Chicago, Winter 1935
In the days and weeks that followed, a new thought came to Barbara and worked its way over and over in her mind. If Gail had not been able to persuade Paul to give up the priesthood for her, maybe he would for her. Maybe if she worked at it, and if Paul knew how much he had come to mean to her, how much she now loved him, he would love her too. Maybe he could love her more than his desire to become a priest.
At first, she thought this would be wrong of her, as if she were in a fight with God over Paul's love. After she reconciled herself that even with God, all was fair in love and war, she realized something else. How unfair it would be to Gail.
That reminded her of her mother's great friendship, and that it had been sacred to her. Then how the friend's love for her mother's husband -- her own father -- had destroyed her mother's marriage and relationship with her best friend.
Would she attempt to do that with Gail? Would she try to steal from Gail the man her best friend loved? Was her love for Paul so great as to risk destroying that?
Barbara could hardly study or work, or be with Gail, while those conflicts raged inside her mind and heart. After a short time and before the year was out, the decision was made as to what to do about her love for Paul Riordan and her great friendship with Gail Eaton.
Barbara knew the saying: Death comes in threes. They came in that number for her, at Christmastime.
First, the joyful news that Paul, knowing by then how close friends Barbara and Gail were, wanted to take them both to a Christmas party at a friend's apartment. It became a night Barbara would never forget.
The apartment was small, on the near north side of Chicago, a basement flat with heating pipes close under the ceiling. Paul's bachelor friend Bill Hughes, an auto mechanic, was handsome and built like a heavyweight boxer. When they arrived, his tiny apartment was already crowded wall-to-wall with guests.
"Paul Riordan!" Bill Hughes called out over a sea of heads, announcing to everyone that a very special friend had arrived.
The living room where Bill stood at one end was so full of young people with drinks in their hands, his newly arrived guests could not hope to make their way through to him without the offense line of the Chicago Bears for escort.
But Paul did not try to push his way into the crowd. Soon as he had entered the apartment, he saw over the heads of the revelers that something was missing.