Pie Town - Lynne Hinton [79]
When Roger had showed up at the front door, Father George had been prepared to tell the sheriff everything, even though he had not wanted to explain the details of that night. But when Roger never specifically asked him about his activities that evening and about what had occurred at the rectory, he had not volunteered the truth. And once everyone began to treat him as if he had been victimized because of the losses he suffered, staying clear of him, not pressuring him for information, he just didn’t see any sense in telling what he knew. Besides, he had told himself time and time again, he didn’t know what Trina had done when she left the rectory. She could have gone into the sanctuary, lit a candle, and left it burning. He didn’t know, and he didn’t see any reason to tell anyone about her visit and about their lengthy and intimate conversation, about how, before she left, she had covered him with a blanket and removed his shoes because he had fallen asleep on the sofa.
Besides, she had not called him for assistance. Apparently, she had not told anyone that she was with him that evening. No one had asked him to verify any story that she had given. So he had just decided not to hand over more information than was required. If she needed him, he convinced himself, she would have called and asked. He would assist only if she needed it. Because the truth of the matter was that it would not bode well for the priest if it was discovered that he had been alone in the rectory with a young woman, especially that young woman, well after appropriate meeting hours and late into the night. The two of them had talked a long time, and he had fallen asleep, and he didn’t know what time she left. That story would not be good for his reputation.
And yet, ever since the fire, ever since the night Trina jumped out of that pickup truck, Rob skidding off, almost knocking her over in the parking lot, George watching from the window and then going out to check on her, bringing her into the rectory, washing off her scrapes and giving her a cup of tea, talking for hours, ever since that night he had been consumed with the idea that he was reliving another night, another series of events that followed that night, and a decision he’d made that would haunt him every single day of his life.
He opened another drawer in the desk. He noticed the contents: a calculator, a small book of the Psalms, some loose paper clips, staples, a few bookmarks. There was nothing he wanted to keep. He closed the drawer and opened the next one. He leaned down and pulled out the few files he had kept in this drawer, stuffing them into the box. A piece of paper slipped out, falling to the floor, and he reached down to pick it up. It was a folded receipt that had been filed in his papers from his seminary days. He opened it and saw that it was hardly significant, a receipt for lunch, and he was about to throw it away when he noticed the date, April 16, a month before his graduation and ordination. He knew immediately that it was hardly an insignificant day.
April 16 was the day Lisa Myers tried to visit him at the seminary, the day she left campus and went to her appointment at the abortion clinic to end her pregnancy, the day he had heard five or six times that morning that a girl was looking for him, calling the phone on his dorm floor, asking a couple of students, a professor, a secretary, about his whereabouts, the day he hid from her, in the library, in a classroom, in chapel, and finally in the cafeteria, where he obviously bought a salad and a chocolate chip cookie, a can of soda, paid $4.53, and the day he received, just as he was finishing his meal, a note written by Lisa