The Consequence of Secrets - Part Two: A Priest Romance (2 page)

"Say one Our Father and three Hail Mary's for your penance and please try to understand that while the grass may look greener on the other side, it rarely is. I think you'll find your neighbor has just as many problems as you do.”

“Thank you Father," the woman says from the other side of the confessional window as she recites a prayer of contrition. I've just spent the last ten minutes listening to her go on about the petty war that has become between her and her neighbor that started over something as simple as an overgrown tree. Most people's problems seem so trivial to me when I know that there are far worse things going on in this world. On most days, people come to confession to unburden themselves over the most ridiculous of thing – they ate too much, they took a penny and didn't put one back, they're having indecent feelings toward the postman. They find guilt in the most trivial of circumstances, and even as a priest who believes in the church’s cleansing of the soul, I feel that confession should be for the big things – the things we can’t even forgive ourselves. I don’t know, I suppose I’m just becoming doubtful as each day, I feel my own secret and my own indecent thoughts gnawing at my insides. Even I don't confess. I don't see the point. God can see into my heart and he knows that I'm not sorry. I’d kiss her again in a heartbeat.

Waving my hand in the sign of the cross, I absolve the woman of her sins, the words falling off my tongue by rote. “…May God give you pardon and peace, and I absolve you from your sins in the name of the Father, and of the Son...” I do everything I’m supposed to do, and when she responds with ‘Amen’, I remind her to let God guide her and teach her to show compassion, and then she leaves.

I breathe a sigh of relief then look at my watch – fifteen minutes left – I hit the switch on the wall to turn the exterior light green.

Within seconds, the confessional door opens and closes, and I hear the shift of fabric as someone bends to the kneeler then taps on the window.

As I open my side, I say the right words, and go through the right motions, but I’m too trapped in my own thoughts to truly pay attention to yet another parishioner. It’s wrong of me, I know, and it’s something I’ll need to confess myself and seek forgiveness for, but these days, I’m really struggling. I say a silent prayer asking for guidance and strength to follow the Lord’s path.

I turn to window, and I can see the outline of the person on the other side, but they don’t speak. Suddenly, I’m one hundred percent here as all of my senses come to life – that scent…that feeling… “Do you have anything to confess?" I ask, moving closer to the woven cane partition, peering through the tiny holes.

“Does it even make a difference?" The beautifully familiar voice says from the other side. “Aren't we all sinners, father?"

“Yes, Emma, I do believe we are," I respond, my voice hushed as my heart beats solidly against my rib cage.

“I wanted to talk to you in private. Is this OK?  I can come back if it isn't," she whispers, leaning close to the window and pressing her fingers against the cane so I can see the pads of her fingers through the tiny holes. I place my hand against hers, closing my eyes as I feel a sense of relief flooding my body.

"I haven't heard from you in over a week. I've been worried.  Are you OK?" My words come out in a whispered rush, feeling as though I need to get it all out before its too late and she's gone again.

"I’m fine, father d– … Braden. I’m fine. I wanted to apologize for somehow getting you mixed up in my mess of a life. I want you to know that was never my intention.”

“Don’t be sorry, Emma. I’m fairly sure that I pushed my way in, and I’m glad I did. You need to get away from him. Have you thought about what I said at all? I can get you out of there. I know people who can protect you – keep you safe.”

“I have thought about it, and I’ve thought about you, a lot, and… and what happened between us.” She lets out a sigh that makes my insides tighten as the memory of her lips on mine flashes through my mind. My only wish in this moment is that the wall separating us was gone so I could do it all over again. I want to kiss her. I want to feel her in my arms, and no amount of prayer is going to change that, and honestly, I don’t want it to.

“Yes?” I ask, prompting her to continue.

“It can’t happen again, Braden. I feel…I feel so much when I’m around you that it makes you dangerous to me. I know you’re trying to help. I know you want to help. But, please understand that I have my reasons for staying, and that everything is under control. He will never hurt me like that again, but…but you have to stay away.”

“Emma,” I start, but she interrupts me.

“Don’t Braden, you…you are a beautiful distraction that I can’t afford. I know you want to protect me, but understand that I’m doing this to protect you – to protect everyone I love. My husband isn’t a good man, he wants to be the head of my father’s company, and his ambition makes him dangerous to anyone who stands in his way. Please, you have to stay away. You and I can’t be friends, or…or anything.”

“Emma, you can’t put yourself at risk like that,” I say in a rush, but my words fall on deaf ears as she stands and quickly leaves the confessional. “Shit,” I hiss, wanting desperately to run after her but knowing the worst thing I could do for her is cause a scene in front of others. So I sit and flip the confessional light again, welcoming yet another burst of feminine scent, although this one doesn’t made my heart quicken like Emma’s scent does.

“OK, so I couldn’t get that stuff you needed," Jules says quietly as she slips into the seat opposite me when I meet her for coffee a week later.

“Seriously?” I ask, feeling sick that I’m now going to have to go to the family planning clinic. After Braden said he saw me leave there, I decided it was too risky to get the contraceptive pill from there, and I asked Jules to get a prescription made up for me. “Wouldn’t they give it to you? Or were you just too busy?”

“They wouldn’t give it to me.”

“Why?”

In response, she reaches into her purse and hands me a long flat plastic stick. “That’s why.”

Staring down at the blue cross in the test window, my mouth falls open. “Oh, wow,” I say. “Who?”

“Who’s the father?” she asks, and I nod in response, still staring at the test in my hands. “Remember that guy who picked me up at the Youth Center?”

“Red sports car?”

She nods. “Yeah, his name is Victor. We’ve been on and off for the last few months. I just got off the phone to him which is why I’m late.”

“How did he react?” I ask carefully, my stomach twisting with a sickness as the implications of my sister getting pregnant begin to set in.

She releases a sigh. “He said he wants to marry me.”

“What?” I gasp, feeling shocked. This is getting worse by the second.

“Yeah,” she says with a half smile, picking up one of the sugar packets and playing with it between her fingers. “He says he loves me.” She glances up at me and shrugs, and immediately I feel guilty for being selfish and thinking about how this news was going to affect me before focusing on how she was feeling. Jules has no idea about what goes on between Gabe and me, although maybe she suspects because she always says she’d throw me a party if I left him. But, she’s never voiced any concerns, so I assume I’ve hid my troubles safely from her so far.

Quickly tucking the pregnancy test out of sight, I take her hands in mine and hold them tightly. “How are you feeling about it?” I ask as I watch her eyes well with tears.

“I don’t know. I mean, I didn’t want this. I’m like you, and I’m scared of getting cancer and leaving my kids without a mom. And I should have been on birth control, but we always use condoms, so I thought we were safe. Then one broke and…” she lets out a slow breath as she shakes her head. “Just…just don’t tell anyone, OK? Not until I decide what I’m going to do.”

“OK,” I say, rubbing my thumbs over the backs of her hands. “I won’t breathe a word,” I promise, while at the same time dreading the day this all comes out. Oh god, what if she does get married and have the baby? What if it’s a boy? Gabe would go ballistic, and suddenly he’d see no point to me. God help me.

As I walk toward the church, my mind whirls as I try to figure out what to do. Suddenly, everything has changed, and I know my sister. Despite her free ways, she still believes in God’s plan and deep inside, I know she’ll keep that baby, and out of her love for our father, she’ll marry Victor so his grandchild has a respectable upbringing. And it’s only a matter of time before it’s all announced at a family dinner, and my life will be over. My stomach twists with unease, all of a sudden, thanks to a little peace of broken latex, my sister who never wanted to marry and have kids is probably going to do just that. And I’m not safe anymore. My carefully planned days, no matter how meticulous, won’t appease him once he knows. And when he knows, he could very well beat me dead. And I used to welcome the idea of that. I used to welcome the thought of it all being over. But now…now I’ve seen what love could really be like in the arms of a priest who is as close to heaven as someone who practices deception for a living is ever going to get, and even though I know we can’t be, the thought of never setting eyes on him again fills me with great sorrow.

My mind continues along its troubled path as I enter the church and cross myself with the holy water then walk down the long quiet aisle to the statue of the Virgin, where I light my candle and look up the serene expression on her face. This is one of those moments that I could really do with a miracle, or perhaps an immaculate conception. As much as I don’t want to have Gabe’s child, if I was pregnant then I’d have time to try and get away from him. He wants child so badly that I think even he wouldn’t hurt me while I carried his seed.

“Mother, help me,” I whisper, looking up at her face as she tilts her head to the side, her arms spread slightly from beneath her robes, palms facing skyward. “I don’t know what to do.”

A tear pricks at the corner of my eye, and I press my finger there to stop it from forming as I take a deep breath and admonish myself for actually standing here and asking a statue for help. She’s never helped me before – why would she help me now?

With a heavy sigh, I walk away and slide into a pew, sitting there for a moment while I search my handbag for a Kleenex. Finding one, I pull it out, and the moment I do, something clatters out and onto stone floor. It sounds plastic so at first I think it’s just a pen, but when I lean down, my fingers searching beneath the pew, I find the answer to my problems – Jules’s pregnancy test. I didn’t give it back.

I glance up at the statue, fleetingly wondering if perhaps she really does work miracles, but the thought doesn’t last long when I hear the word ‘wow’ whispered beside me.

“Is that what I think it is?” Braden asks, sliding into the pew beside me, his body stiff and uncomfortable.

“Yes,” I comment in a whisper.

“I thought you were taking –" he starts.

“I am. I still am.”

“Then how?”

I glance up from the test to meet his blue eyes, so full of concern, pain and longing, and my body cries out to him. I want him to save me. So. Much.

“This isn't mine. It’s… It's Jules’s. She’s pregnant. She also might be getting married.”

“OK,” he responds carefully, waiting for me to go on.

“He's going to go crazy when he finds out. He’s going to tell me I’m useless. He wants me to have his son so my father will give him the company, and if Jules has a son before I do…” I let out a shaky breath. “It’s over. I need more time to think this through.”

“Emma,” he whispers, his hand immediately reaching out to take a hold of mine, slipping our fingers together, and making my chest tight. I want him so much. “Let me help you.”

I look down at the test. “I can use this to buy some time.”

“What do you mean?”

“If I show this to Gabe, and he thinks I’m the one who’s pregnant, he’ll be overjoyed, and it will give me some time to work out what to do.”

“And what happens when he finds out you lied to him?”

“He can’t find out. I need to find some way of getting out of there before he does.”

“Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”

Taking a deep breath, I nod. “Yes. I want you to help get me out of there.”

Relief washes over his features, and his other hand moves to clasp mine between the both of his. “You don’t know how relieved I am to hear you say that. I can make the arrangements right away. You don’t even need to use that test.”

I shake my head. “It's not that simple, Braden. I’ve told you I can't just walk away. He’ll hurt everyone I care about to make me come back. He's done it before.”

“What do you mean? Tell me what he did.”

“When the abuse started, I left him – it was only a couple of months after the wedding, and I ran from him. I was scared and I hid in a seedy motel, not telling anyone where I was because I didn't want to risk him using them to find me. I never dreamed…” The level of my voice drops even further as I close my eyes, remembering the fear that froze my heart when I realized what he’d done. “He cut the brake lines on Jules’s car and she was in an accident. When I got to the hospital to see that she was OK, he was there, acting like the supportive husband while he waited with my father. The moment I saw him, I burst into tears and he just wrapped me in his arms and he whispered ‘Next time you leave, I’ll make sure they’re both in that car.’ I’ve never been more afraid of anyone in my life.” His fingers tighten around mine as I again meet his eyes. “I don’t know how to get away without putting everyone else in danger.”

“We’ll work something out,” he assures me. “There has to be a way.”

“Maybe I could kill him,” I whisper, barely able to get the words out as tears burn my eyes so fiercely that a couple slid out.

“No, Emma,” Braden whispers harshly, taking a hold of my chin and turning me to face him, his eyes boring into mine. “Don’t even think that. You can’t have someone’s death on your conscience, believe me, it’s an impossible burden.”

“Then what do I do? It’s either him or me, and I used to not care if it was me but then…”

“Then what?”

“Then I met you, and I know you’ve taken vows, and I know nothing can happen but you make me want to live, Braden. Just so I can look at you.”

He closes his eyes, his mouth dropping open slightly as he releases a shaky breath. God, what am I saying? I think I might be going crazy talking to him like this. The shock of Jules’s news is making me say things I should never say.

“Emma,” he whispers, so soft that I barely hear it, but when he opens his eyes, there’s so much emotion in them that they’ve darkened to the color of the midnight sky.

“I know,” I whisper, slowly pulling my hand from between his. “I shouldn’t have said that, I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry,” he says, concern filling his eyes as he watches me stand to leave. “And don’t leave. Stay. We can talk about this, we’ll go somewhere quiet,” he pleads.

Sliding my purse over my shoulder, I look down at him and whisper, “What’s there to talk about? I don’t have a lot of choices ahead of me.”

“Just promise me that you won’t do anything crazy,” he says, and I nod, before turning away, and walking to the far end of the pew. Then I leave the church, stopping only for a moment to turn back and see him still where I left him, although now he’s kneeling, probably praying for my soul.