Elin Hilderbrand - Winter Stroll

“Amen,” Kelley says.

Everyone leaves the kitchen to get ready for the baptism-even George. He’s going to join them after all, and then he’ll return to Lenox alone. As it turns out, Mitzi is not just here for the weekend. She is staying. She is staying!

“You know what I want to do right after lunch?” Mitzi asks.

Fix the Christmas letter, Kelley thinks. He’ll have to send out another email announcing that he and Mitzi have reunited.

“What?” Kelley asks. He figures she’s going to say something about sex, which would be great-if only Kelley were feeling better.

“I want to rearrange the Byers’ Choice carolers,” she says. “You set them out all wrong.”

She’s back.

He hasn’t set foot in a church other than the hospital chapel, which is ecumenical, since his father died forty-five years earlier. It doesn’t seem a great reach to conclude that Drake was so decimated by his father’s death and his time in the church so excruciating, that he had never had any desire to return.

He does believe in God, however. He prays in his mind each working day-right after he’s scrubbed in for surgery and right before he’s about to take someone else’s life into his own hands. He prays for the patient; he prays for himself.

This morning, Drake prays for the Quinn family, one and all. Inside the sanctuary, they present as a strong and lovely group. Kelley, patriarch, is standing tall in his navy suit with Mitzi at his side. And then George, the Santa Claus, sits on the other side of Mitzi, wearing his Christmas tie and a plush red Santa hat. Is such a hat allowed in church? Clearly the ushers didn’t speak to him about it; maybe it’s allowed on Stroll weekend. Margaret’s grandsons snicker and Margaret herself intones, “Oh, George.” Drake is puzzled by George’s inclusion, but Drake is here, so why not George? The three Quinn boys are nearly identical in their khakis and blazers; they are sitting in a pew with Margaret and Drake. Jennifer is coming imminently; she had something important to do that apparently could not wait, but no one knows what it is.

Margaret says softly to Drake, so that the boys can’t hear, “Maybe she’s gone to the airport to pick up Patrick. He is the godfather, after all. Maybe he received a furlough for the day. They do it for funerals, so why not baptisms? If you’re the child’s godfather?” Her tone is so earnest that it pierces Drake’s tough armor. She sounds like so many of the mothers he talks to. After surgery, he’ll be cancer-free, right, Dr. Carroll? Drake promotes optimism-but not false hope-in his line of work, and he won’t do it here, either.

He says, “That seems pretty unlikely.”

“But how amazing would it be if Paddy could be here?” Margaret says. “Just for today.”

She is a mother who misses her firstborn.

“It would be amazing,” Drake says. But then he sees Jennifer hurrying down the side aisle, alone. She slips into the pew next to Jaime, just before Mass begins.

Drake squeezes Margaret’s hand.

Margaret says, “I’m not going to check my phone until after Mass. I’m going to let Kevin and Isabelle have this moment.”

“Exactly right,” Drake says.

“Because no matter what is happening, there’s nothing I can do about it right now,” Margaret says.

“Exactly right,” Drake says.

At the entrance of the church standing with the priest are Kevin and Isabelle, holding baby Genevieve. And Ava, who is the godmother, and Kevin’s best friend, Pierre, who is serving as the proxy for Patrick.

The inside of St. Mary’s feels holy to Drake, holier than the hospital chapel which is basically just a tan square room with pews and kneelers. St. Mary’s has a pipe organ and soaring stained glass windows. The priest is white-haired and bespectacled and pleasingly resembles Father Dennis, the priest of Drake’s youth.

The priest raises his hands in the air and announces to the church that a new member is about to join their community of faith, and that this member is named Genevieve Helene Quinn.

Margaret sniffs. Drake feels a wave of love so intense it nearly bowls him over.

There is a long moment while they’re waiting in the front vestibule of the church when Ava gets to hold baby Genevieve. She is wearing a long white gown and a cap that frames her beautiful blue-eyed face. Ava isn’t overly religious-none of the Quinns are-but Ava plans on taking her role as godmother very seriously. She is Genevieve’s spiritual adviser, someone to talk to when Genevieve doesn’t want to talk to her parents.

Ava strokes the baby’s cheek. She gazes up at Ava with her sapphire eyes while Ava tells her, The most important thing is that you grow up strong. You will be your own person, with your own interests and values and talents. You don’t need a man to define you!

Ava thinks this last phrase with no small amount of vigor.

Scott isn’t here. And Nathaniel isn’t here. Ava is happy about this! She’s glad! She is not a baton to be handed back and forth between them, nor a prize to be won. She is her own person. She is, among so many other things, the godmother of this beautiful baby.

It is only in processing down the aisle that Ava sees Scott. He’s impossible to miss-tall and broad-shouldered, sitting a pew behind Margaret and Drake and the boys, two pews behind Mitzi and Kelley and George. So much for “being her own person”-Ava’s heart swells, and her eyes sting with tears of gratitude. He came! Despite Ava’s reprehensible behavior this weekend, he came to the baptism. She wants to reach out and touch his shoulder as she passes, but then she remembers that she’s the godmother. She needs to focus on the altar, and the task at hand.

Baby Genevieve is prayed over and anointed with the oil of chrism. Kevin and Isabelle vow to raise Genevieve in the Catholic faith. Ava and Pierre-as-proxy agree to serve as the child’s godparents. The congregation agrees to participate in raising Genevieve as a member of their spiritual community. Then, Genevieve is sprinkled with holy water, and she doesn’t make a single peep. She just blinks and wrinkles her nose as the water drips off her forehead. The congregation utter oohs and ahhs as Genevieve is presented; everyone applauds. Then, it is time to resume Mass-offering, hymns, the liturgy.

Ava sees Nathaniel as he approaches the altar for communion. She blinks. Nathaniel. As he passes by her pew, he winks at her. She feels herself blush.

She gazes over at baby Genevieve, who is now asleep in Kevin’s arms, and thinks, I really don’t have any words of advice at all. The world is an endlessly confounding place.

Unflappable has never applied to Margaret when she’s been at church, and especially not when the communion hymn is “I Am the Bread of Life,” as it is today. This song always makes Margaret cry. And I will raise you up… and I will raise you up, and I will ra-aise you up on the last day.

Drake offers Margaret his handkerchief and Margaret dabs at her eyes.

She leans over to him and whispers in his ear. “Yes.”

“Yes, what?” he whispers back.

“Yes, I will be your wife,” she says.

As the godmother, Ava has to be in all the photographs after the service. She had thought Scott might leave, but he sticks around, sitting in his pew until they’ve run the gamut from just Kevin and Isabelle and Genevieve to the entire family-meaning Mitzi, but not George, Margaret, but not Drake.

“Drake should be in the pictures,” Margaret says in Ava’s ear. “We’re getting married.”