Thirty-Two
Jude
Riding the high after fucking Saylor, bent over the kitchen table in the rectory, I headed back to the church.
She’d started her period Monday morning and gone to get her birth control shot. Wednesday, her period was almost gone, and I couldn’t wait any longer. I’d taken her that way. Since then, I’d been finding ways to get inside her. Leaving her just now had been easier since I knew she’d be waiting for me as soon as the men’s Bible study ended. Friday night had become my favorite.
I lifted my fingers to my nose and inhaled. I’d been sure to slide my fingers inside her before I took her so I’d have this scent with me.
Mmm. I had to stop it. I was gonna get hard.
The sight of Sister Helen helped me with that. Instant deflate.
“Father Jude,” she said. “We’ve been looking for you. Maureen couldn’t get you on your phone.”
That had been on purpose. Maureen, the Parish Secretary, was nosey.
“You found me.”
She chuckled. “Yes, I did. It’s a good thing too. You’ve got company waiting on you in your office.” She beamed. “You are gonna be happy to see them.”
There was one person I wanted to see in my office, and she was definitely not who was waiting on me.
I nodded. “Thank you, Sister Helen. I will head that way now.”
“And I’ll let Maureen know you’ve been found!” she called out.
I raised my hand in a wave and kept walking. It sounded like whoever was here might hold things up for me today, and I didn’t have time for that.
Opening my office door, I stepped inside with my smile already firmly in place. The holding it there, however, was a challenge. Carp and Hannah Berry, Delana’s parents, each sat in a chair across from my desk. Hannah shot up out of her chair and clapped her hands together once with a squeal at the sight of me.
“Jude,” she said with the same fondness in her voice she always had for me. “It is so good to see you.”
Carp sat with his large belly hanging over the waistband of his pants and raised a hand in greeting. “How’s our boy?” he asked. Pride etched on his face.
The collar at my neck suddenly felt too tight. The room also very warm. The guilt over my broken vows that had magically left me returned like a tidal wave. Crushing me, drowning me, making my heart hammer in my chest in means for survival.
“Wow,” I said. “I didn’t know y’all were in town.” That didn’t sound enthusiastic, Jude. You have to do better . “It’s great to see you.”
Hannah hurried over and hugged me, her petite frame much like Delana’s, keeping her head right below my shoulders. I returned the embrace, hoping she didn’t hear my racing heart.
Hannah pressed her fist to her mouth. “I just know Delana is looking down, so proud of you, Father Jude.” She turned around to Carp. “It’s fun to say, isn’t it?”
Carp nodded with a grin, then turned his gaze to me. “Might want to get a box of tissues for her. She’s already teared up twice since getting in here.”
“You, hush,” she said, swatting at him with her hand. “I’ve been wanting to get up here to see him in his official role. Witness it myself.”
“Well, soak it all in. We’ve got the weekend, so enjoy,” Carp said.
The weekend? They would be here all weekend? A churning in my gut started to add to the other riot of things hammering down on me.
“Maureen, the nice lady that we met out front, said you had a men’s Bible study tonight, but she would call Father Heisler to take it over for you. He attends anyway, is what she said. Then, you’d be free for us to take you out to dinner. Spoil you. The workload you have and the way everything has grown—it’s just something to be celebrated.”
“She keeps up-to-date, checking the website weekly,” Carp informed me with a shake of his head.
This was my why.
These two.
It wasn’t the sin. I’d already accepted that my vows no longer had ahold on me. But these two. I had watched them lose their daughter. Grieved alongside them. And together, we had found some way to continue with this. My becoming a priest. Dedicate my life to God and his service to honor Delana.
Not realizing, one day, I’d grow up. See it all differently. But how could I hurt these two people when I knew what all they had lost? It was a level of selfishness I didn’t think I could obtain.
Hannah picked up the photo of their daughter and gazed down at it so lovingly. They had given that to me the day I left for seminary. So that I could have her with me wherever I went. She pressed a kiss to her fingertips, then placed it on the glass before raising her gaze to meet mine. “Our angel, too good for this world.”
I nodded. “Yes, she was.”
She sniffled, then placed it back on the desk.
“How is Torin?” she asked. “He still hasn’t called us. The only peace I get is knowing he is at least coming here.”
I cleared my throat as another heaping of guilt dropped onto my shoulders. “Better. He’s opening up to others more.”
“Do you think you can get him to see us?” she asked. “I know he’s stubborn. Even when Torin was a little boy, he was so determined. Set on what he wanted. What he believed.”
I rubbed my jaw, hating to tell her I doubted he’d do that. Explaining that he barely spoke to me and that I currently didn’t care to see his face was impossible.
“I, uh…well, he’s changed. Not the same guy. But I suspect prison caused that.”
She sighed, nodding her head. “I know. He’s changed his name. I just…” She shook her head. “How could he take the name we had given him—that we’d chosen when he was in my womb—and just toss it? And for a name like”—she grimaced—“ Crow. ”