Priest by Sierra Simone Page B

next two months? The next two years? She was here to stay and so was I, and there was no way I could let what happened this afternoon happen again. I mean, if Millie seeing us together once (innocently and in public) had given her ideas, then what would happen if we started actually sneaking around?
    I lifted my head and greeted the men as they drifted in. Of all the groups and activities, I was the most proud of this group. Typically, women were the driving force behind church attendance; most men only came to Mass because their wives wanted them to. And especially after my predecessor’s crimes, I knew that the men in particular—many of whom had sons who were the same age as the victim—would harbor a deep anger and a mistrust that would not be overcome by typical methods.
    So I hung out at the local bars and watched Royals games. I enjoyed the occasional cigar at the town tobacco shop. I bought a truck. I organized a hunting club at the church. And all the while, I continued to be open about my own family’s past and all the ways that the church needed to—and would—change.
    And gradually this group coalesced, growing from two old men who’d been going to church so long that they’d forgotten how to stop, to a group of forty, ranging from recent graduates to the recently retired. In fact, we’d grown so big that next month we were starting a new group.
    But what if I had just undone three years of hard work? Three years of toil thrown away for half an hour with Poppy?
    If I seemed distracted, nobody noticed or commented on it, and I managed to not choke on my own words as we read through passages in 2 Timothy and Song of Songs. At least, I managed not to choke until we reached one verse in Romans, and then I felt my throat close and my fingers shake as I read.
    “I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do, I do not do, but what I hate I do…for I have the desire to do what is right, but I cannot carry it out. What a wretched man I am.”
    What a wretched man I am.
    What a wretched man I am.
    I had come to a town cracked wide open by the vile actions of a predator and I had vowed to fix it. Why? Because when I looked up at the stars at night, I could feel God looking back down. Because I felt the wind as His breath on my neck. Because I had bought my faith with a great deal of struggle and pain, but I knew that my faith was also what gave my life shape and purpose, and I didn’t want the Church’s failures to deprive an entire town of that gift.
    And then what had I done today? I had betrayed all of that. Betrayed all of them.
    But that’s not what made my hands shake and my throat tighten. No, it was the realization that I had betrayed God, perhaps more than I’d betrayed the people in this room.
    My God, my savior. The recipient of my vehement hatred after Lizzy’s death and also the presence that had patiently awaited my return a few years later. The voice in my dreams that had comforted me, enlightened me, guided me. The voice that had told me what I needed to do with my life, where I needed to go to find peace.
    And the worst thing was that I knew He wasn’t angry with me. He’d forgiven me before it had even happened, and I didn’t deserve it. I deserved to be punished, a hail of fire from above, bitter waters, an IRS audit, something, anything dammit, because I was a miserable, loathsome, lustful man who’d taken advantage of an emotionally vulnerable woman.
    What a wretched man I am.
    We wrapped up Bible study, and I cleaned up the coffee and chips robotically, my mind still dazed by this newest wave of shame. This feeling of being too small, too awful, for anything less than hell.
    I could hardly bear walking past the crucifix on my way back to the rectory.

I slept perhaps three hours total that night. I stayed up late reading the Bible, perusing every passage about sin that I knew of until my tired eyes refused to focus on the words any longer, sliding over them like two magnets