever express and forever!" I bellowed into the phone. "And thank you, Lord!"

The man's voice was back on the line.

"This is Doctor Haberman. Miss Zanone showed a great deal of quick improvement this afternoon, so we ended the sedation and she quickly came to. We don't often see that, but then this is a disease that didn't exist six months ago, so a definite prognosis is difficult, but it's certainly a lot brighter than it was a week or even a day ago."

By now, I was trying to listen, something complicated by the fact that I was intermittently sobbing and rejoicing.

"Thank you, Lord, and thank you, doctor. Thank you so much. Can you put it back on speakerphone for just a second?"

"Sure," he said. "Go ahead."

"Sarah, I will be there to see you as soon as I can and look into those gorgeous eyes again. You just get well, OK?"

"OK," she said. And then Dr. Haberman was back on the line.

"We need to let her rest now, Mr. Weeks. The staff tells me you've had a mild case of COVID yourself. How long have you been without fever?"

Three days, I told him.

"OK, wait another four before you come to the hospital. By then maybe Miss Zanone will be out of the ICU."

I couldn't spread the news fast enough. I told Butterbean and Perry. I left mom a voice mail. I called Ron Casey. And I called Pastor Charlie. That was the most emotional call of all.

"Charlie, she's back. She came out of it this afternoon. Thank God... and thank you for leading me back to him," I said.

"Why don't you do that right now?"

"Do what?"

"Thank him. Specifically. Remember how we did it?" Charlie said, embarking on the Lord's Prayer.

When we were done, I felt a measure of peace I had never known.

"I want you to meet Sarah, Charlie. Soon as she's able."

"Kirk, I'd like that."

And with that, we'd said all we could say -- all that mattered, anyway.

Relief washed over me and I gave in to weeks of fatigue. It was only 8:30 and I was about to drift off when my phone rang again. An unknown caller, the kind of call I once reflexively shunted into voicemail before my life was tossed in the washing machine and run through the spin cycle. I answered.

"Hello?"

"Yes, Mr. Weeks," a soft voice with a deep drawl said.

"This is he." I was still guarded, but it didn't sound like any telemarketer I ever heard.

"I understand you're interested in helping homeless people and I thought maybe I could help you put your interest into action," the man said. "My name is Jimmy Carter."

I was speechless for long enough that the caller was unsure if he'd lost the connection. "Hello?"

"Uh... forgive me, sir, I've never spoken to a president before, in office or out," I stammered. He chuckled.

"I get that occasionally. Just call me Jimmy if you will," he said.

I was just a child when James Earl Carter of Plains, Georgia, was sworn in as the 39th president of the United States. Still, I remember feeling pride that someone who talked like us was the leader of the free world.

Carter never won re-election, but he won the world over in his post-presidency, continuing to teach his Sunday School classes at his hometown Baptist church until age and advancing frailty made that impractical. He was an avid volunteer and the global face of Habitat for Humanity, and that's why he was calling tonight.

"There's no shortage of people who are willing to show up with hammers and saws to help build or fix homes but we really need people with the knowledge, experience and connections in the home finance industry to advise us and help gain a measure of support among major lenders that has been somewhat lacking," Carter said.

Charlie McCutcheon, it turned out, was well-connected in Atlanta's Habitat organization and what I had told him had rocketed to its top echelons. So they turned to their chief evangelist, Jimmy Carter, to close the deal.

"Mr. President," I said, quickly correcting myself, "Jimmy... I am at your service. God has been very good to me, and it's time I was good to God. How can I help?"

He said I would be getting a call in the next day or two with national board members and the chief financial officer of the organization who would speak with me at length and map out a path forward.

"You know, Kirk, my life has taught me that the Lord does his best work through us when we're at lowest moments. We don't see it at the time, but now, when I look back, I marvel at the beauty and divine genius of it."

"Thank you for sharing that truth, Jimmy. It's been a blessing and an honor to talk to you," I said.

"Good night, Kirk, and God bless you," he said. The call disconnected.

▼ ▼ ▼

The wedding venue had to change, but the date remained the same.

Sarah left the ICU for a private room on the 14th of May and was discharged from the hospital a week later -- nine days before we were to be wed in an outdoor ceremony in downtown Birmingham.

The pandemic had already forced the cancellation or postponement of thousands of weddings. For those that still went forward, drastic alternatives were planned. Ours was no exception.

Sarah was regaining her strength at an impressive clip, but she had to start almost from scratch. She had to retrain herself to balance on two legs, and then deliberately order those unused muscles to take the motions necessary for her to walk. Her damaged lungs had trouble supplying those muscles with oxygen. Her short walks through our townhouse left her breathless and weak after her homecoming. She found it difficult to focus mentally for extended periods. Even using the restroom after weeks on a catheter required time to become re-acclimated.

I had introduced her to Pastor Charlie and told her of our life-changing encounter just on the other side of the ICU window where she lay unconscious. By the end of his visit to our townhouse, we had made plans to marry in a small, socially distanced ceremony at Peachtree Road United Methodist Church the afternoon of May 30 -- in its magnificent outdoor courtyard and fountain, weather permitting, or in the sanctuary if not -- with Charlie presiding. Only a few could attend, so the rest would have to log in to a live-stream of the ceremony.

The wedding dress Sarah had purchased in Birmingham long before the pandemic's privations had to be taken in to accommodate some of the weight her illness had stolen. But when she emerged on the afternoon of the 30th -- her first trip outside our home since her release from the hospital -- all the hardship the virus had wreaked on her seemed for the moment to disappear. As if by magic or divine fiat, she was the radiant, smiling Sarah who had taken up permanent residence in my heart two years earlier. Her wild, coppery ringlets seemed to glisten in the sun, utterly stealing the show from the veil set atop them.

She walked with more vigor than I had seen since before her ordeal began as she approached Charlie and me just in front of the church's landmark fountain, ringed by concentric circles of blooming azaleas. Her first cousin and the only relative with whom she remained in contact had agreed to walk her down the aisle, but had contracted the virus and couldn't attend, so my son-in-law and fellow COVID convalescent, Neil, filled in. Blood or not, we were all family now, all of us with some earned immunity thanks to having survived the virus ourselves.

Among our few guests were Butterbean, Perry and Bobo Mitternicht, all seated in wooden folding chairs at least six feet from one another. There were several people I did not recognize. Two turned out to be nurses from the ICU who had attended Sarah and kept her alive. And one man was the Atlanta regional CEO and for Habitat for Humanity, also a close friend of the presiding minister and a member of his church.

The service was simple and short. Nobody wanted to turn this into a marathon that would tax the stamina of recovering COVID patients. Charlie stuck to the traditional script in leading us through our vows. Predictably, Sarah and I both faltered when we recited the "in sickness and in health" part.

When we placed rings on the other's finger, we each made personalized professions to each other.

"You are now my home in every way, Sarah. You've shown me what home is. And because of what we've already endured, my life has a new mission finding homes for those who need them find them. In devoting myself singularly to you, I have also found my way home to God, and that is a blessing as worthy and everlasting as our love. I am yours forever, Sarah."

She swallowed hard as she slid a gold band on my finger.

"Kirk, no dream could have ever brought together all the beautiful and wonderful things that the Lord mixed together in you. When I had all but given up on love with the passing of my son -- all but given up on happiness for myself -- I had not counted on someone like you. You have been kind. You have been patient. You have loved me without question or reservation during the hardest of times. You are that blessing I never expected God to send my way. And I will love, hold and honor you forever."

When Pastor Charlie pronounced us husband and wife and welcomed our first kiss within the bounds of matrimony, it was no ceremonial peck. It was a kiss born of fear and longing, grace and gratitude, a love that had yearned for this moment, even before either of us knew the other existed. It was tender and passionate without being lustful. And it lasted perhaps a beat too long, outlasting the applause and celebratory whoops of the small gallery and perhaps the larger gathering streaming it live at home.

Rather than complicate things with a raucous reception, we promised a proper party after this dark time, stained by a mysterious and unstoppable pandemic, was behind us. Besides, what good is a reception without toasts, without dancing, without a feast and a sprint through a shower of rice to a waiting limousine to whisk the newlyweds off to a tropical honeymoon venue.

All that would come. For now, I just wanted to get my bride home: to have and to hold, forsaking all others, til death do us part. This day of exertion was already pushing her limits.

When we arrived at our townhouse, we found a massive foam cooler with a full four-course meal from Buckhead's Michelin-rated Atlas restaurant in the St. Regis hotel along with a chilled bottle of Chateau Lafite Rothschild. Inside was a note:

Bringing the reception dinner to Kirk and Sarah. With love to you both.

Butterbean, Neil and Perry

With Sarah still in her wedding dress and me still in my suit, we unpacked and savored our feast at our kitchen table. Watching her enjoy the delectable Wagyu steak, the asparagus, smoked cipollini onions and baby potatoes with garlic and truffles -- the first consequential meal of her convalescence -- filled me with hope. When it was done, I helped her, step-by-step, up the stairs to the second floor. Then as much out of necessity as tradition, I scooped up her fatigued body and carried her across the threshold to our bedroom.

Slowly, I helped her out of her dress and hung it on the hangers as she instructed.

I kissed the flesh of her still-thin body, knowing that she was far too exhausted to take it any farther, but showing her that I still love and crave every inch of her. She donned the oversized Alabama Football t-shirt that was her favorite sleepwear and spooned into me.

"Kirk, I could sense your mind and your heart willing me to pull out of it in the ICU. I think the thought of you made the difference. I had something to live for," she said, turning to face me. "I do have something, someone to live for. I love you, Kirk."

She kissed me as her hand caressed my face.

"You're my answered prayer, Sarah." She knew from her conversations with Pastor Charlie and me that what I was saying wasn't just a metaphor. It was a literal fact.

Within minutes, we were asleep. We would wake late on Sunday morning in each other's arms, husband and wife.

▼ ▼ ▼

COVID didn't relinquish its hold on its victims gladly or quickly.

By the middle of June, Sarah could make her way from the first floor to the second and back unassisted, but it still winded her. By late June, she could sit on a wooden stool and weed the flower bed beneath our front and rear windows for nearly an hour without retreating inside to cool off and take a nap. She had begun logging in to WAS Solutions' digital networks from home and even participated in her first videoconference since her illness.

It was July Fourth, a day we had intentionally designated as a do-nothing day, that she walked down the stairs, found me on the sofa watching Netflix and sat on my lap.

"Care if I join you, Mr. Weeks?"

"Not at all, Mrs. Weeks."

"Good. What ya watchin'?" she said in a singsong lilt that I had missed. Good sign that it was returning.

"It's a comedy series. Pretty funny. You might like it. Stars Jane Fonda, Lily Tomlin and the guy who played the president in 'West Wing.' It's called 'Grace and Frankie.'"

She nodded, acclimated herself to my lap and looped her arm around my neck. She watched the remaining 10 minutes of a Season Two episode, not really engaged. And when the credits rolled, she grabbed the remote, turned off the TV, took my face in her hands and kissed me with an unmistakable hunger.

"Wow," I said when we came up for air. "What did I do to deserve that?"

"You married me," she said in a breathy whisper against my neck, "and unavoidable circumstances until now have prevented us from consummating our marriage."

"There's my Sarah," I said, noticing her rigid nipples tenting the nearly threadbare cotton of the t-shirt. I ran a hand beneath the shirt and caressed them, unencumbered by a bra. "And maybe I need to take her upstairs."

She shook her head and in one move pulled the shirt over her head, leaving her naked on my lap. "No. Right here. Right now."

It had been just over two months since we last made love, an involuntary hiatus directly attributable to a virus from hell. Now, my beautiful wife was in all her naked glory, wriggling in my lap, beckoning my lips to her neck and her nipples; my hand to her opened thighs and the warm wetness at their juncture. Her hand found me hardening fast and unbuttoned the fly to my PJ shorts to free it.

Quickly, Sarah was panting as my fingers and palm plied her womanhood and teased her eager bud.

"Neither of us is going to last very long, I'm afraid," I growled as the mere sight of her brought me to full stiffness, not to mention her handwork.

She nodded, repositioning herself astraddle my thighs before she situated her dewy petals over the erection straining upward toward her. She ground herself for a few thrusts on the underside of it, already bringing us near the point of no return before pausing to guide me to her opening and sinking onto me and me into her, inch by exquisite inch. I removed my ratty t-shirt and she leaned into me as she caught her breath, a concession to her recovering respiratory stamina. I held her gently to me, kissing her face, hair and neck tenderly and whispering "I love you" between each kiss. Sufficiently refreshed after a minute or so, her lips found mine and she began rocking her loins on my hardness deep within her. I cupped her bottom, helping her along while the other tweaked and tortured one brooding nipple.

"That's perfect, Kirk. Just let me...," she said, her words dissolving as she focused on the rhythms of her pelvis and capturing the climax just beyond her reach. As her pace accelerated, so did her labored breathing. I silently prayed that her oxygen level would hold up through her orgasm.

I turned my tongue and lips to her breasts, now bobbing before me in time with her thrusts and dropped my hand to the apex of her slit to caress her pearl and its wet hood. That sent a jolt through Sarah, giving her the boost she needed. She was almost gasping now, her hips heaving into me and back and pulling me toward the crest of release with her.

"Oh yes... oh... yes. Oh God yes," she moaned as her pelvic floor began its familiar clenching. "Oh Kirk, I'm cumming!" she said exultantly, almost as if surprised.

I could hear her wheezing as the muscles of her legs, groin, butt and abdomen shuddered, driving her mound hard into me. Her orgasm triggered my own. I groaned in ecstasy as sperm stored for months filled her pussy.

As the last shivers of her climax rippled through her, fine beads of sweat coalesced on the flushed flesh of Sarah's chest and formed rivulets that trickled slowly downward toward her navel en route to our coital juncture. She was more winded than I've ever seen her, befitting someone who had just sprinted the last half mile of the Boston Marathon.

She slumped forward into me, but I remembered what my basketball coach told me in high school after a punitive session of gassers: stay vertical, preferably with your hands behind your head because it allows your rib cage and lungs to expand up to one-third more than if you're bent over trying to suck wind. She took my advice, but it was still several minutes before she could speak a full sentence.

Then, I held her to my chest, caressed her hair and ran my fingers lightly up and down her back.

"We did it, Kirk," she said. "It took a lot, but we did it. Our first lovemaking in the bonds of matrimony."

"My beautiful wife," I said, barely above a whisper. "Just let yourself rest and enjoy the relaxation and peace of this moment."

She lay her head on my shoulder.

"I love you, Kirk," she said, drowsiness already taking hold. Within a minute, her deep, measured breaths told me she was asleep. For two hours, I would hold her like that, relishing every second of it.

▼ ▼ ▼

She slept through the roar and rumble of one of the localized, afternoon summer thunderstorms that so famously pop up across northern Georgia during sultry dog days like these. She slept through the sirens of ambulances and fire engines streaking up and down Peachtree Street just over a football field's distance from us. It was my cell phone and the sharp ringtone I had applied to my emergency contacts that jostled Sarah from her peaceful slumber.

I scrambled to find the phone which had slipped between two of the sofa's cushions during our aerobic carnal workout.

"Oh shit, it's Neil," I said, sliding the green icon to answer the call. "Neil, everything OK?"

"Megan's water broke... finally," he said. I could hear the hum of his moving car as he used the hands-free speaker phone of his car. I also heard Butterbean, riding shotgun, huffing in a set cadence as they had taught her in Lamaze classes.

Meghan was already four days beyond her expected due date and had become quite miserable as her summertime pregnancy left her sweating buckets, her her ankles and boobs uncomfortably swollen.

"How far are you from Grady," I asked Neil, referring to the same hospital whose intensive care unit had seen both him and Sarah through their COVID struggles.

"Five minutes or less," he said. "Just wanted to give you a heads-up. You're about to be a grandpa."

I knew better than to ask if I could come wait in the waiting room of the newborns' area. The pandemic had foreclosed that option to all but fathers who opted not to be in the delivery room during the birth. So I would sit and watch my phone screen for the next few hours.

"OK. Tell Butterbean we love her."

"Will do."

Sarah gave a drowsy smile, but a glint of melancholy was clear in her expression.

"A grandpa. Wow. Eventful day for you," she said.

"Eventful day for us," I countered.

She shrugged. "That's one thing I won't fully know. God had other plans."

I caressed her auburn ringlets framing her face.

"Angel, grandparenthood isn't about who physically begat whom and a DNA trail. It's about a network of love. My actual maternal grandfather -- mom's dad -- died when mom was in first grade. Be was a brakeman for the L&N Railroad; an accident in the Huntsville switching yard. My grandmother remarried several years later to a very sweet, kind and gentle man who was so good to mom that she agreed to let him adopt Elizabeth and she took his last name. I had no blood tie to him, but he's the only grandfather I ever knew. Took me fishing, taught me how to fix car engines... taught me how to play poker, though mom didn't know about it at the time," I said with a laugh.

"Is there any doubt in your heart now much Butterbean loves and admires you?"

She lifted her head from my shoulder, looked in my eyes and shook her head.

"Good. This is going to be our grandson. Or granddaughter. Either way, he or she will love you. Just like I do."

Neil and Meghan intentionally did not want to know the gender of their child, saying they wanted to leave that revelation for the moment of birth. I could relate. Knowing whether it's a boy or girl is efficient if you want to paint a baby's room pink or powder blue, or for giddy grandparents-to-be who want to know whether to buy Little Mermaid or Spiderman baby clothes. But I understand and respected their choice.

Sarah wrapped her arms around my neck and rested her head against mine. Her silence suggested a heavy heart. The tear that spilled from her and landed on the back of my neck confirmed it. I didn't have to ask why.

She had to wonder: What if David had not been aboard that doomed chopper and they had married and raised a normal, healthy child in Derek. In that kinder alternate universe, might she be getting the phone call as Derek drove Sarah's daughter-in-law to a hospital to deliver Sarah's first grandchild? In that alternate universe, though, Sarah and I likely never meet, much less fall in love and marry.

Real life has its tradeoffs. Yet somehow, if you let it, love can come around and balance out the heartbreak.

We remained there, in each other's silent embrace, until dusk settled in.

▼ ▼ ▼

The idea of sitting at home splitting our time between Netflix and my iPhone screen was a nerve-wracking. A change of scenery was in order -- one socially distanced enough that it put neither of us nor others at risk from virus. We settled on a drive-in theater about about 30 minutes down U. S. 23.

It was an awful year for new theatrical releases. Studios and distributors didn't want to waste their expensive blockbusters by releasing them in the midst of a worldwide crisis that shuttered theaters. Instead, re-released past classics, and we settled on something light and goofy from 1984 to help us pass the time: "Ghostbusters."

The combination of Daylight Saving Time and long days not far after the summer solstice meant that it was nearly 9 at night before the sky got dark enough in Atlanta, near the western boundary of the Eastern Time Zone, to effectively project a movie outdoors. It was almost 9:15 by the time the feature presentation began. An hour later, Neil's text arrived with three simple words: IT'S A BOY!

Good thing we were in a car at a drive-in and not an auditorium. The yelp I let loose would have gotten me ejected. Then a flurry of follow-up texts.

Weight 7 lbs, 11 oz. Born 9:37 p. m.

Healthy -- 10 fingers, 10 toes, loud like me.

Moving Butterbean to her room now.

I responded to each text with a heart emoji. Then I asked: What y'all name him?

His response was delayed a couple of minutes. I started getting a bit worried and then he responded.

Will FT (Facetime) y'all in a bit

after BB (Butterbean) settles in her room

& they bring baby in. BB has a question.

I replied with a thumb's up. What choice did I have? But a question? Sarah and I shrugged and returned our attention to the screen.

Ten minutes passed. Twenty. Half an hour. It was a little before 11, just as a 20-story-tall Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man ran amok in Manhattan, that the Facetime tone rang. When I answered, there was Neil, Butterbean and and a tiny pink face swaddled in soft, baby-blue bunting. Sarah did the talking. She had to. I was overcome at the first sight of this grandchild.

"How beautiful," she gasped as Neil brought the camera in close for a look at his face. "Grandpa over here, if you can see him, is a blubbering mess."

"We really can't see much. Did the storm knock your power out?" Meghan said.

"No, we're at a drive-in theater watching 'Ghostbusters,'" Sarah said as I fumbled for the switch that would activate the car's interior lights. "We were a nervous wreck sitting at home so we went out to one of the few places still open to preoccupy us."

Neil kept the camera close to the baby's face. He seemed to be slumbering.

"He's got your lips, Butterbean. What color are his eyes," I asked.

"They're Neil's. They're blue."

"So what are we going to call him?" I said, cutting to the chase.

"Well, we think we know but we wanted to run it by you first," she said.

"Anything is fine with me, sweetheart," I said.

"We've already decided his middle name will be yours, dad: Kirkland," Neil said. "This specific question is for Sarah."

Sarah looked at me and then at the screen, wide-eyed and perplexed. "Me?"

"Yes. Because we know it's important to you," Neil said. Now, he moved the camera back, fully taking in Meghan's face. "We won't do it if you object."

She shrugged. "I can't imagine..."

Meghan looked down at her newborn and swallowed hard. I knew my daughter. I knew that what she was about to say was something she had thought about extensively and that it evoked strong emotion within her.

"I never forgot what you told me that first night I met you," Meghan said, as if she had committed her words to memory. "About your son. About the 19 years you spent devoted to his every need; about the lasting, unconditional love you had for him and that you knew he had for you; and how you'd gladly do every bit of it over if you could."

Meghan paused for a moment.

"It's not that I never forgot it. More like I've never stopped thinking about it," she said. Tears now formed in her eyes. "Honestly, I think about that, about you, about the mother-child bond you had every single day. It's been especially strong since I learned I would have my own child."

Neil handed her a tissue. Meghan wiped her eyes. She pushed on.

"If I can be half the mother to this boy that you were to yours, I will feel blessed, Sarah. So I ask you: would you approve if we gave this child the first name of Derek?"

Sarah dissolved in the car's passenger seat, sobbing unreservedly. I reached for her and she leaned toward me across the center console, her face hidden in her hands.

On the iPhone screen, Butterbean had also abandoned any pretense of composure. Neil had slid in closer, his arm around her.

Never, since I had known Sarah, had she wept so freely. I couldn't tell whether she gave up trying to rein it in or if the outpouring overwhelmed any restraint she might attempt. I did my best to hold her and let the moment flow. I knew in my soul these were good, cleansing, redemptive tears. Only now could they find their release.

So cathartic a moment would have taxed anyone, but it was tougher for someone still on the mend from COVID. As her body-shaking sobs calmed, she forced herself to sit upright, as I had taught her, to equalize her breathing. Finally, she was able to speak.

"I can't recall anything in my life that has touched me the way this does," Sarah said. "My Derek is dancing with delight in heaven. He will watch over his namesake as he would the brother he never had, just as I feel him watching over me," Sarah said in a still-faltering voice. "I would be honored and humbled to know this child as Derek."

The tears still poured from Butterbean's eyes, but now they flowed toward the same brilliant smile that had distinguished her since she was a toddler.

"Then, little man, you are Derek Kirkland Fulmer," Meghan said.

"You take the phone and I'll go down to the nurse's station so they can fill in the last blank on his official birth record," Neil said, handing the device to Meghan and waving into the camera as he disappeared from the screen.

Meghan moved the phone back in for another closeup of her child.

"Derek, here are your Pap Paw and Nonna."

We cooed at him and called him by name, hoping that some of what we were saying in a car at South Atlanta's Starlight Drive-In might register through a speakerphone a few inches from his face 15 miles away at Grady Hospital. Then baby Derek wriggled, yawned and gave us a fleeting glimpse of his eyes, almost the color of sapphires. Sarah and I gasped.

"Nonna," I said softly to Sarah. "Told ya."

She required no reminder. No explanation. Not only was she be welcomed as a grandparent in full to the firstborn of my firstborn, this child would carry on the honored memory of Sarah's beloved only child.

▼ ▼ ▼

Days of grace like this are rare and fleeting. For those lucky enough to experience them, they change us and shape us forever in ways seen and unseen. That was especially true for Sarah.

She had prevailed over a horrifying new disease that would kill more than 3 million Americans and perhaps a billion people worldwide. She was battling to regain her full vitality. We became man and wife in the eyes of the law and the Lord not long into her convalescence. We found new purpose, joining Pastor Charlie's church and taking on significant duties in the mission of helping to house families without homes.

On this day, we discovered to our endless relief, that this monster pathogen had not stolen our ability to physically manifest our love for each other.

Just hours after Sarah and I consummated our marriage, Meghan and Neil did something that united the great love of Sarah's past with the boundless love my family now has for her. The newest member of our family, baby Derek, would know Sarah as his grandmother and someday learn why his legacy was so precious to his Nonna.

▼ ▼ ▼

Nobody persuaded Meghan and Neil to join Peachtree Road United Methodist.

As children, Butterbean and Perry did all the churchy things their peers did in our Birmingham neighborhood: Sunday school more often than not; Vacation Bible School, mostly because it was outstanding daycare, and maybe a couple of weeks at a Christian camp in the Appalachian foothills of northwest Alabama in the summers.

There were all the traditional Christmas Eve and Easter services, sometimes at our Presbyterian congregation in Birmingham, sometimes with Siobhan's folks in Monroeville and sometimes with Gammy in Huntsville.

Mostly at the insistence of their grandparents, both of my children underwent baptisms as toddlers, sort of a lifelong inoculation against the future predations and temptations of the devil. By their high school years, I don't recall either being at church on Sundays. For that matter, neither were their parents.

But here we were in October of 2020 standing around the baptismal font at the front of Peachtree Road UMC. Derek was restless, squirming first in his mother's arms, then crying for his dad, only to wriggle and cry again for Butterbean. It was the last Sunday of the month and COVID-19 infections had plateaued momentarily, but the sanctuary was nearly empty. Most in attendance were immediate family, but about 700 people were logged in to the live-streamed service, a pandemic accommodation that was popular.

Joining Meghan, Neil and Derek were Sarah and me, Perry, Neil's parents and his sister, my sister Kathryn and Siobhan. In the pews were Laura, whom Perry had been dating since the fall semester of his senior year at Alabama, and a tall man with a stately shock of silvery hair named Warner, a lawyer from suburban Birmingham whom Siobhan had dated exclusively for more than a year. This was one of their first public appearances together amidst family -- something of a debut -- and the relationship seemed to have done her good. She had lost weight, restyled her hair and gained a new air of confidence.

Among those watching from computer screens at home were Siobhan's parents back in Monroeville and my mother in Huntsville, who had accepted but not embraced the fact that her child, grandchild and her great-grandson had somehow wound up as Methodists instead of Presbyterians.

"I guess I should thank the Lord that y'all didn't end up Baptist," she quipped over the phone when Meghan invited her to Derek's infant baptism in Atlanta.

It was the story of my chance encounter with Charlie as I cried out to God while Sarah struggled for each breath in ICU that became the conduit. It struck a chord with Meghan and Neil because it was authentic, unembellished and relatable. They dropped by with Derek unexpectedly one Saturday afternoon as Charlie and I sipped cocktails in the garden patio of our townhouse. Without a word of persuasion from the pastor, they agreed to visit his church the next morning. The week afterward, they joined the congregation, just as Sarah and I had several weeks earlier.

Baptisms are usually just ahead of the closing hymn and benediction, but Charlie agreed to move it up in the order of the service to just before his sermon. He knew how tough it could be to keep a baby calm through an hourlong service, he said, "so let's cut to the chase." First, he led the family at the altar through the recitations of commitment to raise the child according to the Gospels. Then he did the same with the congregation, asking them to respond affirmatively to each pledge.

The only time Derek stopped wriggling was when he was placed in Charlie's arms. He was transfixed by the pastor with his flowing black robe, his white clerical collar and purple stole embossed with a gold cross. He kept eye contact with the minister even as Charlie's hand dripped cool water from the marble font onto his fine, downy blond hair.

In the pews, Laura and Warner photographed the moment using a series of mobile devices as the family held its position before the altar. Then we proceeded out of the sanctuary through a side door and into the cool, sunny noon.

As we bade our farewells from a safe distance, the inevitable moment was upon us: Sarah and I faced Siobhan and Warner.

Siobhan cleared her throat and spoke first.

"Let me congratulate you on your recent marriage. Sarah and Kirk, I sincerely wish you every happiness," she said stiffly.

There's no non-awkward response to that. So we stuck with the simple.

"Thank you, and I am pleased to meet you, Warner," I said. "I am happy you and Siobhan found each other and we wish you both every happiness."

The awkward silence lingered. So we stood there, mostly looking at the grass wearing. Yes, there was more to be said -- much more. It was right there, so near the surface, so obvious. Maybe there would be a time and a place for it. Someday. Soon enough that it still means something. And I knew exactly what it was.

For my own soul's sake, I had recently learned -- as my mother had -- the imperative of forgiveness and repentance. In my heart, I had forgiven Siobhan. I badly wanted to tell her that, and to beg her forgiveness for the times when I had not been there for her, the times I put my work ahead of my family, and for the things I wasn't even aware that I had done because of my shortsightedness and paucity of empathy that pushed her into the destructive actions she ultimately took.

Deep down, I hoped she would find it within her capacity to forgive me, too. I wanted it not just for me, but for her. I now know the burden it lifts from the heart and the soul. I had no idea whether that would happen. It intimidated me.

But without that conversation, I knew that neither Siobhan nor I could move fully into our new lives.

But as burgundy- and orange-colored leaves wafted past on the brisk fall breeze, we bade one another a distanced farewell and headed in opposite directions to our cars.

"It needs to happen. For both of you," Sarah said as she laced her fingers into mine.

"What needs to happen," I asked, knowing full well my perceptive wife saw everything clearly.

"You. Siobhan. Forgiveness. You didn't say it, and neither did she. But it was right there, the clear need, as plain as your faces," Sarah said.

I stopped for a second and looked into her eyes. "How could you know that?"

"Honey, if you run, you can catch them. Go. No regrets."

And I did. I sprinted across the courtyard and law of the church as fast as a middle-aged man wearing a woolen business suit and wingtips can. I called out to Warner and Siobhan just before they closed their doors.

"What's wrong, Kirk," Siobhan asked, an apprehensive look on her face as I approached the car, out of breath.

"Siobhan, I have to ask your forgiveness. For all the ways I hurt you. For all the ways I ignored you or failed to appreciate you. I owed you better. You were and are a wonderful person and mother. I need you to know that," I said.

"And I want you to know that I forgive you. Unconditionally. And forever," I continued. "I'm not asking you to respond. I've wrestled with this for months, and... it's something my faith and my soul compel me to do. So..."

When I found the courage to look Siobhan in the eyes, her jaw was quivering and tears brimmed in her eyes.

"Oh Kirk," she said in a sob. "Yes, I forgive you. This has been tearing at my soul, too."

She stood at her car door and hugged me silently for a long, emotional moment.

"Thank you, Kirk. Thank you for having the courage to break this awful barrier," she said.

"That was to Sarah. She saw it in both of us just now. She told me to run and catch you, to finally let all of this out."

"I meant it when I said I'm glad you two found each other," she said. "She's good for you. And you for her."

"I pray the same for you and Warner. I very much want the best for you, Siobhan."

I hugged her once more before she took her seat again in Warner's Mercedes.

"Stay in touch?" she said before the door closed. I nodded. Warner started the engine and they merged into the traffic of Peachtree Street.

I heard footsteps behind me.

"I'm proud of you, Kirk. It required a brave man to do that," Sarah said, straightening the lapel of my suit jacket that had become disheveled in my sprint.

"Like so much good in my life, I owe it all to you," I said.

We turned and I wrapped my arm around her waist, pulling her to me as we strolled slowly back across the church lawn toward our car. From inside the sanctuary, its mighty pipe organ seemed to suffuse the entire structure -- every stone, arch and cornice -- with the strains to "It Is Well With My Soul," the ideal musical score for the moment. Overhead, the a deep blue sky was free of clouds. We were due for a baptism day lunch at Meghan and Neil's house.

"What do you say we skip the lunch at Neil and Butterbean's and go home, undress each other and fool around instead," I said.

"You don't fool me one bit," she said. "I know what you're after. The Falcons and Packers kick off in just under an hour. Nonna's not missing out on time with baby Derek."

"You and I baby-sat Derek for four hours yesterday afternoon while Neil and Megan went shopping," I said. "Surely you haven't forgotten."

She smiled sympathetically me and said, "Yesterday is yesterday. This is today."

THE END