The Last Time They Met_ A Novel - Anita Shreve [120]
“I will.”
“I won’t ask your name.”
“No. Thank you.”
“Follow me,” he says, leaving the napkin on a side table.
______
She follows the young priest to a small anteroom off the hall. But for the crosses, it might be a room in which a potentate would have an audience with a foreign dignitary. Two armchairs, side by side, face the entrance. Two matching sofas flank the wall. Apart from the furniture, there is nothing in the room.
She watches as the priest pulls the armchairs out into the center of the room and puts them back to back, so that the people sitting in them will not be visible to each other. He gestures to her to take one.
She sets her pocketbook on the floor beside the chair and slips her peacoat from her shoulders. Panic wells inside her. It seems inconceivable that she will actually announce her sins in this room with the two of them back-to-back — with no covering, no booth, nowhere to hide.
“Father, forgive me, for I have sinned,” she begins, her voice barely a whisper.
There is, at first, a long silence.
“You have sins you wish to confess?” the priest prompts. He sounds, if not exactly bored, then perhaps tired.
“Years ago,” Linda says, her heart thumping in her chest, “I had an improper relationship with my aunt’s boyfriend. I was thirteen.”
“How do you mean improper?”
“We . . .” She thinks about how to phrase this. Would fornicate be the right word? “We had sex,” she says.
There is a slight pause. “You had sex with a man who was your aunt’s boyfriend?”
“Yes.”
“How old was this man?”
“I’m not sure. I think in his early forties.”
“I see.”
“He lived with my aunt. He lived with us.”
“And how often did you fornicate with this man?”
“Five times,” she answers.
“Did he force himself on you?”
“No. Not exactly.”
“Have you ever confessed this before?”
“No.”
“These are grave sins,” the priest says. “Fornicating and withholding a sin from your confessor. No one knows about this?”
“My aunt. She found us. I was sent away for a long time.”
“Ah,” the priest says. Unmistakably, the “ah” of recognition. “Go on.”
“The relationship ended. The man just kind of left the family.”
“And you think this was because of you?”
“Possibly. I mean, it seems likely.”
The priest is silent for a long time. His silence makes her nervous. This is not supposed to be how it happens. From outside the room, she can hear water running, voices in the hallway. Will the priest want more details?
“May I speak frankly to you?” the priest asks finally.
The question is unsettling, and she can’t easily reply. The priest turns in his seat so that he is leaning over the arm of his chair in her direction. “This is unusual,” he says, “but I feel I must talk to you about this.”
Linda shifts slightly in her chair as well. From the corner of her eye, she can see the priest’s sleeve, his pale hand. Freckled, like Eddie Garrity’s.
“I know your name,” he says. “You’re Linda Fallon.”
She sucks in her breath.
“I know something of your situation,” he says. He sounds kinder, not quite as censorious. Definitely not as tired. “The individual you speak of was a despicable man. I knew him only slightly before he went away, but I saw enough and have since learned enough to convince me of this. What he did to you he did to other girls your age and even to younger girls. He did this repeatedly. Do you understand what I’m talking about?”
Linda nods, scarcely believing what she is hearing. Other girls? Younger?
“We can say that he was a sick man or an evil man,” the priest explains. “Probably both. But what I’m trying to tell you is that you were not alone.”
The information is so new to her, it sends the world as she has known it momentarily spinning out of kilter. She feels nauseated, as though she might be sick. She has a sudden memory of Eileen and her enigmatic comment: It was just your body acting, and you shouldn’t be afraid of your body.
“I can’t begin to imagine the heart of such a man,” the priest says. “One must pray for his soul. But I can, I think, understand something of your heart.”
The place where she can breathe seems to