Chapter 2 Cillian
CILLIAN
I've heard thousands of confessions in my eight years at St. Augustin's.
Sins of envy and greed, of lust and wrath, of petty cruelties and grand betrayals.
After a while, they all start to blur together, and I find myself responding on autopilot, dispensing absolution like a vending machine that takes guilt as currency.
It's a terrible thing to admit, but the truth is that I stopped really listening years ago.
Until her.
The moment her voice comes through the screen, my entire body goes alert.
I'd know that voice anywhere now. I've been listening for it every time the confessional door opens, and when someone else enters, someone older or male or simply not her, the disappointment that washes through me is shameful in its intensity.
"Bless me, Father, for I have sinned." Her voice is thin and nervous, and I can picture her on the other side of the screen, gripping her hands together, touching that locket she always wears.
I've memorized the details of her without meaning to.
The honey-brown curls she's always pushing back.
The way she bites her lip when she's nervous.
The soft curves she hides under modest clothes that somehow make me imagine them even more clearly.
"Go on, my child." I keep my voice measured, controlled. The same voice I use for everyone. The same voice I've been using for eight years to keep the world at arm's length.
She confesses small sins first, and I barely hear them. Something about lying to her boss, skipping mass. My mind is fixed on the fact that she's here, three feet away from me, separated by nothing but a wooden screen that suddenly feels like the flimsiest barrier in existence.
Then she says the words that change everything.
"I've been having impure thoughts. About someone I can't have. Someone forbidden."
My hands grip my rosary so hard the beads bite into my palm.
She's going to tell me about some man she's met, some inappropriate crush on a coworker or a friend's boyfriend, and I'm going to have to sit here and listen while pretending I don't care.
While pretending my stomach isn't twisting with something that feels dangerously like jealousy.
"Tell me about these thoughts," I say, and I hate how rough my voice sounds. How hungry.
"I think about him constantly. The way his hands move when he speaks. The way he looks at people like he can see right through them."
My hands. My eyes. She's talking about me. I knew it the moment her voice broke on "forbidden," but hearing her describe me, hearing the breathless wanting in her voice, is something else entirely. Every word she speaks is a match striking against my carefully constructed control.
"I imagine what it would feel like if he touched me. If he said my name."
I should stop her. I should transfer her to Father Daugherty for confession. I should do anything other than sit here in the dark, listening to her describe her desire for me while my body responds in ways that my cassock thankfully hides.
"Do you act on them?" I ask, and the question is wrong. I shouldn't be asking for details. I shouldn't want to know if she touches herself thinking about me, if she moans my name into her pillow at night. But God help me, I want to know. I want to know everything.
"No, Father. I just think about him constantly. Every waking moment, he's there in my mind. I can't stop thinking about him, no matter how hard I try."
"This man you speak of—does he know the depth of your feelings? Has he given you any indication that he suspects?"
"I don't know. Maybe." Her voice drops to barely a whisper now, fragile and uncertain. "Sometimes I catch him watching me, and I think... I think he sees me differently than he sees other people. Like there's something specific about me that draws his attention."
I do. From the first moment she walked into my church three months ago, grief-stricken and lost, something shifted in my chest. I told myself I was concerned for a grieving parishioner.
I told myself my interest was purely pastoral.
But I've never before memorized a parishioner's schedule, learned where she works, watched her window at night from the shadows outside the church.
"And what is it you want to see?" The question slips out before I can stop it, and it's not the kind of question a priest should ask during confession. It's personal. It's probing. It's the question of a man who desperately wants to know if she wants him as much as he wants her.
"I want him to want me back. Even though I know that's impossible. Even though I know it would ruin everything."
I should absolve her. Three Our Fathers, three Hail Marys, and a stern warning about the dangers of obsessive thoughts. That's what a good priest would do. That's what I've done for hundreds of women who confessed to impure thoughts about men they couldn't have.
Instead, I say, "Come back tomorrow. Same time."
I don't give her absolution. I don't give her penance. I just let her walk away with her sins still fresh on her skin because giving her absolution would mean this is over, and I'm not ready for it to be over. I'm not sure I'll ever be ready.
"Father?" Her voice shakes, and I can hear her confusion, her uncertainty.
"Tomorrow, Waverly." I let her name roll off my tongue like a prayer, like a confession of my own. "Come back tomorrow."
After she leaves, I sit in the darkness for twenty minutes.
My hands are shaking. My body is tight with arousal that I have no way to satisfy, no right to satisfy.
I've spent eight years serving God, and not once have I struggled with celibacy.
Not once have I looked at a woman and thought, I would give up everything for her.
Until now.
"Forgive me," I whisper into the empty confessional, but even as I say the words, I know I don't mean them. I'm not sorry. That's the sin. I want her with a ferocity that frightens me, and I'm not sorry at all.
The rectory is quiet when I return to my rooms. Father Daugherty is already asleep, and the housekeeper left hours ago.
I move through the familiar space without turning on lights, letting the darkness wrap around me like a shroud.
My room is spare: a narrow bed, a desk covered in books, a crucifix on the wall that seems to watch me with accusation.
I try to pray, but the words taste like ash. Every time I close my eyes, I see her face. Her lips parting as she confessed her sins. Her hands gripping together in her lap. The sound of her voice when she said, "I want him to want me back."
God, I want her back. I want her so badly I can barely breathe.
I sit at my desk and open my laptop, telling myself I'm going to work on Sunday's homily.
Instead, I find myself reviewing what I know about her.
Waverly Sinclair, twenty-two years old, arrived in the city four months ago after the death of her grandmother.
Works at Thornbury Books on Maple Street.
Lives in the building across from the church, third floor, second window from the right.
I shouldn't know these things. I asked Mrs. Callahan, the church secretary, offhandedly one afternoon. Just checking in on a new parishioner. Just exercising pastoral concern. The lies I tell myself are getting harder to believe.
What is she doing right now? Is she in bed? Is she lying awake thinking about me the way I'm lying awake thinking about her? Does she sleep in cotton or silk, or does she sleep in nothing at all, her soft skin bare against cool sheets?
I squeeze my eyes shut and grip the cross at my throat hard enough to hurt. "This is a test," I tell myself. "I can pass this test."
But even as I say it, I know it's a lie. I've already failed. I failed the moment I heard her voice and felt my whole world shift on its axis.
An hour passes, and I still can't sleep. My skin feels too tight, my thoughts too loud. Finally, I give up on pretending and grab my jacket, telling myself I need air. A walk. Something to clear my head.
I end up across the street from her building.
Her window is lit, a warm glow against the dark facade of the building.
Third floor, second from the right. I've watched that window more times than I can count, always from a distance, always telling myself that I'm just ensuring her safety.
As if a priest standing in the shadows outside a young woman's apartment is anything other than exactly what it looks like.
I light a cigarette, a habit I quit years ago. I kept one pack for emergencies, hidden in the back of my desk drawer. This feels like an emergency. The smoke burns my lungs in a way that's almost cleansing, and I let myself watch her window without pretense.
A silhouette moves behind the curtain. She's awake.
She's up there, just a few hundred feet away, and I could walk across the street and knock on her door and tell her that her confession nearly destroyed me.
That I've been thinking about her for months.
That every sermon I preach is secretly directed at her, every homily a love letter disguised as Scripture.
Then she appears at the window.
My heart stops. She's looking out at the church, her face soft in the dim light, and for a moment it seems like she's looking directly at me.
She can't see me in the shadows, but I feel her gaze like a physical touch.
Then she raises her hand and presses her palm against the glass, and something in my chest breaks.
I drop the cigarette and crush it underfoot, but I don't move. I can't. I'm rooted to this spot, watching her watch the night, and every wall I've built over the past eight years is crumbling around me.
I chose the priesthood as penance. My brother Danny died of an overdose when I was twenty-two, and I blamed myself for not being there, for not seeing the signs, for being too wrapped up in my own life to notice he was drowning.
The seminary was supposed to be my redemption.
A lifetime of service to balance the scales of my failure.
But what if the scales were always a lie? What if I was never really serving God? What if I was just hiding from myself, using faith as a shield against the messy, painful, glorious reality of human connection?
Waverly makes me want to stop hiding. She makes me want to be real.
I watch her for a few more minutes, until she finally steps away from the window and the light goes out. Then I stand in the darkness alone, breathing in the cold night air, and I make a decision that will damn me or save me. I'm not sure which yet.
Tomorrow, she'll come back to the confessional.
And this time, I won't stay behind the screen.
This time, I'll look into her eyes and tell her the truth: that she's not the only one with impure thoughts.
That I've been watching her for months. That I would give up everything I've built just to hear her say my name.
I spent thirty years serving God, I think as I walk back to the rectory. I can spend eternity in hell for one taste of her.
The collar around my throat feels like a noose. But when I look up at her darkened window one last time, I think there are worse ways to die than this.