The Last Time They Met_ A Novel - Anita Shreve [121]
“You feel responsible for what happened,” the priest says.
She nods, but then realizes he might not be able to see the nod. She leans slightly more over the arm of the chair as the priest is doing, though she doesn’t want to look directly at him. In the distance, she can hear what sounds like a farewell, a door shutting. “Yes,” she says. “More or less.”
“Though one might have wished for you to have been stronger and to have resisted this man, his is by far the graver sin. You were a child. You are a child still.”
To Linda’s horror, tears come unbidden into her eyes. They well up over the lower lids.
“It was wrong of your aunt to send you away. I can’t imagine what it was like for you.”
She shakes her head back and forth. The kindness, the kindness! It is almost more painful to her than a harsh word. No one has ever spoken to her like this before.
“This is not a sin you need to confess, because you did not commit a sin,” the priest says. “Do you understand what I am saying?”
She doesn’t. Not exactly. It contradicts all she has ever been told.
“Some might think so,” the priest says. He sneezes once quickly and says, “Excuse me.” He takes out a handkerchief and blows his nose. “I’ve got a cold coming on,” he says, explaining. “Would you like to speak to someone about this? Someone who might be able to help you?”
She shakes her head quickly. “No,” she says.
“I’m thinking of someone such as a doctor, who could talk to you about how you might be feeling about all of this.”
“No,” she says. “I don’t think so.”
“I could arrange, I think, for you to speak to a woman.”
“Not really,” she says.
“It’s too hard to carry such a burden alone.”
A great childish sob escapes her. A gulp, a hiccup of air. She turns away from the priest.
She hears the priest stand and then leave the room. She thinks that he has left her to cry alone without anyone to watch, but then he returns with a box of tissues. He stops in front of her, but she is unwilling to raise her eyes past his knees. She takes a tissue from the box and blows her nose. All these functions of the body, she thinks.
“Perhaps you would like some time to be alone,” he says.
She shakes her head again. “I have to get back to class,” she says, wanting more than anything to leave the rectory.
“I understand,” he says. “Linda.”
She looks up at him. She was wrong. He doesn’t look a thing like Eddie Garrity. “Can you forgive the man?” he asks.
“I don’t know,” she says. “I try not to think about it.”
“Can you forgive your aunt?”
She shakes her head. “She hates,” Linda says. “Which seems worse.”
“It is not for us to decide which is the worse sin.”
“No,” she says.
“You’ll work on forgiving them. You’ll try.”
“Yes,” she says, knowing this might not be true.
“Do you have friends?” he asks. “Anyone you can talk to?”
“I have a friend,” she says.
“Someone you trust?” he asks.
“Yes. Very much.”
“Is this person a boy or a girl?”
“A boy.”
“Is he a Catholic?”
“No.”
“Well, never mind.”
“He is my life,” Linda says.
“Now, now,” the priest says gently. “God is your life. Your life is in God.”
“Yes,” she says.
“But now is perhaps not the time to get into that. I assume you have had quite a religious training.”
She nods.
“More than you ever wanted.”
She glances up at him and sees that he is smiling. No, he does not resemble Eddie Garrity at all, she thinks.
The priest holds out his hand. She takes it, and he helps her up.
“I’ll see you to the door,” he says. “If you ever want to talk, about this or about anything else, you have only to call.”
“Thank you,” she says. “I don’t even know your name.”
“Father Meaghan,” he says. “Don’t forget your pocketbook there.”
______
Linda walks out to the sidewalk, knowing that the priest is watching her from behind a window. The light outside is so bright and so harsh she immediately has to take her sunglasses from her purse. She puts them on gratefully, makes the turn toward the bus stop, and when she knows she is out of sight of