Gospel by Sydney Bauer Page A

and kiss under the Bridge of Sighs.’
    â€˜What’s this? My cynical girlfriend allowing herself to dream? It wasn’t that long ago you’d pull
me
up for being unrealistic. What was it you once called me, the President of the United States of Idealism.’
    â€˜Amongst other things,’ she smiled. ‘Besides, that was before I got to know you better, and before all that optimism rubbed off on me.’
    Sara had been born in Atlanta, Georgia, to a single African-American teenage mother who gave her up for adoption immediately after her birth. Her adoptive parents, Alec and Dorothy Davis, were white, as was her brother Jake, six years her junior and now an economics major at MIT.
    She grew up in Cambridge, and while David knew her dentist dad and dental technician mom provided their kids with equal amounts of love and discipline, he also knew that much of Sara’s youth had been played out against a backdrop of uncertainty, a confusion as to where she fit in.
    Of course, now that she had found her birth mother – a forty-seven-year-old postal worker named Annie Hobbs who had two boys of her own – David sensed she was also finding her own ‘place’ in the world, a place in which he hoped he would be a permanent fixture.
    David on the other hand had grown up in Newark, the middle of three kids in a blue collar, Irish-American clan – his school teacher mom Patty a green-eyed, gentle, fair-haired optimist, and his late father Sean, a dark-haired, dark-eyed container ship worker.
    David drew inspiration from them both; his mother’s positive encouragement and his father’s strength and determination – the one comfort in his father’s passing almost six years ago being the knowledge he would always live on in his older brother Sean Jnr who was all dark, gruff and serious.
    His sister Lisa was the other extreme, all wind-blown dark hair and bright green eyes and enough energy to light up a city. She had followed David to Boston, studying nursing at BC before taking up a job at Massachusetts General’s busy ER department.
    â€˜A penny for . . .’ said Sara, breaking his train of thought.
    â€˜I was just thinking about Lisa and how she . . . well, you know . . . she’s a good kid.’
    â€˜She is,’ said Sara. ‘You may be the big brother, but I get the feeling she spends a lot of her time looking out for you.’
    And she did. In fact it was Lisa who helped him pick up the pieces after Karin had left him all those years ago. She would turn up each night with pizza and sodas and make him greasy breakfasts on the all too frequent morning-afters during his phase of alcohol-induced pain relief. She helped him with all the practical stuff like selling the house in Fenway, and moving him temporarily into her much loved bungalow in Southie. Andwhile part of him suspected she felt ‘responsible’ for introducing him to Karin in the first place, he knew her actions had nothing to do with guilt and everything to do with understanding. After all, when Karin walked out on their marriage, she also walked out on her friendship with Lisa – and neither of them had spoken to her since.
    â€˜David,’ said Sara at last. ‘Are you okay? I mean, you seem a little preoccupied and seriously, if you think my working with you will be too much then I . . .’
    â€˜What?’ he said realising she had misinterpreted his quiet contemplation. ‘No, it’s gonna be great. There is no way it will be too much. In fact . . . ,’ all these thoughts of home and family had finally given David the courage to raise the other issue he wanted to broach tonight. He wanted to ask Sara to move in with him.
    â€˜David,’ she said, reaching across the table, placing her long slender hands on top of his own. ‘I want to ask you something. We’re going to be working together, right? Long hours,