Page 39 of The Sinner and the Priest: Part 1

I hold up my hands, and they more than shake, they tremble. The rosary beads woven between my fingers are mostly worn smooth by my thumb and the sweat of my penance. The repair job is so good that I can’t tell which links were broken from the snap during the drowning. Other, chipped and sharper parts I recognize well, though. They never seem to smooth out, no matter how many times I touch them. The Pater bead is a jagged half piece, barely gripping the chain. It earned this state because, on the day I gave the rosary to Maria for her Confirmation, she handed it back and said, “I don’t wear plastic jewelry, Cesco.”

“It’s a rosary.” She didn’t know I spent eight weeks washing my father’s car to save for them. “And it’s not plastic. See?”

I’d put the bead between my teeth and bit down hard, accidentally breaking the glass clean in half.

“Same thing.” That stubborn prima donna chin of hers tilted just so. “You keep them. Say a prayer for me. You’re so much better at it than I am.”

She walked away before I could answer, and I stood there with the beads still warm from my pocket, watching her go.

I have been praying for her ever since.

I clench, letting the cold bite the life out of my flesh. It is not working. The pain is not enough to stop the feeling rippling beneath my skin. The memory.

It always starts with the water.

The air in the cell thickens, turns heavy, smelling of salt and the iron tang of fear. The storm comes out of nowhere, rising from the guilt I try to squash beneath my ribs, to bury it inside the same cage my devil sleeps.

The wave crashes over us.

Maria’s small hands are like white bone flailing in the water.

“I’m coming!” I splutter, pumping effort into every stroke closer.

Another wave steals her from me for a second, but then she is there, almost within reach, wild eyes locked with mine and empty with the sudden, absolute certainty of death. They don’t see her big brother, the protector. They see the one who goaded her into the black water. The one who is failing her.

I reach for her. “You are safe. I have you. You are safe.”

My fingers grab nothing but the smooth line of the rosary around her neck. I pull. Pull. I am trying to save her, but the wave is too strong, and the beads snap.

The beads snap!

The fragile chain flies into the foam, and the terror in her eyes becomes a final, cold comprehension: Betrayal.

And then she is gone.

My breath catches, a strangled, wet sound, and I am back in my room. My hands are wet, but it is not salt water. It is the blood from the beads in my palm.

That look.

It’s the same one Mercy wore when she heard Jasmine’s story.

It is the clarity of an angel looking at the devil she trusted. It is Maria’s face. The same.

After all I’ve done to seek forgiveness, I’m back where I started, and it sickens me.

For if I am no closer to absolution, then I have been traveling the wrong path. I have been looking in the wrong direction, outward rather than inward.

The Vatican used my fear—my penance, my shame over Maria’s death—to turn me into the perfect weapon. They gave me a collar as a leash, and I believed it was for the devil in me.

Fool.

The collar is not a leash for my darkness. It is a muzzle for my truth. It protects them, the Entity, from the lie they need Mercy to believe—that I am a murderer capable of what happened in Spain.

Still … I did not pull the trigger, but I served the hand that did.

Ergo, I am guilty.

I stare at the floor, at the cheap, worn tiles of this monastic cell, and the turmoil finally has clarity. It’s a choice I didn’t realize I’d already made.