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The words were still there. They hadn’t vanished. They lingered somewhere inside me, preserved by years of repetition, but I no longer knew if I believed them.

Our Father.

Hail Mary.

Lord, have mercy.

Nothing moved.

I lowered myself into the front pew. The wood creaked beneath my weight. Pain pulled through my shoulder as I leaned forward and braced my forearms on my knees.

I looked down at my hands in the dim light. The knuckles were marked. A small cut crossed the side of my thumb. The skin around my nails was rough.

I heard the chapel door move behind me and knew it was Adriana. Some people entered a room and disturbed the air. Adriana entered and changed its entire purpose.

I kept my eyes on the crucifix.

“You finally found the saddest room in the house,” she muttered.

“There was stiff competition.”

The faintest breath of a laugh left her but died just as quickly.

I heard her step inside. The chapel door remained open behind her.

She sat one pew behind me instead of beside me, as though she had understood I couldn’t bear comfort if it came too close too quickly.

For a while, neither of us spoke.

The candle flame bent once, then steadied.

Adriana’s hair caught the low light when I turned my head slightly. The new color had changed her. Chestnut. Copper when the flame touched it. It made the bruises less visible, but they weren’t completely gone.

“Did you come here to pray?” She asked the question I was still seeking the answer to.

“I don’t know why I came here.”

The honesty sat between us without mercy.

She looked toward the crucifix for a moment, then she rose and came forward. She stopped beside my pew and waited. I should have told her to go upstairs while I sat with the ruins of myself. Instead, I shifted, making room. She sat beside me.

“You shouldn’t be here,” I said.

“I thought praying was for everyone.”

I looked at her then.

There was still fear in her. But there was something else now, too.

Defiance.

I settled back against the pew, and the tightness slowly uncoiled from my shoulders.

“I’m not the priest people believed I was. Maybe I never was. Maybe I only stayed on my knees long enough to convince myself I’d become a different man.”

“You’re being too hard on yourself.”

She had a way of saying things that didn’t let me hide in extremes and wallow in self-pity. She didn’t consider me damned. She didn’t think of me as a sinner. She didn’t look at me like I was a monster.