I sighed, taking another long swallow. “There’s definitely a we.”
Instead of smiling, she frowned, patting my knee with her hand before standing. “Just Google it, that’s all I’m saying.”
“I’m not going to Google it. That’s ridiculous, Lucy.”
She arched her eyebrow in what was now becoming her infamous look before backing out of the room, door closing quietly in her absence.
I sighed, finishing the rest of the glass in my hand and then pouring a new round, to the brim this time.
“This shit is terrible,” I sighed, already feeling a little buzzy in my head. “Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned.” I took a sip. “My last confession was…” I sipped again, pressing the rim to my lips as I thought back to the last time I’d confessed to Father Martin. The last time I saw him.
My memory was hazy, partly because of the wine, mostly because I’d blocked out that period of my life.
While I couldn’t remember much of anything around that time, my memory of that last confession was razor-sharp.
It was late on a Sunday afternoon, sun just dipping under the horizon on Halloween night.
I was dressed up as a witch, cheap tulle and a face mask.
I’d only made it to the end of the block trick-or-treating, the October wind far too cold for me, when I realized I’d left the keys to our house in the house, and I’d have to wait until Mom was off work before I could get in.
I’d wandered into St. Michael’s for the warmth, sliding in beside the few parishioners seated outside the confessional as I waited for Father Martin.
After the last confessor had come and gone and Father Martin still hadn’t left his booth, I wandered in, more curious than anything else.
He’d greeted me kindly, pretending not to know who I was, and behind that intricate woven screen, I felt freedom. I took off the witch mask and became myself. For the first time, I felt like I could admit all the things I hadn’t wanted to say out loud.
I told him about the previous weekend, when mom’s boyfriend had woken me out of a dead sleep by getting into my bed in his underwear, asking me to get him another beer.
I could tell he was sleepwalking, or so drunk that he might as well have been, but still, I’d felt more of a man’s body that night than I ever had before and had a zillion questions the morning after, starting with the male anatomy.
When I told Father Martin I’d felt his sword, I hadn’t meant literally so much as…brushed against it.
It wasn’t at all horrifying to say out loud, but thinking back on it, I could understand Father Martin’s alarm.
When Mom had come wandering in after eleven that night, Father Martin had taken her into the rectory while I sat in a pew, eyes on the twelfth Station of the Cross.
The resurrection of Christ.
“Every time I let you out of the house, I regret it.” Mom stomped out of the rectory a moment after she’d entered, snagging my hand and pulling me along behind her and out of the doors of St. Michael’s. Father Martin stood on the top step, watching us as we scurried home in the cold night.
I hadn’t known then what the problem was.
But when Mom forbade me from ever going to St. Michael’s or seeing Father Martin again, I knew perfectly well what had happened. He’d expressed concern for my wellbeing.
So she made sure I’d never see him again.
TEN
Bastien
Sheets of rain coated the windows of the sacristy, the light of stained glass bending and changing form as the rivers of water forged their path. I slipped the velvet folds of the vestments through my fingers as I settled them into their wooden box after I’d finished blessing them with prayers, my traitorous thoughts still on the exchange between Tressa and I just moments ago.
She was right, I couldn’t keep cornering her in public places and confessing my greatest sins to her, but I just couldn’t stop doing it either. When I’d been in school with the Jesuits, they’d taught many tools for practicing the vow of order and silence, overcoming the mind to achieve greater clarity and closeness with God and self—but the Jesuits hadn’t met Tressa Torrado.
So young and naive and tender to life—so in need of a guide to love her through life’s hard knocks.
And then my heart sank as I caught my mind chasing impossible dreams.
