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For the DWC Word Counts |
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This starts my DWC 2026 journey |
| Another voice answered before I could. When a question came up about scheduling, someone answered it before I could. I sat back and folded my hands, aware of how easily my role had been absorbed. It wasn’t exclusion. It was efficiency. Afterward, a woman I’d known for years stopped me near the door. “Father,” she said, smiling, “I didn’t realize how much you used to do until someone else did it differently.” She meant it as praise. I thanked her anyway. Outside, the air felt sharper than it had earlier. I stood on the steps, watching people disperse in pairs, in clusters, already moving on to the next part of their evening. No one lingered or waited. Later that week, as Father Baxter and I were headed down to breakfast, Father Pete motioned me to his rooms. Not formally. Not casually either. He didn’t open with small talk. He didn’t sit back. The folder in his hands was already open. “We’ve finalized most of next term’s coverage,” he said. “There are a few pieces that depend on you.” I waited. “With the school,” he continued, “we’ve reassigned what you were carrying. Father Baxter has taken over the weekly meetings. Beatrice has adjusted the rest.” I nodded, aware that this wasn’t news. “There are still gaps,” he said. “If you want them.” “And if I don’t?” I asked. He didn’t hesitate. “if you don’t take them, we’ll fill those too.” The clarity of it was almost a relief. On my way out, I passed the bulletin board where schedules were posted. My name appeared fewer times than it used to. Not erased. Just reduced. I walked the perimeter of the parish grounds instead of going straight back to my rooms. I’ve been doing that more in the evenings, as if distance might sort something out on its own. The lights in the school wing were still on. Inside, a handful of children sat in a loose circle, papers spread across the tables. They talked over one another—not unruly, just alive in the way children are when they know they’re being listened to. Ms. Pratt stood near them, leaning down to listen. It wasn’t me. I felt the familiar urge to step in, to correct, to guide. I didn’t. I kept walking. By the time I reached the far gate, the unease had settled into something steadier than discomfort. I had believed restraint would slow things down. It hadn’t. It had clarified where I was no longer required to stand. The Nuclear Ledger (Jason Logan’s POV) I had called my father the night before, right after walking back from Paulie's porch. I didn’t explain a thing over the line. I just told him I needed to come by. He hadn’t asked questions; he had simply delivered the order to come in the morning. It was Sunday. I had just finished presiding over the early morning liturgy, the heavy, hollow silence of the sanctuary still ringing in my ears. I hadn't even gone upstairs to my rooms to strip out of the black wool suit. I had walked out of the sacristy and straight down the avenue, the clerical collar a rigid, suffocating noose around my neck. There was a limit to how long I could stay in their house today. I had to face my afternoon assignments, and I couldn't let this turn into one of those family conversations that circled until everyone was exhausted and nothing had actually been decided. The route across the neighborhood blocks was so familiar that my feet did the remembering—every crack in the concrete, every place the pavement narrowed and opened again. I slowed my pace once, my boots dragging near the park gate, then forced my posture back into line and kept going. By the time I reached their block, my legs felt twice as heavy as they should have. The house looked exactly the same as it always had. The same narrow asphalt driveway. The same front step where the gray paint never held against the weather. The same wide front window that reflected the cold sky more than whatever life was moving inside. I rang the bell, and my father opened the door before the chime could finish. “Jason,” he said. His voice was already heavily guarded, his jaw set in that hard, unyielding line. He knew this wasn’t a casual Sunday visit. Paulie had already warned me that Dad had called him earlier in the week, furious and demanding to know why I had cleared the track and skipped our regular gym workouts two weeks in a row. He was already treating my absence like a breach of contract. The kitchen smelled like strong coffee and burnt toast. My mother was standing at the counter, her back to the doorway, moving with the steady, practiced ease of someone who belonged in a room regardless of what was about to dissolve there. She turned the moment she heard my father’s boots on the linoleum. “Jase,” she said, her eyes tracking the rigid white notch at my throat. “You’re early.” Not what’s wrong. Not you look completely unspooled. Just the clinical fact of me standing in her kitchen. I stepped inside the room. My father went straight to the wooden table and sat down, his hands flat against the laminate. He didn’t ask if I wanted a glass of water. He didn’t look up at my mother. He just waited for the play. My mother poured a third ceramic mug of coffee and set it in front of my hands without asking. She didn’t sit down right away; she just stood by the counter, her head tilted slightly as she read the gray fatigue under my eyelids. “You didn’t walk over here for small talk, Jason,” she said, her tone exact. Then she took her seat opposite him. “All right. Say it.” I looked at her, then forced my eyes over to meet my father’s stare. “I don’t know how to say this cleanly.” My father snorted once, a sharp, bitter sound. “Then don’t. It doesn’t have to be clean. Just say it.” The words stuck in my throat, the weight of ten years of service fighting against my tongue. When the sentence finally broke past my teeth, it didn’t sound like the version of myself I usually delivered from the pulpit. “I am leaving the priesthood.” For a long, suffocating beat, neither of them moved. The refrigeration unit let out a low hum in the silence. Then my father pushed his chair back with a violent jerk, the wooden legs scraping harshly across the floorboards. “No.” It wasn’t disbelief. It was a flat, absolute refusal to accept the metric. “You don’t get to come in here and say that like it’s a sudden idea,” he continued, his voice dropping into that dangerous, competitive timber. “You’re not new at this, Jason. You’re not an uncertain seminarian. You’ve been ordained for ten years. You don’t get to 'may' your way out of a lifetime contract.” “I’m not trying to—” “Don’t,” he snapped, cutting my defense off before I could find the play. “Not yet.” He stood up from the table and walked over to the counter, bracing both of his broad hands against the formica as if the entire kitchen had tilted underneath his weight. “This is the second time,” he said, keeping his back turned to the room. “The second time in my life this baseline breaks. My mother exhaled slowly, her fingers tightening around her mug. “Paul.” “No,” he hissed, his shoulders rigid under his flannel shirt. “Let me finish. Your brother walked away from this family's name, and now you walk in here wearing that suit and deliver this.” “I didn’t walk away from anyone, Dad,” I said. “Not yet,” he said, turning around to face me, his features tight with an expression that was far older than anger. “But you’re standing in the exact same track where he stood.” “That’s not fair,” I said, and my voice cracked slightly despite my desperate effort to hold the composure straight. My mother leaned forward, her palm flat on the table. “Let him talk,” she said—not to me. She was looking strictly at my father. He sat back down, slower this time, forcing his frame back into the chair instead of pacing out of the room. “This wasn’t a temporary phase for you, Jason,” he said, his blue eyes—so much like Paulie’s—boring into my face. “You built your entire identity around this altar.” “I know.” “And now you’re just tired,” he declared, trying to reframe the ledger into something he could control. “I’m not tired of the work,” I told him, the truth coming out blunt and heavy. “I’m tired of pretending the cost of this lie only belongs to me.” That made him completely still. My mother’s eyes shifted toward me, sharp and analytical. “What does that mean?” she asked. I looked down at my hands resting against the table. They were perfectly steady. The stillness of them surprised me. “It means other people are paying for my silence. And I can’t unsee the calculation now.” My father shook his head, refusing the data. “This is exactly what I was afraid of when Paulie told me you were skipping our routines. You’ve let something personal make you doubt a ten-year vocation.” Before I could stop the reflex, the defensive shield broke out of my mouth too fast. “This isn’t about a woman.” The words hit the air with a frantic velocity. I knew I had compromised the room the second the syllables were spoken. My father stiffened, his shoulders squaring. “Then thank God for small mercies,” he muttered. “At least you’re not humiliating this family on top of everything else.” My mother didn’t look at him. She didn’t even register his voice. She kept her eyes fixed strictly on my face. “Is that true, Jase?” she asked. Her delivery wasn't accusing. It was just perfectly, terrifyingly exact. I opened my mouth to repeat the lie, but my throat locked completely around the hypocrisy. I closed my lips again, my nails pressing hard into my palms. She watched the silence handle me, then nodded once. “That’s what I thought.” My father turned to her, his face flushing. “Danielle. Don’t start.” She didn’t raise her timber a single fraction. “Jason does this when he’s scared,” she said to the room. “He makes the play look neat so he doesn’t have to say what actually caused the hurt.” “That’s not what I’m doing, Mom,” I said weakly, my right hand instinctively rising toward my ear before I forced it back to the edge of the wood. She looked right through the mask. “It is. You’ve done it since you were sixteen years old.” My father slammed his hand down on the table, the ceramic mugs rattling against the laminate. “So now this is my fault? I’m the one who built the cage?” “No,” she said, her voice dropping into a quiet, unyielding cadence. “This isn’t about you, Paul.” She turned back to face me. “You didn’t plan this exit, Jase.” It wasn’t a question. “Someone got close enough to your life that you couldn’t pretend the collar was enough anymore.” “I didn’t do anything wrong,” I said, hearing how tight and thin the defensive script sounded in my own ears. She shook her head slowly. “That’s not what I’m asking you, son. I’m asking whether this life actually fits you anymore.” My throat tightened until I couldn't draw the air behind my neck. My mother leaned back in her chair, her fingers resting loosely in her lap. “I told you at this exact kitchen table ten years ago that you didn’t have the temperament for disappearing inside vows,” she said, her gaze steady and absolute. “I told you you’d try as hard as you could just to prove a point. And I told you you’d end up hating the room.” |
| “Though I need to correct something.” He paused, chalice still in his hands. “The family night at the preschool,” I said. “You told Beatrice I’d confirmed.” Father Pete set the chalice down carefully. “She spoke with Ms. Guzman who said you could do it.” “I said I could,” I replied. “I didn’t say I had.” He watched me for a beat. “What’s the difference?” “The difference,” I said, “is whether I let an assumption turn into a decision because it’s easier not to interrupt it.” His expression didn’t change, but his attention sharpened. “Most people would call that generosity,” he said. “I know,” I replied. “And most of the time it is.” “And this time?” he asked. “This time it would mean more than showing up,” I said. “And I haven’t decided yet whether I can let it mean that.” The silence held. Father Pete nodded once. “Then decide,” he said—not as instruction, as fact. “Because if you don’t, everyone else will.” “I know.” “Let me know,” he said, turning back to the cabinet, “before the school does.” I left the sacristy aware that this was the first time I had stepped into the space between expectation and choice without filling it immediately. It did not feel like relief. It felt like responsibility. By the end of the week, I understood that whatever decision I delayed would not remain contained between myself and my conscience. It would move outward, attaching itself to schedules, to people, to the small assumptions others made in order to keep things running. In my rooms that night, I lay back and stared at the ceiling, aware that the shape of my life was beginning to shift without my permission. What unsettled me wasn’t the mistake. It was how easily others had stepped in to correct it And that I was responsible for that too. By the time the week of family night arrived, I understood that I had already crossed a line. Nothing external had changed. The date was still on the calendar. The arrangements were still in place. From the outside, my agreement looked intact. What had changed was my ability to enter the room without lying to myself. I told myself that attending as requested—as someone from the parish, briefly and professionally—should not matter. I had done things like this for years. I knew how to keep my presence contained. This time, I was no longer sure that containment was possible. I did not call Felicia. There was nothing to clarify. She had not asked for more than she asked for. The uncertainty belonged to me. Felicia Family night unfolded the way these things always did. Children moved in clusters. Parents stood where they could, hands in pockets or folded across chests. The room buzzed with low conversation and the scrape of chairs. Felicia noticed Peter in the room. Not because Peter demanded attention—he didn’t—but because he was already where he was meant to be. Standing slightly behind Nate’s chair, close enough to matter without crowding him, one hand resting lightly on the back as Nate worked. When Nate leaned back to show something on his paper, Peter bent to look, listening without correcting, without narrating himself into the moment. It was the kind of presence that didn’t ask to be acknowledged. Felicia didn’t look up again after that. She had learned, over time, the cost of over‑monitoring what was already steady. Nate was focused, shoulders loose, absorbed in the work in front of him. The room buzzed with the small noise of children and adults leaning in, chairs scraping, scissors snipping. Someone asked Peter if he wanted another chair. “I’m good here,” he said, smiling, and the answer landed easily, without apology. Felicia stayed where she was, hands folded loosely in her lap. She didn’t need to check whether Peter was comfortable. She didn’t need to adjust anything. That, too, was something she had learned—how to let what was solid remain so without interference. She was aware of Father Jason’s arrival without turning toward him. She didn’t need to. He stood where he always stood at these things—near the wall, attentive without inserting himself, careful in the way he had become careful. Nate noticed him eventually. Looked up. Nodded once. Returned to his drawing. The moment passed cleanly. Felicia felt no urge to bridge it. What had once unsettled her—what his distance meant, what it asked of her—no longer required interpretation. She had stepped back when she needed to. She had not been punished for it. Life had adjusted in ways that did not center loss. When the evening wound down and parents began gathering papers and jackets, Peter stayed close, not ushering, not hovering. Nate gathered his things with the seriousness of a child who had been listened to. Outside, the air had cooled. Peter waited while Felicia helped Nate into his coat, his presence unhurried. “Ready?” he asked Nate. Nate nodded. Felicia locked the classroom door behind them and felt, not relief, but steadiness. The kind that comes from having stopped trying to manage outcomes and begun trusting the shape of the life already forming around her. She did not look back. I began saying “no” in places where yes had once arrived without thought. Not to anything dramatic. Not to anything that would force explanation. Just the small things—the extra meeting added because no one else wanted it, the assumption that I would stay late because I usually did, the request to cover a class “just this once.” Each refusal landed quietly. People adjusted. Someone else stepped in. No one asked why. I noticed that before I decided what it meant. I told myself that was the point. But the absences left their own shape. In the faculty hallway, Ms. Pratt stopped me near the bulletin board. “Father, we moved the rehearsal time,” she said. “Would you still be able to sit in for the first ten minutes?” I would have said yes without thinking. “I can’t,” I said instead. “Not this week.” She blinked once—surprised, then recalibrating. “All right,” she said, already making a new plan. I walked away feeling the oddness of it—not guilt, exactly. More like reaching for something that was no longer there. At practice, I watched the boys run the drill without my voice filling every pause. When a ball rolled loose, one of them chased it down without waiting for instruction. It should have felt like progress. Instead it felt like proof. They didn’t need me as much as they had. Or maybe they never had. Maybe they had only been trained to. I blew the whistle once, then lowered it without using it again. When I called out the next drill, the boys complied. Their attention drifted more easily without my constant corrections. Afterward, I walked the length of the court alone, the echo of the ball fading faster than it used to. It wasn’t relief. It was consequence. On the walk back toward the parish buildings, I kept my hands in my pockets to stop them from reaching for my phone. I had already said what I could say. Now I had to live inside the boundary. Felicia didn’t plan to call Peter Campbell that day. The image from family night returned without asking. Children tugging at sleeves. Chairs scraped closer together. Fathers leaning in to look at drawings. The easy way boys leaned toward men who already knew where to stand. She hadn’t noticed it at first. Not consciously. Then she had. It wasn’t something she resented. The feeling wasn’t sharp enough for that. It settled lower, somewhere behind her ribs, and stayed. Peter’s name was still there in her contact list. She let her phone rest in her hand longer than necessary, the screen bright. She didn’t open the contact. She didn’t scroll. Calling him didn’t feel like asking for help. It felt like stopping. She pressed call before she could talk herself out of it. He answered on the second ring. “Felicia,” he said, as if she’d called yesterday. She closed her eyes, just briefly. “Hey.” “How’s my guy?” The phrase landed softly and stayed. Not because it was sentimental, but because it didn’t reach for anything. It didn’t need to. “He’s good,” she said. “He’s… bigger.” Peter laughed, quiet. “That tracks.” She could hear movement on his end. A chair. A door. She didn’t rush to fill the space. “I wanted to ask you something,” she said finally. “About Nate.” “All right,” Peter said. No pause. “Tell me.” She looked at the counter while she spoke, the small mark near the edge she’d meant to clean and never did. “He’s noticing more,” she said. “Who’s there. Who stays.” The words felt unfinished. She let them stay that way. Peter didn’t interrupt. He didn’t correct her into clarity or make it about Dwayne. “Well,” he said after a moment, careful, “I can take him Saturday. If that helps. Couple hours. Pizza. Park.” She felt the shift before she understood it. A loosening. Not relief exactly. “You don’t have to,” she said automatically, because that was still the first language her body reached for. “I know,” Peter said. “That’s why I’m offering.” She rested her elbow on the counter. Finally, she said, “He’d like that.” “I know,” Peter said. “I’ve met the kid.” She heard the smile this time. It surprised her how much she felt it. After they hung up, Felicia stayed where she was. The apartment didn’t feel fuller. It felt quieter in a way she didn’t need to correct. She didn’t name it. She didn’t need to. Father Pete stopped me near the sacristy door after evening Mass. Not blocking me. Not summoning me. Simply placing himself where I would have to acknowledge him. “Jason,” he said. “Yes,” I replied. He didn’t ask how I was. He didn’t need the answer I would have given. “Next month,” he said, “we’ll need to confirm coverage.” “I know.” He watched me. The pause wasn’t suspicion. It was assessment. “All right,” he said finally. “Let me know what you’re keeping and what you’re not.” He walked away before I could turn the exchange into something smoother. I stood there a moment longer, aware that the world was no longer being held together by my willingness to absorb everything. No one asked for the reason. They were already building around the shape of my answer. I had thought stepping back would feel like relief. It didn’t. It felt like the beginning of being seen. By the end of the week, I understood something I hadn’t before. Restraint was no longer neutral. But neither was withdrawal. Whatever came next would require more than careful management. It would require choosing what I was willing to lose. The chairs were already set in place when I entered the room. Someone had arranged them into smaller circles instead of the long rows I usually preferred, each cluster angled slightly inward as if the room had been taught to listen to itself. A stack of handouts sat on the table near the door—neater than I would have made them, clipped instead of loose, the edges aligned with a care that suggested the work had been done without hurry. Beatrice glanced up when she saw me. “Oh—good,” she said. Not relieved. Just acknowledging that I was there. “We went ahead and started.” She gestured toward the front where Father Baxter was already speaking, his voice even, his pacing familiar enough that no one shifted when I took a seat along the wall. I listened. He covered the same ground I would have. Slower, perhaps. Less precision in the transitions. He lingered a moment too long on one point and moved past another without the emphasis I would have given it. And still the room stayed with him. Heads nodded in the right places. Pens moved across paper. When someone raised a hand. |
| Don’t ask the future to make sense when it had already proved it wouldn’t. Those rules had kept her upright. They had raised her son. They had filled the hours when stillness felt dangerous. What they had not done was tell her when survival was no longer the same thing as living. She walked Nate to school, and he had gone in without tears, backpack crooked, his hand slipping free of hers with the confidence of repetition. Felicia stood outside the preschool a moment longer than necessary, then turned toward home. The apartment was quiet in the particular way it only ever was during those hours. Dropping her keys on the kitchen table, she put the kettle on the stove for a cup chamomile tea. While she sipped her tea, she munched on a muffin she had, out of habit, baked the night before. She made a list. Groceries. Laundry. A reminder to replace batteries in the smoke detector. The list looked responsible. It didn’t feel like relief. Afterward she moved through the rooms, without urgency. She folded a towel she didn’t need yet, then another, aware of the familiar impulse to keep moving so she wouldn’t have to notice what the stillness brought back. The habits came easily. They always had. The morning didn’t need her. The hours opened up in front of her—clean, empty, and unclaimed. This was what she had been filling. She stopped in Nate’s doorway. The ceiling still held the stars. Felicia stood beneath them and looked up, tracing the painted line of a star with her eyes the way she had done on nights when sleep would not come. Dwayne had painted them patiently, researching which constellations would be visible on the night Nate was born. He had talked while he worked, explaining which ones were easiest to find, which moved slowly across the seasons. Felicia had listened without really understanding what he was trying to give them. Now she did. Now that he was gone. And there was the other night, years later, after a basketball game—when she had stood in this same room while a priest asked about the ceiling as if he needed something ordinary to hold onto. The air had felt charged then, not romantic, just altered. She had noticed his nervousness, the way he filled space with questions that didn’t belong only to the stars. After that, he began to look away from her at the parish office as if looking directly would make something real. The room wasn’t a shrine. It was a child’s room. Toys on the floor. A small shirt draped over the chair. Evidence of a life that kept going whether she was ready or not. That was the mercy of it. That night, Nate was quiet in the way Felicia had learned to notice. Not sulking. Not afraid. Just careful, as if his thoughts were heavy and he didn’t want to spill them. He lay under the blanket with one arm outside it, fingers rubbing the edge of the fabric the way he did when he was deciding whether to speak. Felicia sat on the side of the bed and smoothed his hair once. “Are you okay, nino?” she asked. He nodded. “Which one’s my dad’s favorite?” he asked. Felicia paused in the doorway. “What?” “The stars,” he said, pointing. “You said he picked some of them.” She crossed the room and sat on the edge of the bed. “He liked Orion,” she said. “Because it’s easy to find in the sky.” Nate nodded, satisfied for a moment. Then, after a long pause, he said, “My dad was a hero.” “Yes,” Felicia said. “He was.” Nate stared at the ceiling. His voice was smaller when he spoke again. “Heroes don’t come back, right?” Felicia’s throat tightened. She kept her hand where it was, steady. “No,” she said. “They don’t.” Nate swallowed. “Did he, did he get hurt because I made him go?” The sentence landed cleanly, like a stone dropped into still water. Felicia didn’t pretend she hadn’t heard him. “No,” she said immediately. “No, baby. Not because of you.” Nate’s eyes filled, but he didn’t cry. He was watching her face, not the answer. Testing whether she meant it. “He went because it was his job,” she said, choosing each word carefully. “He went because he helped people. And someone did something bad.” Nate nodded once, as if that matched the story he knew. Then he whispered, “Sometimes you look like you’re hurting.” Felicia’s hand stilled. “I’m okay,” she started to say. Nate shook his head. “Not like sick,” he corrected. “Like… your eyes.” Felicia turned her face slightly away and then forced herself back. He deserved her eyes. “I miss him,” she said. Not a performance. Just truth. Nate’s breath shuddered once, controlled. “I miss him too,” he said. Felicia leaned down and kissed his forehead, holding the moment long enough that it didn’t become a lesson. When she stood to leave, Nate reached for her sleeve. “Mami,” he said, very quietly, “you’re not gonna go, right?” Felicia froze—because this was the real question. She sat back down. “No,” she said. “I’m here.” Nate watched her for a beat longer, then let go of her sleeve as if the answer had weight he could finally set down. Felicia stayed until his breathing slowed, listening to the familiar sounds of sleep. She told herself she had done what she always did—answered carefully, stayed steady, kept the fear from spilling. Nate was calm. The house was quiet. Everything had held. This was the proof she relied on. She turned away believing, for the moment, that this was still enough. Only when she was alone in the hallway did she realize her hands were shaking. You’re not gonna go, right?” Felicia leaned against the wall and closed her eyes. She had done what she always did—answered carefully, stayed steady, kept the fear from spilling into the room where Nate slept. He was calm. The house was quiet. Everything had held. This was the proof she relied on. And yet the question would not leave her—not the one he had asked, but the one beneath it. How long she had been treating staying as the highest virtue. How easily she had begun to believe that wanting anything more than stability was a kind of betrayal. Survival had kept her standing. What it had not taught her was how to choose when nothing was actively falling apart. She felt it then —not as permission, not as resolve, but as discomfort—that restraint had protected her for years. And that protection was beginning to ask something back. She pushed herself away from the wall. She turned off the light and went to bed knowing that what she had been calling enough might not always be. Nothing had been decided. But something had shifted. By midweek, it became clear that silence was no longer neutral. The schedule on my desk had been adjusted without my input—small changes, nothing urgent. A meeting moved earlier. A note added in the margin where there hadn’t been one the day before. I recognized Bernice’s handwriting and felt a flicker of irritation that had nothing to do with her. I was back to using my handwritten notes for my lesson plans, Bernice telling me she could not read my writing. She hadn’t done anything wrong. That was the problem. In the hallway between classes, people stopped me with the same ease they always had, their questions practical, their tone familiar. Nothing about the conversations suggested concern. And yet I found myself listening for something else—the pause after my answer, the way eyes lingered a moment longer before moving on. It wasn’t scrutiny. It was adjustment. I wondered, not for the first time, who else Felicia leaned on when she wasn’t here In my office, the quiet felt different now. Not empty—but occupied by decisions that hadn’t yet been spoken. I opened my planner and closed it again without writing anything down. Later that day, Father Pete knocked once and stepped inside without waiting. “Can we talk” he asked. “Yes,” I said, because refusing would have been louder than agreement. He didn’t sit. He stood near the window, hands folded loosely in front of him, his posture casual enough to signal that this wasn’t disciplinary. “We’re getting close to the end of the term,” he said. “I wanted to check in about coverage next month.” “Coverage,” I repeated. “Yes. School events. A few parish commitments. Things you usually handle.” He glanced at the calendar on the wall. “I can shift some of it if I need to. I just need to know.” He said it like logistics, but his eyes stayed on my face long enough to make it clear this wasn’t only about the calendar. I understood then what he was offering—not help, exactly, but clarity. A chance to say something before assumptions hardened into plans. I remembered the family day I had agreed to. “I’ll be here,” I said. He nodded, accepting that at face value. “Good,” he said. “Then we’ll proceed as usual.” The phrase sounded procedural. It wasn’t. It was a test I could pass without telling him anything—or fail without speaking at all. After he left, I sat at my desk longer than necessary, aware that nothing in that exchange had been dishonest—and that something in it had been incomplete. Proceed as usual. The last game of the basketball season was approaching, and it looked as if the team would be in the finals—if we got through the playoffs. Before I called an end to practice, the boys gathered and I gave each a copy of the plays for the next game. “So, the next few games are crucial. In order for us to advance, we’ll need to win them all. Are there any questions about the plays?” Cal didn’t raise his hand. He just looked down at the page, then back up at me. “We already tried this play,” he said, tapping the paper. “It doesn’t work. You said you were going to change it.” I looked down at my clipboard. He was right. A few of the boys shifted, waiting. No one laughed. No one filled the pause for me. “Good catch,” I said. “We’ll adjust it.” The words came out steady, but I felt the small misstep behind them—the fact that I had needed a fourteen-year-old to keep me from repeating my own mistake. The boys ran toward the locker room, their voices echoing, the moment already behind them. I stayed long enough to gather the papers I’d handed out, as if collecting them could collect what had just happened. On the walk back toward the parish buildings, the air was cold enough to sharpen thought. Bernice was still at her desk when I stepped into the office. She looked up, then glanced at the calendar book beside her. “Father Pete called earlier,” she said. “He confirmed you’re covering the family night at the preschool next month. I told him you’d handle the details.” I stopped with one hand still on the doorframe. “I haven’t finalized that,” I said. Bernice blinked once—not confused, just recalibrating. “He said it was set,” she replied. “I told Felicia I could do it,” I said. “I didn’t decide what that meant yet.” She studied me a little longer than necessary. “All right,” she said finally. “Do you want me to call him back?” “No,” I said. “I’ll do it.” She nodded and returned to her work as if the exchange had been routine. It wasn’t. I left the office with an uneasy sense that the space had adjusted itself in my absence. Father Pete was in the sacristy when I found him, arranging the vessels for the evening Mass. He looked up as I stepped inside. “Jason,” he said. “Is everything all right?” “Yes,” I said. |
| “If you leave, you leave because it’s true for you. Not because you’ve found a way out.” I nodded once. The distinction mattered. It was the only way Felicia stayed human in this. “And you don’t get to make the Church the villain,” he continued. “You chose it. You loved it. You still do, right?” “Yes,” I said quietly. Paulie watched me for a beat. “So,” he said, “who else knows?” “No one.” He nodded, as if that was what he expected. Then, with the same steadiness, he added, “Then the next part is going to cost you.” I didn’t argue. Paulie stood and crossed to the counter, rinsed his mug, and set it in the rack. The domesticity of it made the moment sharper, not softer. When he turned back, his voice was quieter. “You remember how it was for me when I left,” he said. I did. “You’re not going to get a clean conversation out of Dad,” he said. “Or Mom.” “I know.” Paulie stepped closer to the table, palms resting on the edge. “But if you decide you’re going to tell them,” He said, “you don’t do it alone.” That was as close to help as he ever offered. I swallowed. “Okay,” I said. Paulie nodded once. “And if you decide you’re not leaving,” he added, “then you still have to live inside what you’ve named.” I held his gaze. “I know,” I said again. This time the words didn’t feel like a deflection. They felt like a beginning. The building felt smaller the next morning. Not crowded—just contained. The hallways carried sound differently, footsteps closer than they had been the day before. I moved through them with the same pace I always had, greeting students, nodding to teachers, answering the questions that came easily. That, too, felt different now. It was not that I was distracted. It was that I was no longer hiding from myself while I spoke. Between classes, Father Pete stopped me near the stairwell. “Do you have a minute?” he asked. “Yes,” I said, even though I knew the question wasn’t about time. We stood there a moment, the space between us unremarkable, the way ordinary things often are before they matter. He wasn’t there to correct me. He was there because something had registered. “I’ve noticed you’ve been quieter,” he said. Not concerned. Just observant. “More careful.” I waited. He studied my face, then nodded once, as if confirming something he had already suspected. “It’s not a problem,” he added. “I just wanted to say—if something’s shifting, you don’t have to manage it alone.” The word “manage” landed harder than he intended. “Ok, Father.” I replied. “If there’s anything you need,” he said, “let me know.” It wasn’t an accusation. It wasn’t reassurance. It was the first time someone inside the role had acknowledged the shift without me naming it. He nodded once, satisfied, or at least willing to leave it there. As he walked away, I understood that keeping this private much longer would not protect anyone. It would only decide for me who bore the cost. By midday, it became clear that I would not be able to choose the order of things much longer. At lunchtime, I walked back to the parish office. Bernice was sitting at her desk, and she handed me a note. As I headed to my office, I glanced at the page. My father’s handwriting, unmistakable even without a signature. No explanation. Just a time. That evening. The gym. I folded the paper and put it in my pocket without rereading it. This was how those conversations always began. As if the place itself could do the work of asking what the words wouldn’t. I finished the rest of the day without rushing. Without pretending it wasn’t coming. Paulie had offered to come with me. I hadn’t said no out loud. I had simply not asked. For the first time, I did not rehearse what I would say. I knew that whatever I chose to tell him would cost something. What I didn’t yet know was how much. My father was already in the gym when I arrived. He stood near the free-throw line with the basketball tucked under one arm, his shoulders squared the way they always were when he didn’t want to show he was waiting. The overhead lights flattened the room into something simple—floor, hoop, the faint squeak of his sneakers as he shifted his weight. “You’re late,” he said. “Uh, yeah, things got busy.” He nodded once passed me the ball and I took a shot. The ball hit the rim and bounced away. He watched it roll, then looked back at me. “That used to bother you,” he said. “Missing.” “I’m not here for that,” I answered, and heard how flat my voice sounded. He didn’t pretend not to understand. He walked to the ball, picked it up, and bounced it once. The sound echoed. We had been doing this for years—weekly workouts, small talk, competition disguised as routine. It was the closest thing my father and I had ever had to tenderness. Not hugs. Not conversations at a table. This. Movement and breath and the permission to say less than we meant. He bounced the ball again and waited. “Say it,” he said. I set my bag down against the wall and didn’t move toward the court. “I’m thinking about leaving,” I said. The gym went quieter, not because the lights changed or the air shifted, but because he stopped moving. He didn’t ask what I meant by leaving. There was only one meaning he would allow himself to hear. His jaw tightened. He stared at the hoop as if the hoop might give him a place to put what he felt. “For what,” he said finally, and the words were not a question so much as a refusal to be surprised. I could have softened it. I could have given him a shape that would make it easier to reject. I didn’t. “I don’t think I can stay inside it without lying,” I said. That got his attention. He turned toward me fully now, eyes narrowed—not angry, exactly. Measuring. “You’re a priest,” he said, and there was disbelief in it, as if the sentence itself should solve the problem. “I am,” I said. He bounced the ball once more, hard, and caught it. “You know what this does,” he said. “You know what it means.” I did. All the eldest sons in his family had entered the priesthood. It had been treated as tradition the way some families treated military service—expected, unquestioned, almost inherited. Paulie had been the designated one. My father had lived inside that story, proudly, the seminary catalogs for Paulie spread out on the kitchen table like a map to a promised land. And then Paulie met Cynthia. And the story broke. My father rarely spoke about that break. He loved my brother, but love and disappointment had lived together in him ever since. When Paulie left the seminary, the family didn’t just lose a plan. They lost certainty. And when I stepped into the priesthood, I became their proof that the tradition hadn’t ended in failure. For ten years, I had carried that proof without naming it. My father watched me now like he was watching a wall he believed was solid begin to show a crack. “Is it a woman?” he asked. The bluntness of it would have irritated me once. Now it only sounded tired. “It’s not about a woman,” I said carefully. “It’s about truth.” He scoffed once, a short sound without humor. “Truth,” he repeated. “Truth is you made vows.” “I know.” “Truth is you’ve been at this for ten years,” he said. “Ten years, Jason. We all thought—” He stopped. The words caught in his throat, and for the first time I saw the grief beneath his anger. We all thought you were the one who would hold. He didn’t say it, but it was there. “I know what you thought,” I said. He took a breath and steadied himself the way he always did—by turning emotion into principle. “You’re not Paulie,” he said, and it was accusation and plea at the same time. “Don’t do this like he did.” I shook my head. “I’m not doing anything like Paulie,” I said. “I’m not leaving because I want out. I’m leaving because I can’t stay and pretend I’m whole when I’m not.” He stared at me as if the sentence offended him and frightened him. “You think I wanted Paulie to leave?” he said sharply. “You think I wanted that kind of shame?” “It wasn’t shame,” I said softly. “It was,” he insisted. “It was disappointment. It was humiliation. It was everyone looking at me like my family tradition wasn’t a tradition anymore. Like it was a joke.” The honesty of it hung in the air. He rarely let himself say this part out loud. “And then you came along,” he continued, voice lower now. “And you stayed. You proved something.” I felt my throat tighten. “That’s the problem,” I said quietly. “I’ve been proving something for a long time.” He flinched, as if I had struck him. I stepped closer—not into the court, but closer. “I love what I do,” I said. “I love teaching. I love the kids. I love the parish. None of that is a lie.” He watched me, searching for the escape route in the sentence. “But I can’t keep using the role to avoid myself,” I added. “And I can’t keep pretending that avoidance is holiness.” My father’s hands tightened on the ball. “So what,” he said. “You’re going to throw it all away?” “No,” I said. “I’m trying not to throw anyone away.” His eyes narrowed. “Anyone.” I didn’t answer that. He didn’t need the name to hear the implication. He stepped forward then, finally onto the court, the ball held hard against his hip. “Whatever you’re thinking,” he said, “don’t make her the reason.” It was the same sentence Paulie had warned me with, but it sounded different coming from my father—less ethical, more desperate. I nodded once. “I won’t,” I said. He let out a breath, slow and controlled, as if he’d been holding it too long. “You know your mother,” he said. “You know what she’ll do with this.” “I know.” “And Father Pete,” he added, and his voice sharpened again. “Those priests you work with—” “I know.” He was naming the world that would respond. The world I had lived in for a decade. I didn’t interrupt. Finally, he looked away toward the hoop. “You were never the one we thought would last,” he said, and the admission sounded like it hurt him to say. “Not because you weren’t good. Because you were… you. Temperamental. Proud. Always wanting your own way.” I swallowed. “That’s true,” I said. He turned back to me, eyes bright in a way he would have hated. “And you stayed anyway,” he said. “You made a life out of it.” “Yes.” His voice softened a fraction. “Don’t make me the last one to find out who you are,” he said. The sentence landed like a command and a request at once. I nodded once, slowly. “I’m trying not to,” I said. He bounced the ball once and the echo filled the space between us. “Shoot,” he said. It was the only thing he could offer without breaking. I took the ball from him and faced the hoop. My hands were steady. The shot went in. Neither of us celebrated. But for the first time that day, the silence didn’t feel like avoidance. It felt like what remained when nothing else could be said. Felicia had survived long enough to mistake endurance for clarity. There had been rules after Dwayne died—spoken at first, then absorbed: keep moving, don’t want too much. |
| Mrs. Donnelly arrived before I had finished unlocking the office. She stood just outside the door, uncertain whether to knock, the same folder tucked under her arm as if she hadn’t trusted herself to put it away. “I’m sorry,” she said quickly. “I know you’re busy. I just—after yesterday, I kept thinking about what you said.” I felt the familiar relief of a solvable problem rise. A follow-up. A correction. A chance to reassure. The words formed: “It’ll be fine.” I heard Paulie’s voice instead, flat and accurate: “You talk people out of needing you.” “It’s fine, Mrs. Donnelly. Let me unlock the door and we’ll talk.” The latch clicked and I swung the open. “Come in,” I said. “Tell me what you kept thinking.” I kept walking toward my office and initially she hesitated, surprised. Walking around my desk I sat. At the same time, I pointed to the chair in front of it. “That I shouldn’t be worrying,” she said, as she took the seat. “That it’s a phase. That I’m doing the right things.” “And?” I asked. The word landed between us like an opening rather than a conclusion. Mrs. Donnelly’s eyes filled, but she didn’t cry. “And I don’t know if I believe that,” she said. I stayed still. Let the sentence remain unfinished. For the first time, I didn’t reach for a plan. I said, “Okay.” It wasn’t comfort. It was company. She let out a breath that sounded like relief and fear mixed together, and I realized, too late, how rarely I had let anyone be there with both. Felicia had expected the quiet to feel heavier than it did. With Nate at school, the apartment returned to its ordinary rhythm. She folded laundry, made a list for the grocery store, washed the mug she had left in the sink the night before. Nothing pressed. Nothing collapsed. Nothing felt urgent. That surprised her. She noticed the difference first in her shoulders, the way they no longer held themselves tight as if waiting to be needed. The low attention she had carried for weeks—the sense of listening for something she hadn’t been asked to do—was gone. She did not question the decision to step back. That part had been clear even before she found words for it. The shift in the room. The way care could lean forward without being invited. The way it could begin to expect something in return. Stepping away hadn’t resolved anything. It had simply stopped her from pretending nothing was being asked. The gym was louder than I expected and smelled like varnish and sweat. The boys were already on the court, moving through their warm ups with uneven focus. Sneakers squeaked. Someone bounced a ball too hard. I called out a reminder and they adjusted, more out of habit than attention. I didn’t notice her at first. She was seated halfway up the bleachers, Nate beside her, his legs swinging as he kicked the metal support in front of him with his heel. She leaned in to say something to him, her hand resting briefly on his back before dropping to her lap. Nothing about her presence stood out. That was what made it different. She wasn’t there because she needed to be. She wasn’t filling time. She wasn’t helping. She was simply watching the game, the way other parents did. I turned back to the court and blew the whistle. The boys gathered, breathless. I gave them instructions I’d given a dozen times before, and they nodded, waiting for the release back onto the floor. As they scattered, I looked up again. Felicia hadn’t moved. Nate was focused on the court now, his attention absolute. She caught my eye then—not searching, not guarded. Just aware. I nodded once. She nodded back. That was all. The game resumed, the noise rising again, and I understood—without needing to articulate it—that seeing her there did not steady me the way I had expected it might. It clarified something instead. I stayed with that as the clock ran down, letting the noise and motion pass through me without trying to shape it into anything useful. The week fell into place the way it always had. Practice, classes, meetings—each thing followed the last without resistance. I arrived when I was expected. I stayed until the office emptied. I left with the lights already dimming behind me. From the outside, nothing had changed. That was what made it difficult to locate. I noticed it instead in motion—how often I slowed myself before speaking, how I let conversations trail off without gathering them back up. I gave fewer instructions. I offered fewer conclusions. People nodded and moved on. I told myself that meant I was listening. After practice, I remained on the court longer than necessary, stacking cones, checking the scoreboard out of habit even though the numbers had already gone dark. The gym echoed now, every sound too clear. The feeling I had expected to thin out with time did not. It sharpened. Not into urgency. But Into focus. I could see now that restraint had not removed the wanting. It had only taken away the things I used to hide it behind. I felt her presence before I saw her. She waited until the boys had cleared out. I was stacking cones at the edge of the court with my back to the door and something made me turn. She was standing near the open doors. She didn’t step forward. She didn’t hover. She waited until I looked up. Only then did she walk toward me. “Father Jason,” she said. “Yes,” I answered. “I won’t take much of your time,” she said; the way she said it told me she meant it. “Nate’s preschool is doing a family night next month. They asked if someone from the parish could come by. Just for a few minutes.” I nodded, listening. “I told them I’d ask,” she continued. “If that’s not something you do anymore, that’s fine.” The word “anymore” sat between us. “It’s something I can do,” I said. “Thank you,” she replied. No relief in it. Just acknowledgment. She paused, then added, “I’ll let them know. And I’ll tell Bernice the date.” That was it. She didn’t wait for reassurance. She didn’t offer explanation. She turned and walked out without looking back. After she left, I stayed. I put the last cone away---the empty gym was silent except for the low hum of the overhead lights. What unsettled me was not that she had come. It was how easily she had gone. I had expected something to shift — a return to ease, a sense of steadiness. Instead, the wanting remained, sharper now for having nowhere to go. I locked the gym behind me and stepped out into the chilly evening. The parking lot was mostly empty now, the lights throwing long shadows across the pavement. I stood there a moment longer than necessary, aware that I had not decided where I was going next. For years, that decision had always come easily. I walked toward the residence, then stopped on the path between the buildings. As I stood there, it occurred to me—not as fear, but as fact—that not acting on a feeling did not mean it would dissolve. It only meant I would have to decide what it was. I did not name it immediately. I moved through the next morning, the familiar routines unfolding without resistance. Each thing taking its place without resistance Nothing pressed. Nothing demanded explanation. The word arrived anyway. What I felt for Felicia was not confusion. It was not admiration. It was not a passing disturbance I could wait out. It was desire. Once named, it no longer belonged to circumstance. I could not attribute it to fatigue or proximity or a difficult season. Desire did not explain itself away. It asked for reckoning. Desire did not undo the life I had chosen. It did, however, remove the comfort of believing I could remain unchanged. By evening, nothing had resolved. That was not the failure I once would have taken it for. I had named what was true. What followed would have to be chosen. I thought of calling Paulie. Not to ask what to do. To say the word out loud, as if hearing it spoken might lessen its weight. I didn’t. This was not something to hand off. I woke knowing I would speak to Paulie today. The certainty was quiet, without urgency or relief. It did not feel like confession. It felt like sequence. There were still things to do before then—classes to teach, papers to collect, practice to run—and I did them without hurry, aware that none of it would change what waited beyond it. When practice was over, instead of going to the residence, I walked to Paulie’s house and knocked on the door. When he answered, he looked at me for a moment, then stepped aside without asking why I was there. “Where’s the rest of the family?” I asked him after removing my coat. “They’re at Cyn’s parents’ for the evening.” “You didn’t go?” I asked, my hand sweeping the imaginary locks from my forehead. Paulie shook his head. “Coffee?” he said. “Yes,” I replied. We sat for a moment with the ordinary sounds of his house moving around us—something clinking in the sink, the hum of the refrigerator, voices from the television in another room, the creak of the chair as I shifted. They were the kind of noises that made silence feel less like punishment. This was not the moment I had imagined, back when I still believed moments announced themselves. “You don’t have to tell me,” Paulie said finally. I knew what he meant. “I know,” I said. He watched me, waiting—not for confession, but for posture. “And?” “I’ve named it,” I said. Paulie’s expression didn’t change. He didn’t ask what it was. He nodded once, the way he did when something had finally arrived where it belonged. “That’s different,” he said. “Yes.” He nodded once. “So what’s next?” I didn’t answer right away. “That’s what I’m trying not to rush,” I said. “What do you need from me?” he asked. The question landed cleanly. Not what do you feel. Not what you are going to do. Not what you should do. I stared at the table, then back at him. “I need you to hear it,” I said. “And not turn it into a plan.” Paulie’s mouth tightened briefly, like he almost smiled. “I can do that.” A pause. “And?” he said. I understood then that he wasn’t asking for the rest of the story. He was asking whether I was going to speak like I always did—wrap it up, smooth it over, make it manageable. “I’m not leaving,” I said. The words came out too fast, like defense. Paulie didn’t react. He waited. I breathed out. “I don’t know what I’m doing yet,” I corrected. “I only know what it is. And I know I can’t keep pretending it’s nothing.” Paulie leaned back in his chair. “That’s different from when you were younger,” he said. I didn’t answer. “Back then,” he went on, “you used to want certainty before you took a step. You wanted to be sure you’d be right.” “I still do,” I said. Paulie shook his head. “No. Now you want to be harmless.” The word hit harder than I expected. “I don’t want to hurt anyone,” I said. “I know,” he replied. “But you don’t get to make that your excuse for never choosing anything.” My throat tightened. He didn’t soften. “I’m not going to tell you what to do,” Paulie said. “You know that.” “I know.” “But I am going to tell you what you don’t get to do,” he added. I waited. “You do not get to make her the reason,” Paulie said. |
| The table said it for them. I turned away first, irritated at my own irritation. It would have been easy to fix. I could have stopped at the bakery on the way in. I could have put down a box of muffins and watched people smile. I could have told myself I had replaced what was missing. The thought came so quickly it frightened me. Because it was exactly what I always did. Without fail. I solved absence with substitution. I solved weight with structure. I solved people with tasks. I recognized the impulse instantly—not as kindness, but as reflex. And I had mistaken that for care. Back in my office, the late afternoon light leaned against the wall, making the edges of the desk sharper than usual. I glanced over to the place on my desk where Felicia used to leave finished folders. It was bare. I heard Bernice moving papers outside, each motion brisk and practiced. She was competent. She always had been. But I could hear the extra labor in the day now—the additional steps, the pauses where she recalculated. It occurred to me that when Felicia had been there, Bernice had been able to exhale. Not because Felicia did Bernice’s job, but because she had carried a portion of the room’s attention without making anyone ask. Felicia had been a steadying presence in the office the way good parishioners are steadying presences in a pew: not loud, not demanding, simply there, making the space more livable. And I had taken that for granted because it had been offered without requiring me to respond. The phone rang. Bernice answered. Her voice softened, then sharpened, then softened again. “Father,” she said a minute later, appearing in my doorway. “Father Pete needs you in the church for a moment.” The request was routine. The tone was not. I stood, feeling the thinness in my chest as if it were physical. When I reached the church, Father Pete was by the side aisle, speaking with a man whose shoulders were hunched in a way that looked familiar. Not despair. Containment. Father Pete nodded at me once, then returned to the man with the same calm attention he always carried. I waited, hands folded, until the man left. “Everything alright?” Father Pete asked, as if we were discussing a schedule. “Yes,” I said. The word came out too quickly. He didn’t comment. He didn’t argue. That was the most unsettling part. Instead, he said, “Mrs. O’Brien called to thank you for sending her to me.” I felt my face tighten before I could stop it. “Good.” Father Pete watched me a moment, not unkindly. “Sometimes,” he said, “people don’t need the right words. They need someone to stay.” He didn’t say my name with it. He didn’t have to. I nodded as if I agreed and went back to the office. On the walk, the phrase returned again—not from the man in the confessional now, but from my own mouth, spoken in my own tone: I’m still doing everything I’m supposed to do. It sounded less like virtue now. It sounded like avoidance. By evening, the office had quieted into its usual stillness. Bernice shut off the lights and went home. The building settled. I remained at my desk with the planner open, staring at the week as if it could explain itself. My phone lay face down beside the blotter. I didn’t turn it over. For the first time, I understood that Felicia’s absence had not created the ache I felt in the room. It had only removed the thing that had been carrying it for me. The ache I had noticed the night before had not receded with sleep. The morning began with a problem I couldn’t assign to anyone else. Bernice eyes met mine as I entered the office after my early morning class. A woman was seated at her desk. “Mrs. Donnelly’s here for the meeting about her son Richard.” Mrs. Donnelly stood, with papers in her hand, already prepared to prove she wasn’t overreacting. I nodded and guided her toward my office. “I don’t want to make a fuss,” she said, setting the folder on the desk between us. “I just thought it might help to talk it through.” “Of course,” I said. “That’s what I’m here for.” She nodded, relieved by the familiarity of the exchange. We both knew this script. Her son’s grades were uneven—strong in math, slipping in English, a sharp drop in participation that had appeared gradually enough to be dismissed until it wasn’t. She pointed to the highlighted lines as if they might rearrange themselves if handled carefully. “He says he’s trying,” she said. “And I believe him. I just don’t know what I’m missing.” I leaned forward, already reaching for structure. “Middle school can be a difficult transition,” I began. “Especially for boys. There’s a lot of pressure, socially and academically.” She nodded again. “That’s what his teacher said.” “We can look at tutoring,” I continued. “Extra support after school. Everything I said was reasonable. Correct. Familiar. Mrs. Donnelly listened the way people do when they’re being given something solid to hold onto. But she didn’t interrupt. When I finally paused, she said quietly, “I know all that. What I’m worried about is that he’s stopped talking to me.” The sentence was unexpected. Before, I would have redirected—communication strategies, family routines, and reassurance that this phase would pass. Instead, I felt the space open and hesitate. “How long has that been happening?” I asked. She exhaled, the sound closer to relief than sadness. “Since his father started working nights. It’s not dramatic. He just… disappears into his room.” I nodded. The answer fit easily into the frame I was building. “That kind of change can unsettle kids,” I said. “Consistency will help. Clear expectations.” She looked at me then—not confrontational, just searching. “I’m doing that,” she said. “What I don’t know is whether I should be worried.” I felt the old instinct rise—the need to protect, to reassure, to keep things manageable. “No,” I said, too quickly. “I don’t think you need to be worried.” The relief on her face was immediate. “Thank you,” she said. “That helps.” She gathered her papers and stood, lighter than when she’d arrived. After she left, I sat with the empty chair across from me longer than necessary. I couldn’t shake the sense that what had helped her most was not what I’d said. It was that I’d closed the question for her. Cal’s voice wasn’t defiant. Just factual. “These plays don’t make sense, Father,” he said. “They’re hard to follow.” A few of the boys nodded. One kicked at the floor with the toe of his sneaker. No one laughed. No one challenged him. I looked down at the clipboard in my hand, at the arrows and lines I’d drawn the night before, convinced they would translate cleanly once we were on the court. “They’re not complicated,” I said, keeping my voice even. “You just need to stay disciplined.” Cal shifted his weight. “We are,” he said. “It’s just… we don’t know where we’re supposed to look.” The sentence landed harder than he intended. I didn’t slow down. Or stop to think. “Alright,” I said. “Let’s run it again. Same formation.” We reset. The boys moved when I signaled, but the timing was off. Two collided. One missed the pass entirely. The play dissolved into noise and frustration. “Hold up,” I said, sharper than I meant to. “You’re not listening.” Cal’s jaw tightened. “We are.” That was when I realized the problem wasn’t effort. They were trying. They were doing exactly what I’d asked. I blew the whistle and motioned them in. They gathered, breathing hard, waiting. I pointed at the diagram. “You need to trust the plan,” I said. “If everyone does their part, this works.” They nodded because that’s what they were supposed to do. We ran it again. It didn’t work. When practice finally ended, the boys drifted toward the locker room more quietly than usual. No joking. No post practice energy. Just compliance. Cal lingered at the door. “Father,” he said. “Are we changing anything?” I hesitated. The right answer would have been, I don’t know yet. Instead, I said, “We’ll stick with it for now.” He nodded once and left. I stood alone on the court longer than necessary, the clipboard heavy in my hand. It wasn’t that the plan was wrong. It was that I hadn’t noticed where it stopped making sense. That night, the rectory was quieter than usual. I ate with Father Pete and Father Baxter in the dining room, the food in my plate cooling faster than I expected. We all ate in silence, interrupted only by the sound of cutlery against plates. When I finished, the housekeeper cleared my place; I excused myself and went to my room. I felt rather than saw Father Pete’ eyes follow me as I left the room. He said nothing. As I entered my rooms, my phone buzzed once on my dresser. I didn’t look at it. Later, I sat at the desk and opened my schedule, turning to the next week as if the answer might be written there in advance. Mrs. Donnelly’s name was already penciled in for a follow up I’d suggested automatically, without thinking through what it was meant to do. I erased it. The motion felt deliberate, and that unsettled me. Before, I would have been relieved—another obligation removed, another clean edge restored. Instead, I felt the unease sharpen, like I’d taken away the wrong support. I replayed the day without meaning to. Mrs. Donnelly’s relief when I told her not to worry. Cal’s face when I said we’d stick with the plan. Neither of them had argued. That was the part I couldn’t dismiss. I had mistaken compliance for reassurance. The realization didn’t arrive as guilt. It arrived as something colder: accuracy. I had answered the questions they brought me. What I hadn’t done was stay long enough to hear the ones underneath. I closed the planner and sat back, my hands resting flat on the desk. For the first time, it occurred to me that what I called steadiness might look, from the other side, like distance. And that distance—once chosen—did not remain neutral. I was already moving down the path when Paulie said my name. Not loudly. Not urgently. Just enough that stopping felt inevitable. “Hey,” he said. “Hey,” I replied. “Everything alright?” “Yeah,” he said. “I’m fine.” The phrase was mine. Hearing it from him tightened something behind my ribs. I shifted my bag on my shoulder. “I’ve got a few things to—” “I know,” he said. “That’s why I’m here now.” That stopped me. Paulie studied me—not critically. The way he always had when he was deciding whether to let something go. “You’ve been closing things faster lately,” he said. “I don’t know what you mean.” “You do,” he replied. “You always do. You just pretend you don’t.” The reflex rose—schedule, responsibility, the week. “Don’t,” he said gently. “Don’t make this about being busy.” I looked past him toward the office. Paulie followed my gaze. “You think if you get through the day, it’ll settle.” “It will,” I said automatically. He shook his head. “It hasn’t.” Silence stretched. Then he said the thing I couldn’t argue with, because it wasn’t accusation. It was description. “You talk people out of needing you,” Paulie said. “And lately, you have been doing it faster.” The excuse rose anyway. I swallowed it. “I don’t know how to stay,” I said, “without making it worse.” Paulie didn’t soften. “Then stop pretending the way you’ve been doing it is harmless,” he said. He stepped aside, leaving the path open. “You can go in there now,” he added. As I walked away from him, I felt his eyes on my back. |
| I picked up the messages she handed me. My throat was dry. I said nothing. Opening my office door, I stepped inside. The desk was just as I had left it. I loosened my collar and crossed to the desk. Beatrice followed me only as far as the doorway. “She asked if you were busy and if tomorrow would be better.” “I can call her tomorrow,” I said. Beatrice nodded once, as if she’d expected that answer. “I told her you’d get back to her.” “That’s fine.” She watched me a moment longer. Not critically. Just attentively. “I’ll finish up and lock the front,” she said. “Ok,” I said, already opening my planner. She left my office gathered her belongings and called from the intercom. “See you in the morning.” “Good night, Beatrice.” After she left, I read through the stack of messages. One reminding me of Mrs. Donnelly and her son about his test grades. I put a star on that message; I was reminded about that before. Another message, Mrs. O’Brien’s name was there, written in the same careful hand as the others. I paused, then set the paper back down. I picked them up again and put them back in my bag. I turned off the light and locked the office, I stepped outside and pulled the door shut behind me and headed for the residence. A hand went to my collar. It loosened and stayed that way. In my room, I set my bag down and took out the messages again. I laid them on the nightstand instead of sorting them, folded them once more, then slid them back into the bag. The edge of the bed pressed against my legs. Shoes stayed on. I ran a hand through my hair, then let it drop. After a moment, I stood, crossed to the window, then sat again. I checked my watch. Too late now to return a call without it seeming intrusive. Taking out the planner, I moved Mrs. O’Brien’s name to the following day, drawing a firmer line beneath it than before. Mrs. Donnelly’s name I left where it was. Leaving my room, I went to the bathroom, washed my face and changed for bed. When I turned off the light, I did not lie down. Darkness settled in the room. Sitting up again I opened the planner once more, as if one more adjustment might settle something that had not yet found its place. I arrived later than I had intended. Beatrice was already on the phone when I came in, one hand covering the receiver as she nodded at me. I returned the nod and went straight to my office. The desk was clear. I adjusted the chair before sitting, then stood again to straighten the folders with the revisions to the sermon for Sunday and the lesson plans I’d left stacked the night before. I stepped back into the outer office and glanced toward Felicia’s desk. Her computer was dark. The chair was pushed in, the surface cleared except for the neat stack of folders she always aligned before starting the day. “Is Felicia in yet?” I asked. Beatrice lowered her voice. “She’ll be in shortly. I nodded. “Alright. Let me know when she comes in.” Beatrice nodded. “I will.” She continued with the phone call. I turned back toward my office, leaving the door opened behind me. Sitting at my desk, I opened my planner, scanning the page, then flipping back to the previous day. I drew a line through one appointment and rewrote it below, then paused and straightened the line. A moment later Felicia’s footsteps sounded in the hallway. She appeared at her desk, set her bag down, and nodded once before waking the computer. “Morning Beatrice,” I heard her say. “Morning, dear,” Beatrice responded. “Everything all right with Nate?” “Oh yes. He’s okay today.” I heard steps toward coming my way and a moment later Felicia tapped lightly on the doorframe. “Good morning, Father,” she said in almost a whisper. “Morning. Felicia”. She paused for a moment. “Do you have anything for me today?” I looked over to the folders with the revised sermon and the lesson plan. Picking them up, I put them near the edge of the desk. Keeping my eyes on the planner, I answered, “The lesson plan for tomorrow I’ll need by lunch; the sermon, after practice this afternoon.” I saw her hands reach for the folders. She picked them up. “I’ll take care of this right away, Father. They’ll be ready when you need them.” “Thank you,” and this time I looked at her and then back to the planner. She turned and went back to her desk. The soft rhythm of keys filled the office, familiar and contained. Beatrice stepped into my doorway. “Mrs. O’Brien confirmed Thursday instead of today.” “Good.” “She sounded relieved.” “That’s good.” Beatrice waited a moment, then returned to her desk. I picked up my pen and rewrote the first line of a note I’d already written twice, then checked my watch. Too early for the call I wasn’t making yet. Too late to feel ahead of anything. Outside, Felicia’s typing continued, steady, unhurried. When I returned to the office after basketball practice, neither Beatrice nor Felicia were present. Earlier I sent one of my students to the office to retrieve the lesson plan I’d left with Felicia, and it was ready as I asked. Neat. Again just what I had given her. The sermon was left in the folder on my desk. No notations in the margins. Upon intial scanning, nothing extra on the page. My phone had been buzzing in my pocket all through practice. I didn’t look at it. Before reading the sermon for revisions, I checked it. There was a voicemail when I checked the phone later. “Call me when you get a minute,” Paulie said. I saved it and returned the phone to my pocket. I sat on the edge of the bed with the phone in my hand before pressing call. Paulie answered on the second ring. “Hey,” he said, like we’d talked earlier. “Hey.” A pause settled between us, familiar. “You got my message,” he said. “Yes.” “And you still didn’t call back.” “That’s right.” He didn’t rush to fill the silence. “Where were you on Wednesday?” Paulie asked. I leaned back against the dresser. “What do you mean?” “You missed the game,” he said. “Dad asked about you.” The words were plain. They didn’t ask for explanation. “It’s been a busy week,” I said. “Figured,” Paulie replied. “That’s why I let it go.” I closed my eyes once. “I’m not calling because you missed a game,” he said. “I’m calling because you missed it and didn’t say anything.” I ran my hand through my hair and let it fall back to my side. “I didn’t want to make it a bigger thing than it was.” Paulie was quiet. Then, “You’ve always been good at deciding what counts.” The words landed without accusation. “So what counts now?” he asked. I leaned my forehead briefly against my fist. “I’m still doing everything I’m supposed to do,” I said. “Nothing’s falling apart.” “I didn’t say it was.” Another pause. “You’ve been finishing things,” Paulie said. “You’ve just stopped showing up to them.” I straightened. “That’s not fair.” He exhaled slowly. “Maybe. But it’s what I’m seeing.” “Dad worries,” Paulie said. “He doesn’t say it out loud, but I can hear it.” “I don’t want him worrying.” “Then talk to me,” Paulie said. Not louder. Just closer. I didn’t answer. He waited. “I don’t know how to be present without letting something go,” I said. Paulie didn’t respond right away. “Let what go?” he asked. I ran my hand through my hair and stopped myself from doing it again. “I don’t know,” I said. “That’s the problem.” He was quiet, the way he gets when he’s listening past the words. “You’ve always been willing to give things up,” Paulie said. “You just usually know why.” “I thought I did,” I said. Another pause. “And now?” he asked. I stared at the floor, at the scuffed place near the dresser where the finish had worn thin. “Now it feels like if I name it,” I said slowly, “I won’t be able to decide what it costs.” Paulie let that sit. “That sounds like you’re closer than you think,” he said. “I don’t want to be,” I said. “I know,” he replied. He didn’t say anything else. Neither did I.“I need to go, Paulie,” the silence broken, my throat dry. “Ok,” he said and before he could say anything else, I ended the call. After we hung up, I stayed where I was, the phone still in my hand. The room felt smaller than it had a moment before. I set the phone face down on the dresser and sat there until the quiet sounding like a drum beat in my ears. The next day, the office ran without incident. That was the problem. Things moved. Messages were returned. Schedules held. No one complained. Felicia’s absence registered only in small, practical ways—a missed note, a delayed handoff, a moment where I reached for a correction that didn’t arrive. By late morning, someone finally said her name. It happened, casually, as if it were an afterthought. “Did Miss Felicia take the day off?” one of the students asked, looking at the empty table where the muffins usually appeared and Felicia’s empty desk.. Bernice didn’t look up from the coffee maker. “She’s stepping back for a bit.” “Oh,” the child said. “I hope everything’s okay.” Bernice nodded. No one asked more. No one lingered. I stood in the doorway longer than necessary, listening to the space where her absence had settled without ceremony. It struck me then how easily the work redistributed itself. The tone quieter. The room still functioned. What didn’t redistribute was the care. It occurred to me then that I had learned how to replace labor more easily than presence. By midafternoon, the office had settled into a rhythm that looked normal from the outside. The phone rang. Bernice answered. A parent dropped off a form. Someone asked for directions to the church hall. I signed a permission slip and returned it without looking up. Nothing broke. That was what made the absence sharper. It didn’t announce itself as a crisis. It announced itself as an absence of small mercies—the note I didn’t know I was waiting for, the quiet update that used to arrive before I asked, the steady sense that someone else had already seen what needed seeing. And still, the sentence from the confessional stayed with me, as if it had been stitched to the inside of my collar: “I keep doing everything I’m supposed to do.” The phrase had sounded like virtue when he said it. It had sounded like a man trying to persuade himself he was still inside his own life. I understood now why it had landed like a stone. I sat back down and reached for the planner, then stopped. The page was already full. The day did not need more structure. What it needed was something I could not schedule. I stood and walked toward the outer office without deciding why. The table was bare. No plate covered with foil. No faint smell of cinnamon and sugar. No small offering disguised as routine. Bernice was at the coffee maker, pouring carefully. She didn’t look up when I entered. “Forgot the filters again,” she said, more to herself than to me. “I’ll run out later.” I nodded as if that solved something. Ms. Pratt, the choir mistress came in the office, looked at the empty table—the look of mild disappointment of someone expecting something to be there. “Guess we got spoiled,” she said lightly, and the comment landed in the room and evaporated. No one followed it with Felicia’s name. They didn’t need to. |
| Felicia moved through the small rituals of the end of the evening without thinking about them as rituals. She wiped the counter once more even though it was already clean, straightened the stack of mail she hadn’t opened yet, and set Nate’s sneakers side by side near the door so they would be ready in the morning. The house had its own order when she paid attention to it. Nothing dramatic, nothing that needed interpretation—just the quiet assurance that some things held if she placed them carefully. She checked the calendar on the refrigerator and erased the mark for the day. Tomorrow’s square was already full enough. That was fine. She preferred to know what was coming. When she turned off the last light, the room did not disappear all at once. The outlines of furniture remained faintly visible, familiar enough that she could move through them without fear of misstep. She paused there, letting her eyes adjust, letting the day finally recede. It occurred to her—not as a conclusion, just as a fact—that steadiness was something she practiced, not something she waited to feel. She had practiced it today. That was enough. elicia moved through the kitchen slowly, not because she was tired yet, but because the quiet asked for a different pace. She wiped the counter once more even though it was already clean, straightened the stack of mail she hadn’t opened, and set Nate’s sneakers side by side near the door so they would be ready in the morning. The house held its shape around her. Nothing creaked. Nothing demanded attention. The stillness felt earned. She poured herself a glass of water and drank it standing at the counter, watching the reflection of the streetlight shift faintly across the window. Somewhere nearby, a car passed and then the sound faded. The neighborhood was settling into its own evening rhythm. She checked the calendar on the refrigerator and erased the square for the day. Tomorrow’s space was already full enough. That was fine. She preferred to know what was coming, even if she didn’t yet know how it would feel. Felicia leaned back against the counter for a moment, letting the day loosen its hold. Not everything needed to be understood before it could be set down. Some things simply needed to be carried all the way through the evening before they could be released. When she turned off the kitchen light, the room did not disappear all at once. The familiar outlines remained just long enough for her eyes to adjust, for the house to feel navigable even in the dark. Only then did she go to bed. After she finished eating, Felicia rinsed the container and set it in her bag. She wiped the desk, more from habit than necessity, and returned to the message book. A new call came in almost immediately. “Yes,” she said, lifting the receiver. “Parish office.” The woman on the other end sounded uncertain, as if she wasn’t sure she’d reached the right place. Felicia listened, asked one clarifying question, and then explained gently how the baptism schedule worked, when forms were due, and who would need to be present. “Oh,” the woman said, relieved. “No one explained it like that before.” Felicia smiled, though the woman couldn’t see it. “It’s a lot the first time.” When the call ended, Felicia wrote the name down and placed the slip beneath Jason’s folder, where it wouldn’t be missed. Beatrice glanced over. “You’d be good at teaching,” she said. Felicia shook her head. “I like things that can be finished.” Beatrice laughed quietly and returned to her work. The copier whirred again. Felicia stood, cleared a slight misfeed, and restarted it. While it warmed up, she gathered a small stack of envelopes from the counter and sorted them by hand, placing each where it belonged without needing to check the labels twice. Jason did not come through the office during that stretch. Felicia noticed the absence the same way she noticed the air change before rain — not as a warning, just as information. She continued working. A parish volunteer stopped by with a box of unused programs. “Where should these go?” he asked. Felicia considered it. “Storage cabinet. Third shelf.” He nodded. “Thanks.” She watched him go, then wrote a note in the margin of the supply list: programs — plenty. The afternoon settled more firmly then, the office slowing just enough to allow thought without encouraging it. Felicia answered another call, updated the calendar, and clipped together a set of forms that had been sitting untouched for two days. When she sat back down, she felt the mild, familiar fatigue of having paid attention for hours at a time. Not exhaustion. Just the awareness that attention was not infinite. She stretched once, rolled her shoulders, and returned to the screen. The work continued. The office was quiet, the surfaces orderly, the kind of stillness that suggested nothing had gone wrong. I set my bag down carefully and took out the folder, straightening the pages before opening it, as if precision alone might correct whatever had felt slightly off the day before. When I finished reading, I closed it again and carried it with me. Father Pete read more slowly than he had the day before. That, in itself, felt like information. I sat across from him, my hands folded, watching the way his thumb held the corner of the page as he moved through the draft. He didn’t look up. He didn’t rush. He reached the end, turned back, then continued on as if confirming something rather than searching for it. When he finally set the pages down, he didn’t slide them away. “This is good work,” he said. “Thoughtful. Careful.” I nodded, the familiar response arriving on time. He tapped the margin lightly. “You’ve tightened your language here.” “Yes,” I said. “I wanted to be precise.” “I know.” He paused. “But you’ve also narrowed it.” I waited. “There’s a difference,” he went on, “between focus and avoidance. They can look similar on the page.” The word landed quietly. Avoidance. He didn’t say it as a diagnosis. Just an observation. “I wasn’t trying to avoid anything,” I said. “I didn’t say you were.” He looked at me then, not unkindly. “I’m asking whether you’re saying what you mean, or what you know how to say.” I held his gaze, aware of how thin the distinction felt. “The readings this week ask for clarity,” he continued. “Not certainty. Those aren’t the same thing either.” I nodded again. Too quickly. “You usually trust yourself more than this,” he said. “You don’t circle. You don’t hedge.” “I thought people might need something steady,” I said. “Something they can hold onto.” “They will,” he said. “But steadiness doesn’t always come from restraint.” He leaned back slightly, considering me now rather than the pages. “Has something changed?” The question was simple. That was what made the answer difficult. “No,” I said. The word came out cleanly. “Nothing has changed.” Father Pete studied me over his glasses for a moment longer than was comfortable, then nodded as if he’d heard exactly what he expected. “Alright,” he said. “Take another pass. I’ll look at it again on Friday. See if there’s a place where you can let the language breathe..” Breathe. He gathered the pages and handed them back to me. “You have a gift for helping people feel less alone,” he added. “Don’t lose that by being careful in the wrong places.” “Yes, Father,” I said. As I stood to leave, he spoke again. “And Jason?” I paused. “This isn’t a criticism,” he said. “It’s a question. Answer it honestly on the page.” I nodded once more and left with the draft in my hand, aware that what he was asking for wasn’t more polish—but more presence. “Father, what happens on offense?” I looked at the play in my hand and realized I’d only diagramed defense plays. Looking up, I saw the faces of the children on the team, eyes searching for answers I didn’t have handy. They waited. Watching. “Uh, show me the last play again. Um..Cal, you bring out the ball and Sebastian you cover him on defense.” They continued with defensive drills. I corrected Cal’s stance, I told Sebastian to stay closer. I reminded them to keep their hands up, to watch the ball, to anticipate the pass. They did what I asked. They always did. When practice ended, I blew the whistle and gathered them in a circle with me in the middle. “Great work, guys. Next time we’ll concentrate on offensive plays.” A few of them nodded. One of them asked when next time was. I told him the schedule was the same as always. They packed up and left the court in pairs, calling to each other, the sound of the ball fading as it bounced farther away. I stayed where I was, holding the clipboard against my chest, the paper bent slightly where my fingers had pressed too long. I waited until the last of them was gone before moving. I stacked the cones, one inside the next, straightened the pinnies, counted the balls before putting them back in the bag. I checked the bench for anything left behind, even though there never was. The court lights shut off row by row, leaving the far end dark first. I walked the length of it alone, my footsteps louder than they should have been. At the gate, I paused, looking back over the court, as if there were something I was supposed to finish. There wasn’t. I locked up and started home, already thinking about what to adjust next time. Beatrice was still at her desk when I came in, her purse tucked beneath her chair, her coat folded beside it as if she had not yet decided whether she was staying. “Practice ran a bit late today, Father,” she said. “Yes,” I said, setting my bag down. She slid the phone log closer. Thoughts on Drafting Scenes During the diner scene his brother asked him just before he left. They were talking about it. It didn't resolve. He didn't name it. And then the brother says something. You're gonna go play or gonna meet dad at the gym tomorrow or this week, and then Jason stopped and thought about his father. Now in a couple of chapters prior to that, I had introduced the fact that Jason and his father have a weekly basketball game that they play at the gym together. In that scene, that was shortly after Jason met Felicia. She has a little handkerchief that she carries around with her. He asked about handkerchiefs to his father, and his father wanted to know, why are you talking about women's handkerchiefs? His father always had the feeling that Jason wouldn't stick with the priesthood because of what they called woman worry. So now that this feeling has exacerbated after. With the meeting at Felicia's house and the room he saw. He. He's now confronting the fact that he now has to be with his father, and he's not sure if he can now hide what his feeling about Felicia to his father. So that was part of his internal struggle. He couldn't sleep. It was restlessness. He looked at his schedule and saw that it was full. But that meeting with his father kept flashing and causing him anxiety. He's afraid his father will confront him. Unlike Paulie, who didn’t. Paulie, he knew, saw something. So he knows that around certain people that know him well, he cannot hide . And he's debating whether or not to even have this game with his father until he can come to grips with what he's feeling. Because Paulie, that's his brother, didn’t not push him, but saw something and he kind of pushed him, but allowed Jason to retreat. He’s unsure his father will do the same thing. |
| Felicia moved through the small rituals of the end of the evening without thinking about them as rituals. She wiped the counter once more even though it was already clean, straightened the stack of mail she hadn’t opened yet, and set Nate’s sneakers side by side near the door so they would be ready in the morning. The house had its own order when she paid attention to it. Nothing dramatic, nothing that needed interpretation—just the quiet assurance that some things held if she placed them carefully. She checked the calendar on the refrigerator and erased the mark for the day. Tomorrow’s square was already full enough. That was fine. She preferred to know what was coming. When she turned off the last light, the room did not disappear all at once. The outlines of furniture remained faintly visible, familiar enough that she could move through them without fear of misstep. She paused there, letting her eyes adjust, letting the day finally recede. It occurred to her—not as a conclusion, just as a fact—that steadiness was something she practiced, not something she waited to feel. She had practiced it today. That was enough. elicia moved through the kitchen slowly, not because she was tired yet, but because the quiet asked for a different pace. She wiped the counter once more even though it was already clean, straightened the stack of mail she hadn’t opened, and set Nate’s sneakers side by side near the door so they would be ready in the morning. The house held its shape around her. Nothing creaked. Nothing demanded attention. The stillness felt earned. She poured herself a glass of water and drank it standing at the counter, watching the reflection of the streetlight shift faintly across the window. Somewhere nearby, a car passed and then the sound faded. The neighborhood was settling into its own evening rhythm. She checked the calendar on the refrigerator and erased the square for the day. Tomorrow’s space was already full enough. That was fine. She preferred to know what was coming, even if she didn’t yet know how it would feel. Felicia leaned back against the counter for a moment, letting the day loosen its hold. Not everything needed to be understood before it could be set down. Some things simply needed to be carried all the way through the evening before they could be released. When she turned off the kitchen light, the room did not disappear all at once. The familiar outlines remained just long enough for her eyes to adjust, for the house to feel navigable even in the dark. Only then did she go to bed. After she finished eating, Felicia rinsed the container and set it in her bag. She wiped the desk, more from habit than necessity, and returned to the message book. A new call came in almost immediately. “Yes,” she said, lifting the receiver. “Parish office.” The woman on the other end sounded uncertain, as if she wasn’t sure she’d reached the right place. Felicia listened, asked one clarifying question, and then explained gently how the baptism schedule worked, when forms were due, and who would need to be present. “Oh,” the woman said, relieved. “No one explained it like that before.” Felicia smiled, though the woman couldn’t see it. “It’s a lot the first time.” When the call ended, Felicia wrote the name down and placed the slip beneath Jason’s folder, where it wouldn’t be missed. Beatrice glanced over. “You’d be good at teaching,” she said. Felicia shook her head. “I like things that can be finished.” Beatrice laughed quietly and returned to her work. The copier whirred again. Felicia stood, cleared a slight misfeed, and restarted it. While it warmed up, she gathered a small stack of envelopes from the counter and sorted them by hand, placing each where it belonged without needing to check the labels twice. Jason did not come through the office during that stretch. Felicia noticed the absence the same way she noticed the air change before rain — not as a warning, just as information. She continued working. A parish volunteer stopped by with a box of unused programs. “Where should these go?” he asked. Felicia considered it. “Storage cabinet. Third shelf.” He nodded. “Thanks.” She watched him go, then wrote a note in the margin of the supply list: programs — plenty. The afternoon settled more firmly then, the office slowing just enough to allow thought without encouraging it. Felicia answered another call, updated the calendar, and clipped together a set of forms that had been sitting untouched for two days. When she sat back down, she felt the mild, familiar fatigue of having paid attention for hours at a time. Not exhaustion. Just the awareness that attention was not infinite. She stretched once, rolled her shoulders, and returned to the screen. The work continued. The office was quiet, the surfaces orderly, the kind of stillness that suggested nothing had gone wrong. I set my bag down carefully and took out the folder, straightening the pages before opening it, as if precision alone might correct whatever had felt slightly off the day before. When I finished reading, I closed it again and carried it with me. Father Pete read more slowly than he had the day before. That, in itself, felt like information. I sat across from him, my hands folded, watching the way his thumb held the corner of the page as he moved through the draft. He didn’t look up. He didn’t rush. He reached the end, turned back, then continued on as if confirming something rather than searching for it. When he finally set the pages down, he didn’t slide them away. “This is good work,” he said. “Thoughtful. Careful.” I nodded, the familiar response arriving on time. He tapped the margin lightly. “You’ve tightened your language here.” “Yes,” I said. “I wanted to be precise.” “I know.” He paused. “But you’ve also narrowed it.” I waited. “There’s a difference,” he went on, “between focus and avoidance. They can look similar on the page.” The word landed quietly. Avoidance. He didn’t say it as a diagnosis. Just an observation. “I wasn’t trying to avoid anything,” I said. “I didn’t say you were.” He looked at me then, not unkindly. “I’m asking whether you’re saying what you mean, or what you know how to say.” I held his gaze, aware of how thin the distinction felt. “The readings this week ask for clarity,” he continued. “Not certainty. Those aren’t the same thing either.” I nodded again. Too quickly. “You usually trust yourself more than this,” he said. “You don’t circle. You don’t hedge.” “I thought people might need something steady,” I said. “Something they can hold onto.” “They will,” he said. “But steadiness doesn’t always come from restraint.” He leaned back slightly, considering me now rather than the pages. “Has something changed?” The question was simple. That was what made the answer difficult. “No,” I said. The word came out cleanly. “Nothing has changed.” Father Pete studied me over his glasses for a moment longer than was comfortable, then nodded as if he’d heard exactly what he expected. “Alright,” he said. “Take another pass. I’ll look at it again on Friday. See if there’s a place where you can let the language breathe..” Breathe. He gathered the pages and handed them back to me. “You have a gift for helping people feel less alone,” he added. “Don’t lose that by being careful in the wrong places.” “Yes, Father,” I said. As I stood to leave, he spoke again. “And Jason?” I paused. “This isn’t a criticism,” he said. “It’s a question. Answer it honestly on the page.” I nodded once more and left with the draft in my hand, aware that what he was asking for wasn’t more polish—but more presence. “Father, what happens on offense?” I looked at the play in my hand and realized I’d only diagramed defense plays. Looking up, I saw the faces of the children on the team, eyes searching for answers I didn’t have handy. They waited. Watching. “Uh, show me the last play again. Um..Cal, you bring out the ball and Sebastian you cover him on defense.” They continued with defensive drills. I corrected Cal’s stance, I told Sebastian to stay closer. I reminded them to keep their hands up, to watch the ball, to anticipate the pass. They did what I asked. They always did. When practice ended, I blew the whistle and gathered them in a circle with me in the middle. “Great work, guys. Next time we’ll concentrate on offensive plays.” A few of them nodded. One of them asked when next time was. I told him the schedule was the same as always. They packed up and left the court in pairs, calling to each other, the sound of the ball fading as it bounced farther away. I stayed where I was, holding the clipboard against my chest, the paper bent slightly where my fingers had pressed too long. I waited until the last of them was gone before moving. I stacked the cones, one inside the next, straightened the pinnies, counted the balls before putting them back in the bag. I checked the bench for anything left behind, even though there never was. The court lights shut off row by row, leaving the far end dark first. I walked the length of it alone, my footsteps louder than they should have been. At the gate, I paused, looking back over the court, as if there were something I was supposed to finish. There wasn’t. I locked up and started home, already thinking about what to adjust next time. Beatrice was still at her desk when I came in, her purse tucked beneath her chair, her coat folded beside it as if she had not yet decided whether she was staying. “Practice ran a bit late today, Father,” she said. “Yes,” I said, setting my bag down. She slid the phone log closer. Thoughts on Drafting Scenes During the diner scene his brother asked him just before he left. They were talking about it. It didn't resolve. He didn't name it. And then the brother says something. You're gonna go play or gonna meet dad at the gym tomorrow or this week, and then Jason stopped and thought about his father. Now in a couple of chapters prior to that, I had introduced the fact that Jason and his father have a weekly basketball game that they play at the gym together. In that scene, that was shortly after Jason met Felicia. She has a little handkerchief that she carries around with her. He asked about handkerchiefs to his father, and his father wanted to know, why are you talking about women's handkerchiefs? His father always had the feeling that Jason wouldn't stick with the priesthood because of what they called woman worry. So now that this feeling has exacerbated after. With the meeting at Felicia's house and the room he saw. He. He's now confronting the fact that he now has to be with his father, and he's not sure if he can now hide what his feeling about Felicia to his father. So that was part of his internal struggle. He couldn't sleep. It was restlessness. He looked at his schedule and saw that it was full. But that meeting with his father kept flashing and causing him anxiety. He's afraid his father will confront him. Unlike Paulie, who didn’t. Paulie, he knew, saw something. So he knows that around certain people that know him well, he cannot hide . And he's debating whether or not to even have this game with his father until he can come to grips with what he's feeling. Because Paulie, that's his brother, didn’t not push him, but saw something and he kind of pushed him, but allowed Jason to retreat. He’s unsure his father will do the same thing. |
| Father Pete called me into his office the next morning before the school bell rang, before I reached my office. The rectory smelled faintly of coffee brewing in the main office. The air cool and dim, the hallway quiet in that brief stretch before the day came into focus—urgent, demanding. “Jason,” he said, gesturing to the chair across from him. His tone was casual, but his eyes were already assessing, already reading the small signs I’d been trying to erase. I sat in the chair, and placed my bag on the floor beside me, careful, as if noise itself might betray me. My fingers went to the top of the bag without thinking—toward the folder—then stopped. Father Pete didn’t mention the missed meeting. He didn’t mention the way I’d been moving, half a beat behind myself. He picked up a sheet of paper from his desk and tapped it lightly with his finger. “Sunday,” he said. “The readings are going to land hard for people. They need something steady. They need to walk out feeling anchored.” Anchored. Another clean word. Another expectation disguised as comfort. “I’ll have something,” I said. “I know you will.” He leaned back slightly. “That’s why I asked you. You have a way of grounding things when people need clarity.” I heard it again—clarity—and this time it didn’t echo. It lodged. I nodded, too quickly. Father Pete’s gaze sharpened, just a fraction. “How’s it coming?” There it was: the moment where I could have told the truth in a harmless way. I’m working on it. I’m behind. I’m tired. A dozen acceptable answers. Instead I heard myself say, “Fine.” And my hand, reaching toward my hair, paused as I forced it to the edge of the desk. The syllable dropped between us, flat and absolute. Father Pete watched me for a long beat, then stood and moved to the window, looking out at the schoolyard as if giving me space. His voice softened when he spoke again. “Jason,” he said, his back facing me, “you don’t have to be brilliant. You just have to be clear.” Clear. Clarity. As if the two were the same. My throat tightened, and I felt the old instinct rise—to smooth, to perform, to deliver what was expected and leave no trace of the effort it cost. “Yes, Father,” I said. When I stood to leave, I realized my hands were damp. I wiped them once against my trousers and reached for the doorknob. Behind me, Father Pete said quietly, “And Jason?” I paused. He turned from the window at last, his expression unreadable—neither kind nor harsh, simply attentive. “Take care of yourself,” he said. “You seem to be carrying more than usual.” I managed a nod and stepped into the hallway, the collar at my throat suddenly feeling less like clothing and more like a question I didn’t know how to answer. The main office door was half open. I saw Beatrice first—mail in hand, coffee steaming beside her—and I stepped in as if I’d meant to all along. “Morning, Father,” she said. “Morning.” My voice landed in the right place. Ordinary. “Father Pete called earlier,” she added. “Just to make sure you got the readings. He said Sunday will be… busy.” “I met with him already. I’ve got it,” I said, then belatedly said, “Thank you.” She nodded toward the calendar book beside her. “You’ve got the school assembly at ten, and Mrs. Donnelly called to confirm her son’s meeting next week. I wrote it down.” “Good,” I said. “Thank you.” I reached for the stack of messages and slid them into my bag without reading them. My hand found the edge of the folder again—felt the paper’s firmness through canvas—then let go. “Everything alright?” Beatrice asked, not prying, only noticing the way people notice when you’ve been in the same building long enough. “Just the homily,” I said, and heard how quickly the explanation arrived, how ready it was. “It’s one of those weeks.” She smiled as if that answered everything. “Well, you always pull it together.” And then I heard footsteps behind me, softer than Beatrice’s, and my body registered them before my mind decided what to do with them. Felicia crossed the doorway with a folder tucked against her chest, her coat still on, as if she had just arrived. She didn’t stop. She didn’t linger. “Good morning, Father, Beatrice” she said, polite and clean. Beatrice smiled and nodded, continuing to sort the mail as though nothing had happened. “Good morning,” I answered, equally clean. Our eyes didn’t meet for long enough to be called a moment. That was the mercy of it. Felicia disappeared into her space. I realized my hand had tightened around my bag strap, and I forced it to loosen. “Beatrice, could you print two copies of the readings for me?” I asked, too quickly. “One for the sacristy, one for my desk.” “Of course,” she said, still looking at the envelopes in her hand “And if they’re not there by lunch…” I started then stopped, my throat as tight as the grip on my bag had been. “And if they’re not there by lunch, just let me know,” I finished, and made it sound like routine. She turned, blinked once—just a flicker of surprise—then said gently, “Sure, Father.” Felicia looked up briefly, then answered the phone as it rang. Checking my watch, I took that opportunity to go into my office. After closing the door, I leaned against it, remaining where I was. Listening to the muffled sounds of the office beyond it, I didn’t move until they faded. I sat back and pressed my palms flat against the desk. The room was quiet enough that I could hear my own breathing, shallow and quick. I sat there longer than necessary, waiting for it to settle. It didn’t. After classes, but before basketball practice, I sat in my office with the drafted pages of my sermon sitting on my desk. I still couldn't fix that paragraph, nor could I pinpoint why the words were right, but the tone still sounded off. My cellphone vibrated on the desk; it was Paulie. I ignored it. It buzzed again, persistent in a way that wasn’t accidental. I let it ring one more time before answering. “Hey,” I said. “Hey,” Paulie returned. No small talk. He never wasted it when my voice sounded like this. “You okay?” “Yeah.” I flipped a page as I spoke, as if paper could prove it. “I’m in the middle of the homily.” “It’s Tuesday,” he said. “It’s one of those weeks.” I kept my tone light. I tried to make it familiar. A pause. Then, carefully: “You didn’t call last night.” “I fell asleep early,” I said. The lie was easy because it was plausible. “Long day.” Paulie exhaled—quietly, like he was deciding what not to say. “Alright. Just… don’t disappear on me, Jase.” “I’m fine,” I said again, and hated how efficient the sentence sounded. “Okay,” he said, Unconvinced. “I’ve got to finish this,” I added, already moving toward the end of the call. “Friday deadline.” “Yeah,” Paulie said. “Call me when you’re done hiding behind it.” I held the phone for a beat after he hung up, then set it face down beside the draft. The announcements were due by noon. I realized this when I reached my office and found the folder still where I had left it the night before, the pages inside neatly ordered but untouched. I checked my watch, then checked it again, as if the second look might revise the day. The office beyond my door was already moving—phones ringing, drawers opening. I opened the door and stepped into the hallway. Beatrice looked up from the counter. “Morning, Father.” “Morning.” I kept walking. “Is Felicia in yet?” She glanced toward the desk, then back at me. “She was here but had to leave early today. Nate’s school called. She said she’d be back tomorrow.” Tomorrow. I nodded as if this were information I could use. “Alright.” Beatrice hesitated. “Did you need something?” “Yes. The announcements. I was hoping to have them revised and copied before lunch.” The word came too quickly. She smiled apologetically. “I can do it, but it won’t be until after one. We’re short this morning.” After one was too late. I knew that immediately, though I couldn’t have said why. “That’s fine,” I said anyway. “I’ll manage.” I turned back toward my office, already calculating—what could wait, what couldn’t, what I could do myself without drawing attention to the fact that I had assumed help would be there. Behind me, Beatrice said, gently, “Father?” “Yes?” “You alright?” “Yes,” I said. The word sounded familiar now. Useful. “You’re needed at the church. Father Pete called, told me to tell you when you came in. Father Baxter’s going to cover your morning class.” I turned and made my way there without another word. Almost running. Mrs. O’Brien stopped me just outside the side entrance to the church, her coat still unbuttoned, her purse held tight against her ribs. “Father Jason?” she said, already apologetic. “I won’t take much of your time.” “That’s alright,” I said, though I felt the familiar calculation begin—what I could afford to give, what I couldn’t. She nodded, relieved, and then seemed to hesitate, as if deciding how much of herself to set down at once. “My sister passed last month,” she said. “Unexpectedly. We were close.” She paused. “I keep thinking I’m doing better, and then it comes back. The quiet is the worst.” I waited. I knew how to do this. “I don’t need answers,” she added quickly. “I just… I don’t know how to sit with it. Everyone keeps telling me to be strong.” I nodded. “Grief isn’t something you move through on a schedule,” I said. “It comes in waves. Quiet doesn’t mean you’re failing. It just means you’re listening.” She watched me carefully, as if weighing the words. “And what if all I hear is how alone I am?” she asked. The question landed cleanly. Too cleanly. I felt the answer rise—the right one, the one I’d given before. I spoke it anyway. “Even in that,” I said, “you’re not abandoned. God is present in the silence as much as in the noise.” “Yes,” she said, nodding. Slowly. “That’s what I thought.” Not comforted, exactly—more like instructed. She thanked me, gathered her coat more tightly around herself, and walked away. I stood there longer than necessary, aware that I had given her something accurate and left her carrying the rest alone. “Father?” I turned. Beatrice stood a few steps away, her expression apologetic. “Father Pete’s waiting for you.” I nodded and followed her, again in silence. Father Pete read without speaking. I sat across from him, hands folded, watching the small movements of his face—the narrowing of his eyes, the slight tilt of his head as he reached the end of a paragraph and went back again. He didn’t rush. He never did. When he finished, he set the pages down and rested his palm on them. “This is solid,” he said. “Careful.” I nodded. The word felt earned. He glanced at me. “You’ve circled the same point a few times.” “Yes,” I said. The answer came automatically. “Not in a bad way,” he added. “But it reads like you’re approaching something from the side.” I waited. “You don’t usually do that,” he continued. “You’re clearer when you trust yourself to say the thing outright.” There it was again. Clear. “I wanted to be precise,” I said. “I can see that.” He paused. “But precision and clarity aren’t always the same.” He tapped the page lightly. “What are you trying to say here, Jason?” The question was gentle. That’s what made it difficult. “I’m trying to offer something people can hold. |
| The Altar Mirror (Jason) The bells rang while the sky was still undecided, the deep bronze sound cutting cleanly through the streets and into the rectory as if the day had already chosen its shape and I was simply late joining it. I lay perfectly still against the mattress, listening to the intervals between peals, counting them without purpose, intensely aware that my body had not truly slept. Whatever had fractured open during the blowout with my parents yesterday morning had not closed again. The house was fully awake. Footsteps moving down the corridor. Water rushing through the downstairs pipes. The heavy legs of a dining chair scraping across the kitchen tile with a deliberate, muffled quiet. The rectory moved on its ancient, institutional schedule, indifferent to an interior collapse. I dressed from habit alone, my muscles stiff. Black wool suit. Roman collar. Shoes polished well enough not to draw comment from the altar servers. In the mirror, my face looked entirely unchanged, and the stark familiarity of the reflection irritated me. If I looked physically different, I would at least know where to begin the repair. Instead, I looked completely intact in a way that felt increasingly inaccurate. The community morning prayers came and went in the small chapel. I missed a line in the breviary—not by skipping the text, but by stopping just short of the response, my tongue already forming a syllable that failed to arrive. The pause was brief enough that the other priests didn't react. I finished the stanza and closed the leather book, listening to the collective cadence resume around me as if nothing had happened. In the sacristy, Father Pete stood with the heavy missal open, reading with the focused, unhurried patience he brought to anything structural. Father Baxter moved through the final altar preparations efficiently, setting the chalice and paten down with steady hands. “You’ll assist, Jason,” Father Pete said, his eyes never leaving the red ink of the page. “Yes, Father.” He closed the volume and looked up at me then—not with simple kindness, and not with overt concern, but with a sharp, professional appraisal. It was the look of a veteran engineer checking the balance of a system he already knew was under terminal strain. “Stay close today,” he said. It wasn’t a reassurance. It was a directive. The nave was nearly full when we processed out from the back. Families settling into the wood, children quieted by their immediate proximity to the ritual, the low, collective hum of the neighborhood arranging itself into expectation. I took my position near the presbytery steps and looked out across the pews despite myself. Felicia and Nate were sitting in their usual space on the left side of the aisle. The boy sat upright beside her, serious and composed, his small hands folded loosely in his lap. He wasn’t restless; he never was inside the church. He understood the boundaries of the room and met them without any visible effort. His attention stayed fixed forward, carried by a solemn gravity that was entirely native to him rather than performed for the crowd. Felicia lifted her eyes as the incense rose, and her gaze met mine. She didn’t look away. The recognition between our desks had become entirely unguarded and unadorned—not a flash of warmth, and not an accusation, but a plain, mutual presence. That was what made looking at her now so difficult. I also noticed immediately that the man who had accompanied them to the preschool Family Night—the man who had been sitting with Nate on the baseline at the gym—wasn't in the pew with them. The absence didn't bring a single shred of relief. It simply narrowed the field. And two rows behind them, sitting rigid in the middle of the nave, were my parents. My mother’s posture was relaxed, but her fingers were laced too tightly over her handbag. My father faced straight forward, his jaw clenched hard, his blue eyes fixed on a point just beyond the altar crucifix. He did not look up as we took our places at the chair, but the immense weight of his deliberate lack of attention pressed forward across the rail anyway. Mass began. I followed the centuries-old choreography—the candle, the book, the sweeping manual gestures—with a precision earned over a decade in the collar. Still, my internal awareness lagged and surged unpredictably, like a broken compass needle settling late against the true north. At Communion, the room compressed into a single, collective motion. The pews emptied without instruction, bodies moving in a practiced, sequenced line toward the rail. I assisted Father Pete exactly where he placed me, adjusting my weight whenever he shifted his vestments, intensely conscious of how narrowly I was staying aligned with the sacrament. Felicia and Nate approached the station. The boy lifted his amber eyes to mine calmly, offered a small, deliberate nod of acknowledgment, and consumed the host before turning back toward the aisle. There was no hesitation in his stride. Then Felicia met my gaze fully. In that brief, silent exchange lived the entire unfinished conversation we had shared behind our desks—the way I had pulled back, explained nothing that actually mattered, and left her with a wall of folders that I then pretended time would dissolve. There was no anger in her face. Only clarity. After receiving, they passed down the side aisle and returned to their pew. I missed my next liturgical cue by a fraction of a second. Father Pete compensated instantly, his sleeve moving smoothly to cover the gap, the correction entirely invisible unless you were watching the mechanics closely. I was watching. The irritation folded inward, deep into my chest, with nowhere left to go. When the final hymn ended, the nave loosened into its familiar Sunday shape—parishioners greeting each other before their coats were even buttoned, children released from the stillness, voices rising as the structure of the Mass relaxed. Father Pete, Father Baxter, and I waited near the heavy oak exit doors after the recessional, shaking hands with the neighborhood as they filed out into the afternoon. I caught my parents out of the corner of my eye. As they stood together near the rear pew, they spoke briefly to a couple next to them, then turned toward the aisle. My mother adjusted her wool coat. My father placed his hand flat against the small of her back, guiding her forward through the crowd. In front of them, Felicia and Nate rose together. She stepped out into the center lane, letting the boy move ahead of her toward the doors. As they passed my station, Felicia shook my hand, Nate reaching his small hand up to do the same. She acknowledged me exactly as she did the other priests, her face calm and respectful. She met my gaze steadily—not inviting a confidence, and not withdrawing her presence, but completely, seamlessly intact. “Good morning, Father,” she said simply. Nate echoed the greeting, his voice small in the noisy vestibule. “Good morning,” I responded, my throat dry. As she moved past me, I watched her step toward Father Pete. His face lit up with a genuine smile as he stopped her, and the two of them stepped out of the flow of the line near the stone font. “Hello, Felicia! How have you been?” Father Pete’s voice was loud and hearty over the murmur of the crowd. “The office hasn’t been the same without you this week! Especially those delicious baked goods you’ve been spoiling us with!” I saw her smile widen, her posture relaxing into that easy, bright camaraderie she had shared with the staff for months. Though I couldn’t hear her response over the noise of the coats, I was struck by the fluid, unthinking ease with which the two of them interacted. A sudden, violent jolt of envy hit my stomach, sharp as glass. That ease used to belong to my desk. Engrossed as I was in watching her laugh with him, I didn’t hear my mother call my name until she was standing right in front of my sleeves. “Jason,” she said, her voice dropping beneath the noise of the vestibule. “What’s wrong?” I blinked, the front doors clearing as I found both of my parents looking at my face, their expressions deeply quizzical. My father's shoulders were square beneath his coat. “Nothing, Mom,” I muttered. I looked over at my dad, reaching out to take his hand. “Dad.” He shook my hand once, a hard, unyielding grip that carried the exact, heavy warning from yesterday's kitchen table. “We still have to finish our conversation, Jason,” he said, his voice level and dangerous. “We’ll talk soon.” Then they turned and vanished into the crowd on the steps. That was all. No scene, no shouting. And it was ten times worse than any argument they could have handed me. In the sacristy, Father Pete shut the heavy oak door behind us with clear intention, the latch clicking loud in the quiet room. “You’re completely out of alignment, Jason,” he said, unbuckling his green chasuble and setting it on the long counter. I didn’t offer a defense. There was no play left in the book to save it. “This isn’t subtle anymore,” he continued, turning his sharp eyes to face my posture directly. “You are fulfilling the role with precision, but you are not fully in this room. That does not work. Not at this altar.” “I know, Father.” “Whatever you are trying to manage by withholding your presence is now actively interfering with your function as a priest.” The word landed cleanly, hard against my ribs. “You don’t get to let this persist, Jason. You don’t get to wait for a convenient time to fix it. This has moved far beyond a supervisor's concern. We have to discuss this—sooner rather than later.” Another demand for an explanation about a system I didn't understand myself. I knew what the fault was; I simply had absolutely no answers to give him. Back in my residential quarters, before I could even take off my jacket, my phone began to vibrate against the wood of my desk. It wasn’t a message notification; it was a live call. Paulie. I took a slow, shallow breath behind my collar and pressed the receiver to my ear. “Paulie.” “We have to talk, Jase,” his timber came through rough and immediate. “I’m outside the building.” A trifecta. Another person standing on the perimeter, demanding that I show my ledger. “It’s not convenient right now, Paulie,” I said, my hand gripping the edge of the desk. “Can we meet for coffee later?” “No,” he snapped, the line crackling. “We can’t.” I let out a heavy, exhausted sigh into the receiver. “O.K. I’ll be right out.” Paulie was waiting across the street, his hands shoved deep into his flannel jacket pockets against the chill. We didn't stay near the stone steps; we turned the corner and walked a little way up the block, our boots striking the pavement in an uncoordinated rhythm. “They called me,” he said without a single word of preface. “Yesterday morning, right after you left their kitchen.” My stomach tightened instantly, the physical sensation exactly like hearing a heavy door slam shut in an empty house. “What did they say?” “What they always say when the family frame breaks, Jace,” he replied, his voice breaking slightly as he looked down at the concrete. “That they don’t understand how we got here. That maybe it didn’t have to happen this way. That maybe I was the one who pulled the bricks out from under you.” I nodded once, my jaw locking. “Dad.” “Yeah,” Paulie said, his blue eyes turning to face me. “Mostly Dad.” “You didn’t tell them,” I whispered, looking back toward the church tower. “About Felicia?” He stopped walking completely, pivoting on his heel to face me under a barren maple tree. |
| The steady, mechanical tap of the keys was the only sound in the hallway. When she finally rose and walked into my office, her hands were folded loosely in front of her, her shoulders carrying that formal distance she’d been holding since Tuesday. She didn't look angry. She just looked entirely prepared to give me the professional space my behavior had demanded. She stood opposite my desk. "Yes, Father?" The title was soft, but it still felt like a physical reminder of the boundary between us. I sat back in my chair, my hands resting flat on the blotter, the plastic insert of my collar biting hard into my neck. I had promised Paulie on the porch that I wouldn't hide behind being careful anymore. I had to start fixing the damage. "Last week, when you asked me if you had done anything wrong," I began, forcing myself to look her straight in the eye, though the heat behind my face was burning. "I told you everything was fine. It wasn't. But the problem wasn't you." Felicia went perfectly still, her eyelashes fluttering quickly as she looked at my hands pressed flat against the wood of the desk. She didn't interrupt. She just watched me, her breath coming in a slow, controlled rhythm. "I've been less than truthful with you, and I am deeply sorry," I continued quietly, the admission tasting like copper. "I didn't know how to manage the office. The atmosphere changed after that afternoon in Nate's room, and I panicked. I used the work to push you away because I was dealing with my own internal confusion, and it was a coward's way out. I made you feel like an intruder in a room where you were only trying to help. I'm the one who broke the comfort we had, Felicia." Saying her first name out loud felt like crossing a point of no return. My throat tightened around the syllables, a sharp, electric heat arcing through my chest that made the collar feel instantly twice as tight. It wasn't the title of a parishioner; it was just her, and the raw weight of it left me completely breathless behind my desk. The room went completely silent, the ticking clock on the wall suddenly very loud. Felicia didn't step closer, and she didn't use my first name. The confusion on her face didn't clear; it deepened, her brows furrowing as she tried to make sense of a devout priest standing behind his desk and admitting to his own panic. She didn't give me an easy out, and she didn't offer a polite platitude to make me feel better. She was entirely left in the dark about Friday night at the preschool—she didn't know I had stood by the equipment cage watching her, and she didn't know I had spent the night unraveling over a ghost. "Thank you, Father," she whispered, her voice tight, the rigid line of her shoulders dropping just a fraction of an inch. She looked toward the door, then back at me, clearly unsure of how to navigate the space now that the coldness had been named. "I... I should get back to the Sunday notes. Father Pete needs the revisions before noon." I looked down at the legal pad on my desk, unable to give her anything else without setting the collar on fire. "Of course," I said. "Thank you." She turned and left the room, closing the door softly behind her. I sat alone in the quiet office, my heart hammering against my ribs. We weren't anywhere near a declaration, and I hadn't confessed what was actually destroying my focus. But the air had shifted. The line had been drawn, and as I looked at the desk lamp, I knew the easy, silent safety of the last ten years was gone for good. Monday Afternoon — At the Typewriter (Felicia’s Close Third POV) The steady, mechanical tap of the keyboard was the only thing keeping Felicia anchored to her chair. She was typing Father Pete’s Sunday lectionary notes, but her mind was completely miles away, trapped inside the inner office she had exited an hour ago. I panicked. I used the work to push you away because I was dealing with my own internal confusion. Father Jason’s words sat heavy and cold in her chest. She was deeply grateful for the clarification; the toxic weight of her self-blame was gone, replaced by the hard reality that his three weeks of freezing her out hadn't been her fault. He had stood behind his desk, dropped the formal shield of her last name, and taken the full responsibility for the distance between them. But the relief only deepened her bewilderment. She stopped typing, her fingers resting flat against the home row keys as she stared at the glowing Excel rows on her monitor. Why had he asked about Peter? She hadn't brought Nate's godfather to the preschool dinner to confound a priest or to test a boundary. She had asked Peter weeks ago, purely as a maternal necessity to keep her fatherless son from feeling invisible during Family Night. And it had worked Nate had been vibrant, loud, and completely transformed from the weeping boy who had clung to her bedsheets just days ago. Peter had nothing to do with the parish. So why had the simple sight of a man in a sportscoat kneeling to check a toy dinosaur caused a devout priest to stand behind his desk today admitting to "panic"? She remembered the look on Jason's face in the gym before he took the podium—the hand plowing through his hair, and that unmistakable, aching expression she thought she recognized from the bedroom doorway. She had labeled it desire in her mind. It had looked like a raw, unholy hunger. But if she hadn't projected that feeling onto him... if a devout priest who belonged to God was actively unspooling because of her... then the consequences were suddenly terrifying. She looked toward the small crucifix hanging above the filing cabinet. She already knew exactly how God kept His books. Her parents had cast her out, and Dwayne had been murdered before they could ever stand at an altar. God had already taken everything that mattered from her once. If she reached out and actually tried to claim something that belonged to Him—if her forbidden wants pulled a devout priest out of his vocation—the retribution would be catastrophic. The ledger would balance itself. Something would happen to Jason, or worse, to Nate. "Felicia? Do you have those noon revisions ready?" Beatrice called out from across the hall. Felicia forced her fingers back into motion, her gaze focusing on the cursor blinking against the white background of the screen. She didn't want to name what she was feeling, and she didn't want to play a game of metrics with a keeping-score deity. She would give Father Jason the exact professional distance his collar demanded, completely blind to the storm that was already gathering outside the office walls. Saturday Afternoon: The Playoff Game (Jason Logan’s POV) The sharp, metallic blast of my whistle cut through the cavernous roar of the gym, but it didn't bring the room to order. Not for me. We were down by six in the third quarter of the playoff opener, and my clipboard was a chaotic, uncoordinated cluster of black ink. I had drawn both offense and defense, trying to force the lines to stay within the margins, but the plays were suffocatingly tight, crowding the center of the court with no room to breathe. "Father Jason?" Cal asked during the timeout, his chest heaving under his jersey as he squinted at the plastic board. "If I pass to Sebastian there, the lane is completely choked. There's no play." "Adjust it then," I said, my voice rough and gravelly. I wiped the dry-erase ink away with the side of my palm, leaving a dark, gray smudge on my skin. "Clear out to the wing. Give him space." The boys scrambled back onto the hardwood, the squeak of their sneakers and the rhythmic thud of the basketball filling the echoing space. For ten years, the predictable physics of this game had been my sanctuary. There were boundary lines here. There were strict rules. If you broke them, the whistle blew, the ledger balanced, and everyone knew where they stood. But as the point guard brought the ball up the court, my eyes automatically drifted past the baseline, scanning the crowded bleachers toward the exact spot in the third row where I had looked a hundred times before. My breath caught, my ribs straining against a sudden, heavy pressure. Nate was there. He was sitting on the bench, a small box of popcorn balanced on his knees, his amber eyes wide as he watched the players. But the seat next to him was empty of the slender, dark-haired woman I expected to see. Felicia wasn't there. Instead, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, was the man from Friday night. He was wearing a faded sweatshirt and jeans, looking entirely comfortable, attentive, and natural in the loud gym. I looked down at my own casual clothes—my coaching pullover and slacks. I didn't have the plastic collar around my neck today, but the constraint was still there, an invisible straitjacket tightening against my ribs with every breath. I was dressed like any other man in this gym, but the invisible wall of my vows still kept me entirely locked out of the room. The image hit me like a physical blow, dragging my mind straight back to that afternoon months ago when I had looked up at those exact bleachers and seen Felicia sitting there with her son. That was the first time the shield had cracked. That was the moment the terrifying, unholy thought had first hit me—the quiet, sudden hunger to be the one holding her hand, to be the father that boy was missing. I had spent months secretly, shamefully editing myself into the frame of their lives from this very sideline. But looking up now, the frame was already filled. The space wasn't vacant. The man in the sweatshirt didn't need a uniform or a plastic collar to claim his place; his posture was loose, grounded, and permanent. I didn't know his name. I didn't know what he was to them, and I had absolutely no right to ask. I was Father Logan. Even without the black suit, I was still just a community resource, completely extra to the life they were living. I waited for Nate to look over. I waited for the brief, happy wave he usually gave the bench, a tiny thread of connection I could use to anchor myself to the floor. But the boy never turned his head. He was completely engrossed, pointing eagerly at the scoreboard and laughing as the man leaned in, his hand resting protectively on Nate's shoulder to whisper something over the din of the crowd. Nate's ankles were swung back against the bleacher wood, his entire body language tilted toward the man in the jeans as if he knew without looking that the foundation would hold. The game moved on without me. The clock ran down, the buzzer sounded, and the boys pulled off a messy, uncoordinated win by four points, but I didn't feel the satisfaction of the purpose anymore. The armor of my authority had completely broken. I stayed behind just long enough to handle the automatic congratulations and watch the players pair off with their respective parents. I watched from a distance as Nate walked out, his small hand hooked firmly into the man's sleeve, completely oblivious to the wreck he was leaving on the baseline. I didn't stay to wipe down the bleachers. I didn't talk to the athletic director. I shoved the dry-erase marker into my pocket, grabbed my coat, and walked straight out the heavy double doors. |
| (con’t) (Jason) “I started thinking I should get out. Before I mess up something else I can’t fix.” Paulie’s eyes narrowed. “From what, exactly?” I hesitated, and I hated that I hesitated, because it proved how much of this was still a performance. “From coaching,” I said. “From the boys.” Paulie’s voice went completely flat. “Wrong answer.” Not loud. Not dramatic. Final. The words hit me hard enough that my chest tightened. “They are headed into playoffs,” Paulie continued, stepping closer until he blocked out the light from the window. “You’ve been there all season. You taught them to trust you. You don’t get to walk away from them just because you are falling apart.” I felt anger flash, not at him, but at being pinned. “You think I don’t know that?” I said, too sharp. Paulie didn’t move. “Then act like you know it. You think disappearing is the same thing as being careful, Jace. It isn't.” My hands were shaking again, my fingers twisting the fabric of my jacket pocket. “And what happens when you disappear?” Paulie asked. “Who pays the ledger?” I didn’t answer fast enough. “They do,” Paulie said. “Those boys. Cynthia and the kids. Mom, Dad. Everyone around you who has to adjust around your silence.” His voice dropped, moving closer. “And Felicia. You built a wall of folders and cold names to protect yourself, and you left her carrying the weight of your confusion. You don't get to do that anymore.” That line hit, and something in me finally gave way—not a plan, not an argument. A feeling. Raw, heavy, and humiliating. “I’m trying not to hurt anybody,” I said, and it sounded like a plea for air. Paulie didn’t let me hide in it. “I know. But you don’t get to hide behind being careful forever. You finish the season. You don’t abandon them.” I nodded once, my eyes locked on the floorboards. “If you step back after,” he added, “you do it clean. You hand it off. You say goodbye. You don’t just vanish.” I nodded again. “And what about Felicia and Nate?” he asked. “I won’t make them the reason,” I said, my voice rough but steady. “But you won’t pretend they aren’t part of it,” he said. “No,” I said. Paulie leaned back against the railing again, the loose posture returning. “Good. Now comes where you stop doing this alone. You talk to Dad. No circling. No posture.” I nodded. “And then you talk to Father Pete,” he continued. “Not to confess. To decide what you’re actually doing.” I nodded again. “Say it back,” he said. “I finish the season,” I said. “I don’t abandon the boys.” “Yes.” “I talk to Dad,” I continued. “And I don’t make Felicia the reason.” “Yes.” “And then I speak to Father Pete plainly,” I finished. “So the Church isn’t guessing, too, about what my silence means.” Paulie nodded once. “That’s the order. That’s how you do something you can’t undo.” Inside the house, Cynthia called his name again. Paulie opened the door, and the warmth and noise of his family spilled out across the porch. He didn’t invite me back in. He didn’t have to. The life inside had already said everything. Saturday Morning: Parents' House (Jason’s POV) I had called my father the night before. I didn’t explain anything; I just said I needed to come by. He didn’t ask questions. He just told me to come in the morning. It was Saturday. I didn’t have classes, but I had a game that evening, and the knowledge of the ticking clock stayed with me the entire walk. There was a limit to how long I could stay—a practical boundary that wouldn't let this turn into one of those family conversations that circled until everyone was exhausted and nothing had actually been said. By the time I reached their block, my legs felt heavier than they should have. The house looked exactly as it always had. Same narrow driveway, same front step where the paint never held. Same window that reflected the gray sky more than whatever was inside. I rang the bell and my father opened the door. “Jason,” he said. His voice was already guarded. He knew this wasn’t a casual visit. The kitchen smelled like coffee and toast. My mother was at the counter, her back to us, moving with the steady ease of someone who belonged in the room regardless of what was about to happen there. She turned when she heard the door. “Jase,” she said. “You’re early.” Not what’s wrong. Not you look tired. Just the fact of me. I stepped inside. My father went straight to the table and sat down, his hands flat on the wood. He didn’t ask if I wanted anything. He didn’t look at my mother. He just waited. My mother poured a third cup of coffee and set it in front of me without asking. She didn’t sit right away, but looked at me, her head tilted a little. “You didn’t come over for small talk,” she said, then sat down opposite my father. “All right. Say it.” I looked at her, then at him. “I don’t know how to say this without breaking things.” My father snorted once. “Then don't try to make it pretty. Just say it.” The words stuck in my throat for a second, the plastic insert of my collar feeling like a wire against my neck. When they finally came out, they didn’t sound like the version of myself I usually offered. “I may be leaving the priesthood.” For a moment, neither of them moved. Then my father pushed his chair back hard enough that the wood scraped loudly across the floor. “No,” he said. Not disbelief. Refusal. “You don’t get to say that like it’s a casual idea. You’re not new. You’re not uncertain. You don’t get to may your way out of this.” “I’m not trying to—” I started. “Don’t,” he said. “Not yet.” He stood and went to the counter, bracing his hands against the laminate as if the room had suddenly tilted. “This is the second time,” he said, his back to me. “The second time in my life this line breaks.” My mother exhaled slowly. “Paul.” “No,” he snapped, turning around, his face tight with an anger that looked decades old. He pointed a finger directly past me, toward the highway where Paulie’s house sat. “He did this. He’s been whispering in your ear, hasn’t he? You were fine for ten years, Jason. Ten years of dignity. Then you start skipping appointments with me and spending your afternoons at his place.” "Dad, stop," I said, my voice rough, the blunt mask failing to hold. "Paulie didn't do anything. I came to him because I'm the one drowning. He kept my confidence." "He corrupted you," my father shouted, his voice dropping into that dangerous, heavy timber. "He walked away from his responsibility because he wanted to build houses and live for himself. We carried the weight of that. You answered the Call he ignored, and now he’s trying to drag you down into the same selfish dirt he lives in because it excuses his own cowardice." "Leave Paulie out of this," I said, standing up so fast my knees hit the coffee table. "I'm the one telling you the collar is choking me. Not him." "You've let some temporary pastoral strain cloud your head," my father said, his voice turning into a terrifyingly protective dismissal. "You need a week at the retreat house. Thank God at least there isn't a woman involved to humiliate this family on top of everything else." The words came out before I could stop them. "This isn’t about a woman." It was too fast. I knew it the second the syllable left my mouth. My mother didn’t look at my father. She looked straight at me, her eyes exact and unblinking. “Is that true, Jason?” I opened my mouth, then closed it again. She nodded once, a slow, heavy movement of her head. “That’s what I thought.” My father turned to her, his face flushing dark. “Danielle. Don’t start.” She didn’t raise her voice. “Jason does this when he’s scared. He makes it neat so he doesn’t have to say what actually hurt.” She looked back at me. “Someone got close enough that you couldn’t pretend anymore.” “I didn’t do anything wrong,” I said, and heard how tight and defensive it sounded. She shook her head. “That’s not what I’m asking. I’m asking whether this life still fits you. I told you at this table ten years ago you didn’t have the temperament for disappearing inside vows. I told you you’d try. And you’d hate it.” My father looked at her like he’d been struck by a betrayal. “You always did that. You always left him a door.” “I left him the truth,” she said. Silence settled over the table, thick and structural. My father stared at me as if I were a stranger. “So you throw everything away,” he said, “for this.” “No,” I said, the word coming out sharp. “I’m not throwing anything away. And it’s not for her.” My mother nodded once. “There it is. Don’t protect it, Jason. Whatever it was. If you’re leaving, at least tell the truth about what made you stop.” I swallowed hard. “I don’t know what comes next. But I know I can’t keep calling this integrity when it’s costing other people.” I looked down at my watch. The hands were moving too fast. "I can't stay all morning. I have a game later." The moment it was out of my mouth, I understood what it sounded like to him. My father looked at me, then at the clock on the wall—longer this time. Not because the time mattered, but because it proved his point. “You don’t even hear yourself doing it,” he said, his voice turning cold. “You’re already halfway gone. You’re going to say something that blows up the family story and then go coach a game like you can just step back into your collar and everything goes quiet.” “I have to be there,” I said, my jaw clenching. “I’m the coach. The boys are entering playoffs.” He laughed once—short, bitter. “Of course you are. Always needed somewhere else.” My mother stood up then, the chair legs scraping the floor. “Paul.” He turned his anger toward her. “No. Let it sit.” He looked back at me, the first visible crack showing in his jaw. “You go. But don’t pretend this is finished because you have a game. You come back. Not in a month. Not when you’ve found prettier words. You come back when you can sit here without checking the clock. Because I am not losing another son on a schedule.” The sentence hit like a fist to my ribs. I nodded once, unable to throw a single word past my throat. Outside, the morning had moved on without us. The Saturday light felt sharper than it had earlier. I stood on the concrete step for a moment, my hand resting flat against the painted doorframe, as if letting go of it too quickly would make the pavement tilt beneath my boots. I started down the block, my chest compressed, my lungs straining against a sudden, heavy pressure. When I finally managed to inhale, the breath came out uneven, and I had to force my feet to keep moving toward the gym. Clearing the Air (Jason’s POV) "Ms. Guzman," I said, standing just inside the threshold of the inner office. "If you have a minute after you finish those pages, could you step in here, please?" Felicia didn't look up immediately. Her fingers finished a line of typing on the sermon notes I’d left on her desk, the steady, mechanical tap of the keys the only sound in the hallway. When she finally rose and walked into my office. |
| (con’t) (Felicia) He hadn't just cleared her of blame; he admitted to his own panic. For weeks, she had been carrying the toxic shame of believing her own feelings had "leaked" and disgusted a priest. Now, the revelation that Jason had been running from his own reflection left her completely unanchored. A cold, familiar anxiety began to tighten its grip around her chest. It wasn't the relief she had expected. If Jason was confused—if he was actively fighting the space between them—then the stakes were suddenly terrifyingly real. She looked toward the small crucifix hanging on the wall above the filing cabinet. Her relationship with God was already a jagged, broken thing. He was the entity that had allowed her fiancé to be gunned down in an alley before they could ever say their vows. He was the shadow behind her parents' cold faces when they disowned her for refusing to terminate the pregnancy, leaving her to raise Nate entirely alone. To her, God wasn't a source of comfort; He was an accountant who kept track of forbidden desires. If she had caused a priest to stumble—if she let herself love Jason as a man—the retribution wouldn't just land on her. It would land on Nate. "Everything all right over there, Felicia?" Beatrice called out, her voice breaking through the dark spiral. Felicia forced her fingers onto the home row, waking up the monitor. "Yes," she said, her voice a little too tight, a little too hollow. "Just trying to make sense of these notes." Part 2: Wednesday Aftermath — The Abrupt Family Blowout A few days later, after skipping his regular gym appointment with his father to avoid scrutiny, Jason finally walks into his parents' living room. The pressure of the impending basketball game acts as a literal ticking clock, forcing an aggressive, unfinished ending to the argument. "You missed the gym on Tuesday," my father said, his back to me as he stood by the fireplace. He didn't offer to pour me a drink. He didn't ask how the parish was. He went straight for the breach in routine. "I had meetings at the school, Dad," I said, my voice blunt, the defensive shield firmly in place. "I couldn't make the time." "You make time for your father, Jason. It’s what we do." He turned around, his eyes cold and transactional, skipping past me to land on Paulie, who was sitting quietly on the arm of the sofa. "Or have you been spending your free afternoons listening to your brother's new philosophy on life?" Paulie didn't lower his arms. "Leave me out of your schedule, Dad." "I can't leave you out of it when you're the one pulling the bricks out from under him," my father snapped, his voice rising into that dangerous, deep timber. "Jason was fine. Ten years he gave this family a name in this town. Ten years of dignity. And now he’s skipping appointments, he’s distracted at Mass, and he’s talking about 'confusion'?" "Dad, stop," I cut in, my voice rough, stepping between them. The iron band around my ribs was back, squeezing hard. "Paulie didn't do anything. I came to him because I'm the one drowning. I'm the one who can't look at the collar in the mirror anymore without feeling like it’s a noose." My father’s expression changed from anger to a terrifying, protective dismissal. "You're tired, Jason. You've let some temporary pastoral strain cloud your head. You need a week at the retreat house. Your brother—your brother has always wanted to see you fail at this because it pardons his own selfishness." I looked at my watch. The hands were moving too fast. Forty minutes until tip-off. Twenty teenagers were waiting for me at the school gym, expecting Father Jason to show them how to run an offense, while my own life didn't have a single clean play left. "I have to go," I said, my voice completely flat as I reached for my coat. "We are not finished here, Jason," my father shouted, taking a step toward me, his face flushing dark with insulted pride. "You don't just walk out on this family when things get difficult." "I have a game to coach, Dad," I said, my hand gripping the doorknob. The bluntness felt like a survival reflex now. "The clock is running. I don't have time to sit here and let you blame Paulie for a cage I built with my own hands." I shoved the door open, the cold Wednesday air hitting my face with a sharp, clean shock. I didn't stay to hear his response. I left them standing in the tight, heavy silence of that living room, the argument left raw and completely unextended, bleeding right into the drive to the gym. Notes on why this structure works: The Shared Secret: The reader now knows both of their hidden terrors. Jason is terrified because he thinks he's irrelevant to her life, while Felicia is terrified of a cosmic, spiritual punishment for loving a priest. The Concealed Backstory: Keeping Felicia's history of being disowned by her family hidden from Jason for a few more days creates a beautiful, ticking subtextual bomb. When she finally confesses it, it will completely reframe why she is so protective of her independence and why she matches his energy. The "Game" as a Shield: Using the basketball game to cut off the family blowout is incredibly realistic for a busy priest. It shows that his duties don't stop just because his personal life is collapsing, increasing the feeling of system overload. AFTER FAMILY NIGHT REWRITE Paulie’s house was loud before I even reached the steps. Not chaotic—just alive. A television was on somewhere inside, a kid's laugh cutting through it, followed by the thud of something heavy hitting the floor. Light spilled out through the front window in uneven blocks onto the damp grass. I paused at the foot of the stairs, my knees feeling entirely hollow, my lungs refusing to take in a clean breath of the Saturday morning air. I forced myself to climb to the porch. Paulie opened the door before I could knock twice. Behind him, Andrew was stretched across the couch, long legs hooked over the armrest, phone in one hand, a game on just loudly enough to claim the room. “Hey, Uncle Jase,” he said, glancing up, then back to his screen. Kyra sat cross-legged on the floor with a notebook open, earbuds hanging loose around her neck. She looked up more carefully than her brother did, her eyes instantly tracking my face, lingering on the open, empty notch of my collar where the plastic tab was missing. “Hi,” she said. “You staying?” Cynthia moved between the kitchen and the dining room with a dish towel in her hand. She stopped short when she saw me. “Jason,” she said. Not cheerful. Not wary. Just entirely present. “Everything okay?” Paulie didn’t answer her. He kept his eyes fixed on my face, reading the wreckage before I could even pull my hands out of my pockets. “Outside,” he said. Not harsh. Not kind. Just the decision. Cynthia’s eyes held mine for a second. She didn’t ask again. “All right,” she said softly to Paulie. “Breakfast is in ten.” Paulie stepped onto the porch and I followed him out. The heavy door clicked shut behind us, but the house didn’t go quiet. The television volume dropped. Andrew said something to Kyra I couldn’t hear. Life continuing normally on the other side of the glass. Paulie leaned against the porch railing, folding his arms, his posture loose in the way that meant he wasn’t going to help me manage this. For a moment, neither of us spoke. The cold air scraped the inside of my lungs. I realized I was standing too straight, my shoulders locked, like posture alone could keep me from falling apart. Then Paulie said, “So.” Not start at the beginning. Not tell me what happened. Just: “So.” I stared past him at the street, my fingers automatically rising to my head, dragging slowly through my hair until they reached my scalp before I even realized I was doing it. I dropped my hand back to my side, annoyed with my own nerves. "I can't do it, Paulie," I whispered, the words arriving rough, entirely stripped of my pastoral delivery. "I can't stand up there anymore." Paulie didn't shift his weight. "What happened last night, Jace?" "She was there," I said, the name finally breaking past my teeth like water through a cracked dam. "At the preschool event. I had to stand on that stage and give a blessing, and she was sitting right there. And she wasn't alone." Paulie’s attention sharpened, but he didn’t jump in. "There was a man with them," I added too fast, my voice going thick. "I didn't know he'd be there. She didn't say a word about him all week. I didn't ask. I couldn't." I stared out at the street because looking at Paulie felt like standing under a bright light. "It wasn’t even that he was doing anything specific," I said, the bluntness returning like a survival reflex. "That’s what got under my skin. He was just there. Like he’d been there a thousand times. I could see Nate—he seemed completely natural with him, leaning back against his knee like he knew the man would be there to catch him. And the guy... he was just comfortable. Attentive. He lifted Nate onto his shoulders like it was nothing." I let out a short, hollow breath that almost turned into a laugh and didn't. "I stood at that microphone," I said, quieter now, "and felt this stupid, heavy flare in my chest. I didn't even understand it, because I don't know him. I don't know what he is to them. But Felicia was just watching them like that’s how things were supposed to look." Paulie didn’t rescue me from how ugly it sounded. He didn't offer a polite excuse. "You were the outsider." The sentence hit before I could brace for it, squeezing the last of the air out of my ribs. "What is this, Jace?" Paulie asked, his voice flat and precise. "Jealousy? Shame? Both?" My throat closed around the mass of the hypocrisy. I looked away, then back. I hated that he could do that—strip the room down to the one thing I was too terrified to name. "I felt jealous," I said, and the confession came out like something torn loose from my throat. "And I hated myself for it. It didn't even feel like jealousy at first. It felt like... I was extra. Like I had looked at a life that already had its shape, and I was the thing that didn't fit. I've been pulling away from her for weeks because I thought I was protecting the collar. I thought my silence was a holy sacrifice. But she wasn't hurting, Paulie. She was just moving on." Paulie held my gaze, his eyes narrowing slightly as he looked at the empty space where my collar belonged. "You didn't take my place in the seminary to please God, Jace," Paulie said softly, his voice cutting through the last of my excuses with a terrible, grounding clarity. "You did it for Dad. And you're blaming her now because she's the first person who made you realize the door to the cage was never locked." “That’s your move,” Paulie said, his voice level. “Disappear before anyone can see you struggling.” I looked away, staring past him at the street. “And now?” he asked. My jaw clenched. “Yes,” I said. “Because if I show up distracted and off by even a little, I’m the one who breaks them at the worst possible time.” Paulie nodded once. “Good. That’s the truth.” He let a beat pass, then asked, quieter: “And now?” My hand went through my hair once, quick, and I dropped it again. |
| (con’t) (Felica) Yet she knew the atmosphere was too thick continue without clarification. When he said, basically, that all was well, she was able to breathe, relieved that her secret feelings had remained secret. As she waited for Nate outside at the school, she felt something inside question the satisfaction she was feeling. If everything was the same, then what had she seen that night on him in the doorway of Nate’s room? She couldn’t stop that image from renting space in her head. After all, she did have that vision in the Church a few months ago when sitting there and she heard Dwayne speak to her. Was that just memory or wishful thinking? Or was it real? She shook herself out of her head as she heard the raised voices of children pouring out of the building. She searched the sea of faces until she saw Nate and waved at him. He ran to her, his backpack slipping off of his shoulders, and collided with her, wrapping his arms around her as she bent down to meet hm at his level. “Hey nino,” she said as she hugged him. “Mami! I! missed! you!,” he said, pausing between the words, gasping. “Slow down.” She held him at arm’s length and searched his face. He looked away and she cupped his face between her hands. “Are you ok? Did anything happen to upset you?” Nate met her eyes, and shook his head, his hair falling across his forehead, covering his eyes. He brushed it away before she could. “Everything’s fine, mami. I just,” he paused as Felicia felt the breath catch in her throat. Everything’s fine. She knew that wasn’t true as he said it. But she inhaled because of the words he used. Jason just said the same thing to her today. Standing up, she clasped Nate’s hand and they walked toward home. “And then, Mami. Mami! Hello?” Her hand suddenly jerked as she realized Nate had stopped walking. Her eyelashes fluttered quickly and she hadn’t been listening. “Yes, Nate?” “What’s the matter? I asked about you and you had a funny look on your face. Did I do something?” The blood rushed to her face and there was a pounding in her ears. Nate looked up at her, his eyes like slits in his face, not only from the sun, but more from confusion and worry. Did I do something? Felicia forced her mouth to curve into a smile and the concern on his face lifted slightly. “No Nate. I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you.” He nodded, and they walked on. “I was saying how much I love school,” he said quietly. “I know. You are always excited to go in the morning.” “But there are times when, it’s hard, like around the other kids.” They reached the house and before entering, she sat down with him on the front steps. He looked at her, his brows furrowing on his small forehead. “Ok, Nate. Tell me what’s hard about school.” He looked at Felicia, then looked away. “Mami, they were talking again about Family Night and I was thinking about Daddy.” “What about Daddy,” she asked. “Sometimes, like today, I wish he was here with us. I don’t always say that to you because don’t want to make you sad.” He kept staring at her, as if he was measuring her reaction. “Why would you think it would make me sad? You can talk to me about anything, nino.” Nate’s eyes searched her face again, then looked up toward the sky. “Like just now. When I was talking to you. You didn’t hear me, and you looked far away. Like you were in the sky, like those clouds.” He pointed up Felicia enveloped her young son in her arms. “You’re such a little man, Papi. Sometimes I think about other things. You know, like when you’re playing with your dinosaurs and you so deep in imagination? Grownups do that too.” When she was releasing him, he squeezed her just a second longer and then let go. “But, and this is important,” she said. “You can always, and I mean always, talk to me about your dad. I miss him too, and we can miss him together. We take care of each other, deal?” Nate let out a long sigh and held out his hand. “Deal, Mommy.” They stood up and entered the house, Nate heading upstairs to drop his backpack, while Felicia went down the hall toward the kitchen. Tonight, she thought, “I’ll tell him his Uncle Peter is coming on Friday. She washed her hands at the sink, the cold water a sharp shock against her palms, before she pulled a cutting board from the cabinet and began slicing carrots for dinner. The rhythmic, steady thump of the knife against the wood usually cleared her head, but today, the echoes of the afternoon wouldn't quiet down. Everything’s fine. Did I do something? She stopped the knife mid-stroke, her fingers resting flat against the damp blade. The symmetry was unsettling. Nate had looked her in the eye outside the school and told her he was fine because he was terrified of causing her pain. He had hidden his real grief to protect her, and then he had immediately assumed her distraction was his fault. Jason had used those exact same words in the office. She looked out the small window above the sink, the satisfaction she’d felt earlier completely evaporating. Was it possible she was misreading everything? Nate had lied to keep her safe from his feelings. She couldn't help but wonder if Jason had done something similar; if his careful, measured assurance wasn't a clean resolution, but just a boundary he was holding up to protect the room. She shook her head, forcing the knife back into motion against the carrots. She was probably just overthinking it. Jason was a devout man with a calling; he didn't have a reason to hide behind a script with her. But as the kitchen went quiet again, the suspicion lingered, a tiny, cold doubt that made her wonder if the safety she’d felt this afternoon was just an illusion. The rest of the evening went by without incident, though Felicia noted Nate was quieter than usual. He picked at his dinner, slowly chewing his carrots and potatoes. “Did you want something else, baby?” She asked him. He shook his head, drained the milk from his cup and took his dishes to the sink. “Leave them for tonight, Nate. Let’s have our movie night.” His eyebrow raised. “It’s not Saturday, Mami.” “Well, who says we can only have one movie night?” Nate smiled and after he put his dishes in the sink, they went to the living room. He picked out "The Good Dinosaur” DVD and she placed in the player. They went back to the kitchen, made some popcorn, then sat on the couch for the movie. When the movie was over, he stretched, yawned, and went upstairs to get ready for bed. Felicia turned off the television and decided to leave the cleaning up for tomorrow. She climbed the stairs to Nate’s room, who was out of his clothes and on the bed. Nate lay on his back, his small chest rising and falling beneath his dinosaur pajamas, his eyes fixed on the ceiling with the painted night sky, the stars seeming to be more intense. The nightlight threw a soft, amber wash across his bed, casting long shadows into the corners of the room. Felicia sat on the edge of the mattress, her hand resting against his leg, waiting for him to settle. Instead, a quiet, ragged hitch broke through the dark. "Mami," he whispered, his voice cracking into the fragile, high register of a four-year-old. "I can't--I can't stop thinking about Daddy." Before she could answer, the dam broke. He rolled onto his side, burying his face in his pillow as the heavy, deep sobs took him. He wept with the violent, uncoordinated exhaustion of a child who had been holding his breath all day. Felicia immediately pulled him into her lap, cradling his small head against her shoulder as he clung to her shirt, his tiny fingers bunching the fabric into tight knots. "I know, Papi. I know," she murmured, rocking him slowly. "I miss him too." "Are you, are you gonna go to the sky too?" he gasped out between gulping, desperate breaths, his face wet against her neck. "Like Daddy? Are you gonna leave?" The question cut through her, a sharp, cold ache that made her tighten her arms around him. The fear of abandonment was always there, an invisible ledger he was trying to balance in his head. "Never," she said, her voice absolute and steady, a firm anchor against his panic. "I am right here. I am never leaving you, Nate. We take care of each other, remember?" She lifted him effortlessly, his small legs wrapping around her waist as she carried him down the short hallway to her own bed. The transition was smooth, a familiar safety. She laid him down on the cool sheets and climbed in beside him, pulling the quilt up to his chin. As his breathing slowly began to decelerate, the sharp hitches smoothing out into a quiet, rhythmic hum, she rubbed the soft hair back from his forehead. "I have a secret," she whispered into the quiet room. "I was going to save it for a surprise, but I think you need to know now. Uncle Peter is coming with us to Family Night next Friday." Nate’s eyelashes fluttered, his amber eyes shifting up to meet hers in the dim light. "He is?" "He is. He's going to be there just for you, so you can show him your classroom and your drawings." She kept her thumb moving in slow, soothing circles against his temple. "And tomorrow, it's just you and me. No errands, no office work. We’re going to stay right here, make blueberry pancakes, and spend the whole weekend together. Just the two of us. Deal?" Nate let out one final, long sigh, the last of the tension draining out of his small frame. His fingers remained tightly hooked into the hem of her sleeve, but his eyelids grew heavy, finally sliding shut as his breathing deepened into sleep. Felicia didn't move her hand. She lay there in the dark, watching the quiet rise and fall of her son's chest, her heart completely full of him. There would be no Sunday liturgy for them this week. The rectory office, the tithing records, and the confusing, distant boundaries of Father Jason would have to wait. Her ministry was right here, in this bed, keeping a little boy from feeling invisible. Once his grip relaxed completely, she carefully slid her arm free and reached for her phone on the nightstand. She opened her messages, the blue light of the screen illuminating the quiet bedroom and pulled up Peter's name. Told Nate tonight about Friday, she typed, her fingers silent against the glass. He was having a really hard day missing Dwayne. He's so happy you're coming. The program starts at six at the preschool. Thank you, Peter. See you there. She hit ‘Send,’ locked the screen, and slipped the phone under her pillow. Turning back into the shadow of the bed, she pulled her son close against her side and closed her eyes, letting the quiet dark finally swallow the long week. Monday Aftermath Felicia’s Close Third POV (Immediately after Jason leaves the office to teach, Felicia is left alone with the echo of his apology.) The heavy oak door clicked shut behind him, leaving Felicia alone with the rhythmic tap of Beatrice’s keyboard across the hall. She sank slowly into her chair, her hands hovering above the keys, completely unable to start the spreadsheet on her screen. I was terrified of what it meant. His words sat in the room like a physical presence. |
| (con’t) (Jason) I shoved Paulie’s front door open. He was sitting at the kitchen table, a blueprint spread out under the low light of the pendant lamp, a pencil balanced between his fingers. He looked up, his expression flattening the moment he saw my face. I didn't give him a chance to ask. I could not. "I cannot do it, Paulie," I said, my voice rough and broken, the blunt mask completely disintegrating as I stepped into the room. I reached up, my trembling fingers catching the edge of my collar, ripping the plastic tab out and throwing it onto the table. It slid across the wood, stopping right on top of his blueprints. "I cannot stand up there anymore." Paulie didn't move. He didn't pick up the collar. He just leaned back in his chair, his eyes steady on mine. "What happened tonight, Jace?" "She was there," I whispered, dropping heavily into the chair opposite him, my hands resting useless and shaking against my denim thighs. "She brought someone. A man. I don't know who he is some guy who looks like he actually knows how to protect a family. Nate was on his shoulders. They looked like,” I paused, the image too painful to describe. Paulie crossed his arms at chest level. “Like?” “They looked like a picture,” I said finally. I ground the heels of my hands into my eye sockets, pressing down until the darkness turned to a riot of static, but the friction was a waste. The ache in my head just burned hotter. "I've been pulling away from her for weeks because I thought I was guarding something holy," I said, the words tumbling out like a landslide I couldn't stop. "I thought if I stayed behind the wall, everything would stay safe. And she matched me, Paulie. This whole week, she looked right through me like I was made of glass. I thought she was hurt. I thought she was embarrassed." I dropped my hands, staring at my brother through blurred vision. "But she wasn't. She was just moving on. I stood on that stage tonight to give a blessing, and all I could see was the life I traded away when I took your place. I didn't choose this because it was my destiny, Paulie. I chose it because you left a vacuum and I was too terrified to let Dad look at an empty chair. But Felicia... she isn't just a woman I want. She’s the proof that the choice I made was a lie. I don't want to belong to something holy anymore. I want to belong to them. And I have absolutely no idea how to survive the fallout of saying that out loud." Paulie looked down at the plastic insert sitting on his blueprints, then back up at me. The silence in the kitchen wasn't a punishment; it was just the heavy, undeniable weight of a system that had finally run out of plays. "You didn't take my place, Jace," Paulie said softly, his voice cutting through the last of my panic with a terrible, grounding clarity. "You just built your own cage. And you're blaming her because she's the first person who made you realize the door was never locked." The Family Blowout: Transactional Guilt (The setting should be the parents' home—a place that represents the weight of the family tradition. Jason is present, but his father focuses his rage entirely on Paulie.) The clock on my parents' mantel ticked with a heavy, mechanical rhythm that made the living room feel smaller than it was. I sat on the edge of the sofa, my hands resting flat on my knees, my collar hidden away in my coat pocket. I felt completely hollowed out, the adrenaline from my confession to Paulie entirely spent. My father didn't look at me. He stood by the window, his back rigid, hands clamped behind him. When he finally spoke, his voice didn't carry the weight of a theological crisis; it carried the cold, sharp anger of a businessman whose contract had been breached. "Ten years," my father said, his voice dropping into a dangerous, low hum. "Ten years of dignity. Of giving this family a name we could hold up in this town. And you sit there and tell me you’re confused?" "Dad, it's not about the family," I said, my voice rough, the blunt mask failing to hold. "It's about the life. I thought the choice was enough, but—" "Don't tell me what the choice was," he snapped, turning around abruptly. His eyes skipped right past me, landing heavily on Paulie, who was leaning against the doorframe with his arms crossed. "He didn't come up with this on his own. He was fine until he started spending his nights at your place, Paulie." Paulie didn't flinch. He didn't lower his arms. "I didn't give him the doubts, Dad. I just listened to them." "You corrupted him," my father said, his finger snapping up to point directly at Paulie’s chest. "You walked away from your responsibility because you wanted to build houses and live for yourself. We carried the weight of that. Jason carried it. He answered the Call you ignored, and now you're sitting in your kitchen whispering in his ear, trying to drag him down into the same selfish dirt you live in." A band of iron clamped around my ribs, squeezing the air right out of my lungs. The injustice of it hit me like a physical blow. I hadn't gone to Paulie because he was a corrupting force; I had gone to him because he was the only person who knew what it felt like to stand outside the family frame. "Leave Paulie out of this," I said, standing up so fast my knees hit the coffee table. "He had nothing to do with it. I made the choice to enter the seminary, and I’m the one telling you the collar is choking me. Not him." "You don't know what you're saying," my father said, his voice turning dismissive as he looked back at me, his tone shifting into a terrifyingly protective patronization. "You're tired, Jason. You've been working too hard with the school and the team. You've let some... some temporary distraction cloud your judgment. But your brother—your brother has always wanted to see you fail at this because it excuses his own cowardice." I looked at my father, and the truest, most terrifying realization of my life stripped me bare. He didn't see Father Bell, the man who had spent a decade finding holy purpose in a small parish. And he didn't see Jason, the man who used to play his sax in smoky bars and was now drowning in the memory of a woman’s name. He just saw a shield for his own pride. "Paulie didn't build the cage, Dad," I said quietly, the words arriving like a final decision. "I did. And if I walk out of it, it won't be because he unlocked it. It will be because I finally realized I want a life that belongs to me." (Jason) The Monday morning sun cut a sharp, cold wedge across Felicia’s desk, highlighting the dust motes hanging in the silence between us. I stood by the corner of her workspace, my collar a stiff, suffocating ring around my neck, pretending to look over the parish hall schedule. "I noticed the registration forms for the preschool Family Night," I said, my voice flat, aiming for an administrative tone I didn't feel. "I didn't realize you had... extra guest support for Nate. A man" Felicia didn't look up from her monitor immediately. Her fingers paused on the keys, the sudden cessation of her typing louder than a shout in the small room. When she finally turned her head, her face was completely unreadable—the protective, mechanical distance she’d been using all week firmly in place. "That was Peter," she said. Her tone was measured, even. "He’s Nate’s godfather. He was his father’s partner." The word partner hung in the air, a sharp, heavy weight. I felt the breath leave my lungs in a quiet rush, a sudden, dizzying wave of realization hitting me. A cop. Her late husband's friend. He wasn't a replacement; he was a ghost from the life she had lost before it even started. I had unspooled my entire psychological foundation over a man who was simply helping a fatherless boy feel normal for an evening. "I see," I muttered, my hand rising instinctively to adjust my collar. "I didn't know. You’ve never mentioned him." Felicia stood up slowly, her chair making a brief, scraping sound against the linoleum. She didn't look needy or apologetic. She looked tired, her shoulders squared as she faced me directly. "Why are you asking, Father?" The title felt like a physical barrier she was holding up between us. "I'm just trying to keep track of the parish families—" "No," she cut in, her voice low enough that Beatrice wouldn't hear across the hall, but sharp enough to stop me cold. "You’ve barely looked at me for three weeks. You call me Ms. Guzman. You hand me work like I’m an intruder in this office, and when I asked you if I did something wrong, you told me everything was fine. Now you’re asking about who accompanies my son to school events. I want to know why it matters to you." The blunt, defensive mask I’d been wearing for a month crumbled right there in the sunlight. I looked at her, and the sheer weight of my own dishonesty turned into a physical ache in my throat. She wasn't the one who had leaked her feelings; she was just trying to survive the hostile environment I had created out of pure, defensive terror. "I'm sorry," I said. The words arrived rough, entirely stripped of the measured, careful cadence I usually gave parishioners. "I was less than truthful with you last week. When you asked if you had done something... you hadn't. You haven't changed anything." Felicia's brow furrowed, her eyes scanning my face, searching for the trick. "Then why have you been treating me like a stranger, Jason?" Hearing my actual name from her lips made my pulse spike, a frantic, electric heat arcing between us in the quiet office. I held the edge of her desk with my fingertips, my left hand white-knuckling the wood just to stay anchored. I couldn't give her the grand confession—not yet, not with the collar still around my neck—but I couldn't lie to her anymore either. "Because I didn't know how to handle the room," I said quietly, the admission tasting like copper. "After that night in Nate’s bedroom... the air changed. And I was terrified of what it meant, so I blamed you for the shift instead of dealing with myself. I made you carry the weight of my own confusion, and it was a coward's way out. You didn't do anything wrong, Felicia. I'm the one who broke the comfort we had." She went perfectly still, her chest rising and falling in a slow, controlled rhythm as she digested the apology. The "safe" illusion she’d built at her desk was gone, replaced by the hard, undeniable reality that neither of us had imagined the heat in that doorway. "Thank you for saying that," she whispered, her voice tight. She didn't soften completely, but the rigid line of her shoulders dropped a fraction of an inch. "But it doesn't fix the office, does it?" I looked down at the papers on her desk, unable to give her an answer that wouldn't set the rest of my life on fire. "No," I said. "It doesn't." The Weekend with Nate (Felicia) Felica left the office after speaking with Father Jason a bit lighter in her spirit. She was almost afraid to have confronted him about the shift in the way he was interacting with her. |
| (con’t) (Felicia) He kept his gaze strictly on the paperwork. He was dressed in his black suit, his collar a rigid, absolute ring around his throat. "I'll be out for the afternoon, Ms. Guzman," he said, his voice flat, carrying that polished, distant delivery used for official parish business. "I'll have these sorted before I leave, Father," she said gently. She kept her voice as light as possible, but the words felt heavy in the quiet room. Last week he had stood right here and told her everything was fine, that nothing was wrong. Yet the way he was acting didn’t match those words. The formal "Ms. Guzman" felt like a physical shove, a reminder that the easy, friendly camaraderie they used to share was entirely gone. For a fraction of a second, his rigid posture faltered. Instead of locking his jaw, his right hand rose automatically, his fingers dragging slowly through his hair, disrupting the neat, combed strands until they stood up in messy, jagged points. He dropped his hand quickly and turned toward the door without another word. Felicia watched his back disappear, completely confused by the brief, messy gesture. She didn't know what the movement meant; only that it appeared more than it did before. She was no longer sure of what she had seen that evening in Nate's bedroom doorway. In the cold light of his current avoidance, she was convinced she had simply projected her own longing onto him, that she had looked at a him and imagined a reflection that wasn't there. She was entirely sure of her own want then and even now; she knew she wanted him out of the periphery and inside the frame of her life. But he belonged to God. And if he had detected even a leak of that want on her face that night, it explained everything. He was pulling away to re-establish the relationship. A sudden, sharp wave of fear tightened around her ribs. She had to hold up her end of this wall, not just to protect the relationship, but for her own survival. Felicia already knew exactly how God kept His books. First, her parents had disowned her and cast her out for disobeying them by not making Dwayne marry her before Nate was born. Then Dwayne had been gunned down before they could ever stand at an altar. God had already taken everything that mattered from her once. If she reached out and actually tried to claim something that belonged to Him, if she allowed her desires to pull a priest out of his vocation. She shook her head slightly in an effort to remove even the thought. But it completed itself, if she did that, the retribution would be catastrophic. The ledger would balance itself. Something might happen to Jason, or worse, to Nate. She closed her eyes for a brief second, forcing her fingers back to the home row keys. She didn't want to play a game of metrics with a keeping-score deity. She just wanted to finish her work, get through to the weekend, and figure out how to lock her feelings behind a wall of mechanical typing. She would give him the exact distance his actions demanded. Friday Afternoon — The Pickup Realization (Felicia’s Close Third POV) At the preschool parking lot was a noisy chaos of slamming car doors and children carrying construction-paper decorations for Family Night. Felicia held Nate’s small, warm hand as they walked out to the sidewalk, his teacher, Ms. Candy, waving them off from the double doors. "See you both at six, Felicia!" Ms. Candy called out over the chatter. "We’re so thrilled someone from your parish is driving across town to open the event. It’s the first time we’ve had a real clerical presence for the families." Felicia stopped on the pavement, her grip tightening instinctively on her purse strap. She didn't let her expression falter, but her mind instantly flashed back to the folder Father Jason had handed her on Tuesday—the uneven, scrambled notes that circled their subject without ever landing. She had assumed he was drafting a standard homily for the upcoming parish youth retreat. It might be Father Pete or Father Baxter, she told herself. But deep down, she knew it was him. A sudden, sharp wave of guilt tightened around her ribs. If Father Jason was the one coming to the preschool tonight, she had placed him in a terrible position. He was a man with a true calling—she had never doubted that for a second—and he was doing the painful, necessary work of pulling back to protect his vows. He shouldn't have to carry the awkwardness of her unspoken affection into his pastoral duties, yet here he was, being sent to the one place where her life was centered. She looked down at Nate, who was looking up at her with his bright amber eyes, completely oblivious to the panic in her chest. Peter was meeting them at the gym at six so her son wouldn't feel left out among the other fathers. The two men didn't intersect in her mind at all; Peter was a brotherly shield from her late husband's world, and Jason was a man of God. Her only worry now was her own heart. She had to find a way to contain her feelings completely tonight—to freeze them behind the mask of a polite parishioner—so she wouldn't cause a holy man to stumble any further than she already had. (Jason) Family Night The preschool Family Night. I was supposed to stand at the podium in ten minutes to give a brief opening blessing about the sanctity of the domestic church. I stood near the equipment cage, my collar choking me, trying to rehearse the prayer in my head. Then the double doors opened. I saw Felicia first. She looked exhausted, her shoulders set in that defensive, rigid posture I recognized from her parents' stories. Nate was clinging to her left hand, but his right hand was wrapped around the thumb of a tall, broad-shouldered man in a dark utility jacket. My breath caught, the air in my lungs turning instantly to concrete. I didn't know him. I had never seen him before in my life. He walked with a heavy, deliberate authority that spoke of sirens and badges—the unmistakable bearing of a cop. But it wasn't his presence that made the floor tilt beneath my boots; it was the casual, unthinking familiarity of how they moved together. As they navigated the crowded baseline, the man reached down and effortlessly lifted Nate onto his shoulders. The boy didn't flinch or hesitate; he just locked his small ankles around the man's neck and laughed, his amber eyes bright as he looked down at the crowd. Felicia didn't look uncomfortable. She leaned in toward the man to say something over the din of the gym, her posture relaxing in a way it never did when I walked into a room. A band of iron clamped around my ribs, squeezing until I couldn't get a clean breath. This was the picture. This was the frame I had been secretly, shamefully editing myself into during those quiet evenings when I’d carried Nate home. I had imagined stepping into the periphery of their lives, anchoring them, belonging to something smaller and warmer than a parish. But the space wasn't vacant. It belonged to him. The man didn't look like an intruder; he looked like the foundation. "Father Jason? We're ready for you," the preschool director whispered, tapping my arm. I didn't hear her at first. I was staring at the man as he laughed at something Nate said, his hand resting protectively on Felicia’s shoulder as he guided her toward the rows of tiny chairs. The touch was entirely platonic, a brotherly gesture of support, but through the lens of my own guilt, it looked like absolute possession. I had gaslit myself into believing I was protecting her by pulling away. I had thought my silence was a holy sacrifice. But looking at them now, the terrifying truth stripped me bare: she didn't need my protection, and she didn't need my mask. I was completely irrelevant to the life she was building. I gripped the edge of the clipboard until my knuckles turned white, the plastic snapping under the pressure of my thumb. I had to walk up those steps. I had to stand in front of twenty families, in front of them, and pretend I had the authority to bless a life I would never be allowed to touch. I forced my chin up, the plastic insert of my collar cutting hard into my throat as I stepped toward the microphone. My playbook was completely blank. By evening, the temptation to fill the hours returned. Practice was over for the day, and I found myself walking back to the empty parish office. There were calls I could make, notes I could draft, small tasks that would restore the sense of usefulness I had relied on for years. I stood at my desk and considered them, aware of how easily I could disappear into that familiar rhythm. Instead, I turned off the light and left the office as it was. Outside, the path back to the residence was quiet. The buildings stood close together, unchanged, as if nothing between them had shifted. I walked it slowly, without rehearsal, without deciding what came next. For the first time, I understood that not knowing what to do did not absolve me of what I already knew. FAMILY NIGHT SCENE TO INCORPORATE Part 1: The Exit from Family Night (Jason’s POV) I don’t remember the words of the blessing. I just remember the sterile, metallic echo of my own voice bouncing off the cinderblock walls of the gym, sounding hollow and detached. I kept my eyes fixed on the exit sign at the back of the room, refusing to look down at the third row where the man sat with Nate still balanced on his knee, his hand resting near Felicia’s sleeve. The moment the microphone clicked off, I didn't stay to mingle. I didn't shake hands with the preschool director or nod to the parents. I dropped the clipboard onto a folding chair and slipped out the side doors into the dark alley behind the school before anyone could call my name. The night air was cold, a sudden, sharp slap against my face that did nothing to clear the cloying, phantom taste of panic in my throat. I walked fast, my boots striking the asphalt with a frantic, uncoordinated rhythm. I needed to get away from the lights. I needed to get away from the image of that man occupying the exact center of the frame I had spent weeks secretly building in my head. I thought I was sacrificing my happiness to keep things holy. I had thought my coldness was a shield to protect her from my own unravelling. But the truth was far uglier: she didn't need my protection because she had already found her footing without me. I was just the priest who helped her carry her kid home once. I was an afterthought. By the time I reached the rectory, my chest was so tight the plastic insert of my collar felt like a wire cutting into my throat. I couldn't go inside. I couldn't sit in that office with her empty desk and the slanted lines of my own ruined handwriting waiting for me in the drawer. I grabbed my keys, got into my car, and drove. I didn't think about the direction; my hands just steered the vehicle through the dark until the tires hummed against the asphalt of the highway, heading toward the only person who knew exactly what it felt like to look at the "chosen" path and want to set it on fire. Part 2: The Final Confrontation with Paulie The car engine was still ticking. |
| (con’t) The screen slid shut. The curtain rustled as she left. I stayed pinned to the wooden seat in the dark, my hands resting heavy and useless on my knees. I had successfully avoided Paulie all morning, but as the quiet settled back into the box, the truth hit me: I didn't need my brother to expose me. The collar was doing it all on its own. The pews were empty now. The air had settled. Nothing in the room suggested what had just been said there. That, more than anything, unsettled me. It was not the confessions themselves that stayed with me. It was the restraint I had felt while listening, the effort it took not to explain, not to soften, but to reach for something useful. To sit with someone’s grief without shaping it into purpose meant letting it remain unresolved. It meant allowing the silence to reflect something back at me—something I could not manage or redeem with language. I thought of Felicia, of how directly she had spoken to me when she first came into the office. I had not turned away from her grief then. I had helped her organize it. I had given it shape, hours, structure. I had called that support. What I had avoided was the part that did not fit into any schedule. DRAFT ONLY (Felicia) Monday morning felt different the moment Felicia crossed the threshold of the rectory. The air from her vestibule conversation with Jason was still fresh in her mind, his rough, unscripted apology acting like a quiet green light. For three weeks, she had been carrying a toxic weight, certain she had compromised something holy. But he had cleared her. He had admitted the clumsiness was his own. She walked into the main office, dropping a fresh sleeve of paper near Beatrice’s desk. "Good morning, Bea. Did you get that rain over the weekend?" "Ruined my garden completely," Beatrice grumbled, though her eyes were bright over her glasses. "But Father Pete said the humidity is good for the basement mold, so I suppose someone is happy.” Felicia laughed, the sound natural and light in her throat. She moved to her own desk, waking up her monitor and organizing the youth ministry flyers. When Father Baxter shuffled past her door ten minutes later, she gave him her usual, respectful nod. "Morning, Father. The coffee's fresh if you need a cup." "Bless you, child," the old priest mumbled. Everything was returning to its proper orbit. The old camaraderie was waiting right around the corner. Then Jason’s boots sounded on the linoleum. Felicia looked up, her smile already forming, ready to meet the friend she had missed for a month. But the man who stepped into her doorway was still wearing the stone mask. He didn't look at her face. His eyes slid straight to the corner of her desk, his jaw set so tight the muscle near his ear twitched. "The bulletin changes are on the clipboard," he said. His voice wasn't rough like it had been on Friday night; it was that flat, polished stone he used for funeral announcements. "I need the text typed before the noon mail." The smile died on her lips. A cold, familiar knot tightened in her stomach. "Of course, Father," she said. She kept her tone even, professional, and entirely clear of any edges. He didn't linger. He grabbed his keys from the hook, his hand white knuckling the metal ring, and vanished down the hallway without another word. Felicia sat perfectly still, her hands resting flat against the plastic edges of her keyboard. The realization didn't hit her with a dramatic flair; it settled over her like a heavy coat. He had lied to her. The apology on Friday hadn't been a truce; it had been a tactical retreat. He had seen her feelings leak out in Nate’s room. He knew exactly how she looked at him, and he was so embarrassed by the stain of her affection that he couldn't even stand in her office without locking his jaw. She thought of her weekend—the grueling, exhausting hours spent sitting on the floor of Nate’s room while her four-year-old wept for a father he could barely remember. She had skipped the basketball game and the Sunday liturgy because her son was breaking apart, not because she was playing a game with the priest. She had been dealing with real, heavy grief, while Jason was apparently still litigating the space between their desks. Fine, she thought, her fingers finding the home row keys with a sharp, mechanical precision. If you want a stranger, I will give you one. By Tuesday morning, the new routine was locked in. When Beatrice asked her about the preschool budget, Felicia was warm, engaging, and patient. When Father Pete needed help locating a baptismal record from 1984, she spent forty minutes in the dusty archive room with him, laughing at the old handwriting. But when Jason walked into the room, the temperature dropped. She didn't glare. She didn't slam drawers. When he handed her a stack of unvouched receipts, she took them with a polite nod. "Thank you. I'll have these entered by three." "Good," he muttered, his hand lingering on the edge of her desk for a fraction of a second, his knuckles white. "Is there anything else?" she asked, her voice clear, professional, and completely devoid of the friendly banter they used to share. She didn't look for his eyes. She looked at his collar, treating him exactly like the administrative authority he was hiding behind. "No," he said, his boots already pivoting toward the exit. She watched his back disappear around the corner. Her chest ached, a deep, true longing that she couldn't entirely scrub out of her blood, but her hands stayed steady on the keys. She had survived her parents disowning her by learning how to live inside a clean absence. If Jason wanted to build a wall between them, she wouldn't try to pull the bricks down anymore. She would just help him hold them up. Thursday Afternoon: Phone Call from Paulie The phone on my desk rang, the sharp, mechanical bell cutting through the heavy silence of the rectory. I didn't reach for it immediately. I sat there, staring at the plastic casing, my fingers still stiff from a morning spent deliberately avoiding the corner of the office where Felicia’s keys were clicking. Ever since my apology on Monday, the room had felt entirely wrong. I had told her she hadn't changed anything, but every time she stepped near the desk, my throat locked up. I had kept my voice level, formal, and distant—pastoral, I’d told myself—but my body had betrayed me anyway. I’d treated her like she was still the problem. By Tuesday, she had stopped looking for a truce. She had matched my stride, stone for stone, her silence turning into a cold, efficient wall that made the office air feel thin and unbreathable. I picked up the receiver. "Father Jason." "Jace. It's me." Paulie’s voice was low, carrying the familiar, unhurried cadence of a man who worked with his hands. I leaned back in the chair, my knuckles white against the plastic of the handset. "I missed the gym with Dad yesterday. If you're calling to give me the lecture—""I'm not giving you a lecture," Paulie cut in, his tone flat. "Dad called me this morning. He wanted to know if you'd been down to the site. He asked if you were seeing someone. "The air left my lungs in a quiet, ragged rush. I reached up with my free hand, my fingers instinctively digging into my eye sockets, pressing down until the darkness behind my lids blurred into a dull, hot pressure. "What did you tell him?" "I told him we’ve been talking," Paulie said. He didn't sound angry, just precise. "I told him you were handling a lot with the playoffs and the parish budget. I didn't say a word about her, Jace. Your business is your own." "Thanks," I muttered, the word sticking like grit in my throat. "He thinks I'm getting in your head," Paulie added, a slight, cynical edge creeping into his voice. "He thinks because I walked away from the track, I'm trying to pull you off it, too. He's looking for someone to blame because he can't face the idea that his perfect son might actually have an interior life he didn't approve first. "I dropped my hand from my face, staring down at the empty clipboard on my desk. The white plastic was clean, but in my head, the lines were already tangling. Tomorrow was Friday. Family Night. I had to stand at that podium in front of the entire preschool, in front of her, and I had absolutely no strategy for how to get through the blessing without my hands shaking over the microphone. Her Sunday absence hadn't relieved the pressure; it had just stripped away my predictability. I was running blind. "He's going to come down hard on you, Paulie," I said quietly. "If he finds out I'm unravelling, he's going to put it all on your doorstep." "Let him," Paulie said, his voice completely level. "I've been handling Dad's disappointments since I was eighteen. I can carry the weight. The question is how long you're going to keep wearing that collar just to keep him from shifting the ledger." The silence on the line stretched out, heavy and unyielding. I didn't have an answer. I couldn't tell him that the collar wasn't just about our father anymore—it was the only thing keeping me from dissolving entirely every time Felicia looked past my shoulder. "I have to go," I said, the bluntness returning like a survival reflex. "I have to review the text for tomorrow." "Don't choke on it, Jace," Paulie said softly. The line went dead. I hung up the receiver and sat there in the quiet office, the ticking clock on the wall counting down the hours to Friday night, leaving me completely trapped inside a defensive rotation that had already run out of space. By Tuesday, the silence in the rectory office had hardened into a brick wall. I had spent all of Sunday liturgy scanning the third pew from the front, my throat dry as I preached a generic homily on community while staring at the empty space where she and Nate usually sat. She hadn't come. It was the first time in two years she’d missed a Sunday, and the absence had sat in my stomach like lead. I’d expected her to be waiting for me on Monday morning with questions, or at least that lingering, hurt look she’d given me when I called her Ms. Guzman. Instead, she gave me exactly what I’d asked for: absolute, mechanical professionalism. When she handed me the typed minutes, her fingers didn't tremble. Her eyes didn't track mine. She didn't even use my name. She just left the folder on the corner of the desk and walked out before the draft from the door could even register. She was matching my energy, stone for stone, and it was suffocating me. I had built a fortress to protect my vows, but she had simply walked away from the wall, leaving me trapped inside it alone. (Felicia) The Office Departure The morning silence between their desks felt like a necessary sanctuary. Felicia kept her eyes fixed on the weekly tithing records, keeping her posture formal and efficient. It felt entirely unnatural to sit here and not offer to help, to deliberately hold back her automatic impulse to smooth over the rough edges of the room. Concealment didn't come easily to her; she had always preferred to live out in the light. But Jason's coldness left her no choice but to suppress her own nature. Father Jason finally came out of his inner office to drop a stack of mail in her outbox. |
| (con’t) Had the lines broken on those sheets, too? I stood up, my shoes heavy on the floorboards, pacing the narrow space between the desk and the wall, my fists tightly clenched. I hadn't asked her why she thought she was the problem because I couldn't face the alternative. To ask her meant acknowledging what happened when I stood in the doorway of her son’s bedroom. It meant admitting that I hadn't been thinking about a pastoral blessing. I had been looking at the star-painted ceiling, the clutter of toys, and Felica and I had wanted to step across the threshold. I had wanted a life that wasn’t only about God. It was the first time I had ever looked at an obligation and wanted to walk away from it. The realization felt clumsy and terrifying in my head; I didn't have the vocabulary for it, and I didn't have a plan. I looked down at the clipboard. The basketball plays were a chaotic cluster of defensive lines, overlapping until the diagram was just a solid black block in the center of the key. A total structural failure. But the whistle was biting into my palm, the plastic insert of my collar was a tight band against my throat. I changed into my gym clothes. Forcing my chin up, I swallowed hard to get the faint, sweet trace of vanilla out of my throat, and turned the doorknob. I had no idea how to fix the breakdown, but the clock was running, and I had a role to play. At the Gym I shoved through the heavy double doors into the gym, the cool, stale air hitting my face like a damp towel. The squeak of sneakers on hardwood and the rhythmic thud of basketballs filled the cavernous space. It was loud. It was normal. I needed it to be normal. I blew my whistle, the sharp blast cutting through the chatter. "Lines on the baseline! Let's go!" The boys scrambled into position, their energy loud and uncoordinated. I held my clipboard tight against my chest, waiting for the tremor in my fingers to die down. When I finally flipped it over, I forced myself to draw both sides of the ball. Offense and defense. I drew the passes, the screens, the cuts. I forced the lines to stay within the margins. But they were still off. "Father Jason?" Cal asked, squinting at the plastic board. "If I pass to Sebastian there, I'm running right into a double team. The lane is completely choked." I looked at the diagram. He was right. My offense was claustrophobic; the plays were jammed tight, crowding the center of the court with no room to breathe. I had drawn an attack that trapped my own players. "Adjust it then," I said, my voice rough but steady. I wiped the dry-erase ink away with the side of my palm, leaving a dark smudge on my skin. "Sebastian, clear out to the wing. Give him space." The boy nodded and ran out onto the floor. I watched them run the modified drill. They made mistakes—dropped passes, missed layups—but the sheer, predictable physics of the game began to work on me. The ball bounced where it was supposed to bounce. The whistle blew when a foul was committed. There were rules here. There was a boundary line. With every lap they ran, the pressure behind my eyes began to loosen, settling into a dull, manageable ache. The faint trace of vanilla in my throat was slowly replaced by the sharp tang of sweat and floor wax. I wasn't fixed. The slanted script on the legal pad in my office was still waiting for me in the drawer, and the memory of the way Felicia had looked at me in the doorway still sat like a stone in my throat. But as I barked out defensive rotations and corrected a shooting form, the chaos in my head slowed down. I felt the familiar weight of my authority return, heavy and cold. I had recovered my footing on the hardwood, even if the ground beneath the rectory was still giving way. Winning? “Great game, guys,” I said after the final buzzer. The practices this week had been uncoordinated, entirely on my end, but the boys pulled off a four-point win anyway. My skin was still hot, my whistle sitting dead in my pocket. For two hours on the hardwood, the rules had saved me. I had been loud, clear, and absolute. Yet during the game, I’d found myself scanning the bleachers, looking for a slender, dark-haired woman and a small, amber-eyed child. They weren’t there. A sharp wave of relief hit me, followed immediately by that familiar, dull ache in my chest. After the parents cleared out, I stayed behind in the empty gym to wipe down the bleachers. The memory of walking home with Felicia, carrying Nate in my arms, kept looping in my head, forcing me to hurry through the task just to escape the space. Back at the residence, I showered, changed, and sat at my desk to sketch out a lesson for the pre-school kids next week. A sharp knock interrupted me. “Come in.” Father Pete filled the doorway, his frame blocking the light from the hall. “Father Baxter isn’t feeling well today. I need you to cover confessions this afternoon.” “No problem,” I said, the response automatic. “I’ll make time.” He nodded and closed the door. It wasn't how I wanted my afternoon to unfold, but to refuse a basic duty would only invite scrutiny from the other priests. I was already too exposed. An hour later, the moment I sat down in the confessional, the armor of my authority turned into a cage. For a few minutes, I was entirely alone in the narrow, velvet-lined dark of the box. A soft rustle on the other side of the screen signaled the first arrival. The kneeler groaned. The sliding panel scraped back, revealing the dim silhouette of a woman through the mesh. I couldn't see her face, but the sudden change in the stagnant air made my throat lock. It wasn't vanilla; it was just lavender soap and rain. But my chest tightened anyway, a band of iron clamping around my ribs as my brain instantly tried to force Felicia into the shadow behind the screen. “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned,” the voice whispered. “It has been two weeks since my last confession.” Normally, I would have filled the space without thinking. Instead, I hesitated. The pause stretched until she cleared her throat on the other side. I raised my right hand to make the sign of the cross, but my fingers were trembling so violently the movement felt clumsy. I forced the standard script past my teeth, my voice sounding mechanical in the small wooden chamber. "May the Lord be in your heart..." “Father," she said, her voice dropping lower. "I don’t know if this is something I’m supposed to bring here. But I’m tired of carrying it by myself.” I spoke to her about patience. About small steps. About the grace of endurance. The words came easily, rolling off my tongue like a rehearsed speech, and she said nothing. That was how I knew they were wrong. The pause stretched, and in the silence, I felt something give way—not in her, but in me. I tried to continue with something serviceable, but the advice landed clumsily. On the other side of the screen, she let out a slow, controlled breath. “Mm-hmm,” she said. It was polite, but it wasn't agreement. I waited for her to continue. She didn’t. “How long have you been carrying it?” I asked. Another pause. “A long time,” she said finally. “Long enough that people think it’s just… who I am.” “What is it?” I asked, hearing the sudden, careful constraint in my own voice, as if the words themselves might spill. She cleared her throat. “My mother’s been living with me. For three years.” “That’s a generous act,” I began. “Everyone says that,” she cut in, then immediately softened, as if she had broken a rule. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—” “No,” I said, leaning closer to the mesh. “Go ahead.” She hesitated. “She’s not, what’s the word, ‘easy’. She’s not kind anymore. Or maybe she never was and I just didn’t see it until I couldn’t leave.” I held the edge of the wood with my fingertips, feeling the grain, then released it. “Do you have help?” “My sister lives ten minutes away,” she said. “Ten minutes. And she comes by once a month with groceries like she’s doing charity.” “That sounds painful.” “It’s exhausting,” she corrected sharply. “Pain lets you sit down and cry. This doesn't give you the time. This is just… day after day.” I swallowed hard against the tight line of my collar. “And I’m ashamed,” she added quickly, the words rushing out now. “Sometimes the sound of her voice is exasperating. Sometimes I stand in the bathroom with the water running just so I don’t have to hear her calling my name like I owe her something every time she’s bored.” Her voice trembled, but she kept it contained. “I don’t know if that makes me a bad daughter. Or just tired.” The old, safe answers rose in my throat, patience, duty, sacrifice. It sat on my tongue, ready to dismiss her. I didn’t say it. Instead, I asked, “Have you told anyone this?” “No,” she said immediately. “What would be the point? They’d tell me to ‘let go and let God’. To be grateful she’s still alive. To remember she’s my mother.” “And what do you need?” I heard myself ask. The question surprised me. It felt dangerous, entirely stripped of my role. On the other side, the silhouette went perfectly still. “I need someone to say I’m not evil for feeling trapped,” she whispered so softly I almost didn’t hear it. “I need someone to say it counts as real.” My throat tightened. “It counts,” I said. She let out a ragged breath that sounded like relief and grief mixed together. Then, because the silence terrified me, I added too quickly, “And it doesn’t mean you don’t love her.” The relief on the other side vanished into stillness. “I didn’t say I don’t love her,” she said. She wasn't angry; she was just precise. “I said I’m tired.” I closed my eyes in the dark. “You’re right,” I said. “You did.” I forced myself to sit in the quiet. Let it be still. Her breathing shifted, as if she was surprised the silence wasn't going to punish her. After a long moment, she whispered, “Thank you.” “Take ten minutes today,” I said, my voice dropping into a register that felt entirely separate from the priesthood. “And do nothing that is for anyone else. Not as rebellion. As permission.” She was silent, digesting the penance, before she whispered, "I just want to be better. I want to do the right thing." The words hung between us, a physical obstruction in the small space. I opened my mouth to deliver the final prayer of absolution, but the Latin phrases stayed lodged in my throat. I had to swallow hard, fighting the strict constraint of the plastic insert against my neck just to draw enough air to finish the ritual. The formula felt like an unpayable debt. I sat there in the dark, gripping the silver crucifix of my rosary until the metal edges bit raw into my palm. I was listening to a stranger confess her human failures, while my own legal pad with its slanted, ruined script sat waiting for me in the drawer across the courtyard. I was handing out absolution like a judge who had already broken the law. "I absolve you from your sins," I muttered, the words arriving like a sentence I was passing on myself rather than a blessing. |
| (con’t) I turned toward the window again, the truth settling in me with equal parts relief and dread. I still hadn’t named her. I didn’t need to. The shape of the thing was clear enough now. I spoke slowly, almost in a whisper. “I’m committed to the Church, Paulie. It’s my life. But I’ve seen the possibility of a different one.” Paulie didn’t answer right away. The road curved gently and he followed it, one hand steady on the wheel, the other resting near the window. When he finally spoke, his voice was quiet, almost careful. “That’s not a small thing to see,” he said. “Especially after all this time.” I kept waiting for the advice, or at least a warning to pull back. Nothing came. He just left me holding the wreckage. “It’s harder for you, Jase. All your adult life, you’ve followed a path that while difficult, was your choice. No detours, no forks, no illusions. Now, you seem to come to the biggest, widest bend and you’re lost,” he said, again with no judgment. Just facts. “I’m not hearing you say you want out,” he continued. “I’m hearing you say you didn’t think there was another way to imagine your life. And now there is.” He glanced at me briefly, then back to the road. “That doesn’t undo what you’ve lived, Jase. It doesn’t erase the vows. But it does change the questions.” My chest tightened again. “That’s what scares me.” “I know,” he said. And because it was Paulie, because he had always known when to stop talking, he let that be enough. The name surfaced before I could decide whether to stop it. “Felicia,” I said. It wasn’t a confession. It wasn’t even an explanation. It was simply the first word that didn’t lie. Paulie nodded once, as if something had finally clicked into place. “Okay,” he said. A band of iron clamped down around my ribs, squeezing until my next breath came up short and hollow. "I haven’t done…" My jaw locked. The rest of the sentence refused to move, anchored deep in the dark of my throat. I cleared my throat, a rough, defensive sound, but the confession wouldn't budge. " –Haven’t wanted to do anything." I swallowed hard after the word “anything”. “I didn’t ask what you’ve done,” Paulie said. His voice didn't carry any anger, just a flat, unyielding clarity that sliced straight through my panic. He wasn't letting me hide behind the fear of actions I hadn't committed yet. He was forcing me to look at the desire itself. “I don’t know how to keep this contained,” I said quietly, the confession finally slipping past my teeth like water through a cracked dam. “And I don’t know what happens if I don’t. And how can I stand there in front of those children, in front of THEM…” I couldn’t continue. The syllables dissolved into static before I could throw them past my lips. I fought the collar for air, my throat closing around the sheer mass of the hypocrisy. I couldn't say the word priest. I couldn't say man of God. I just stared at my brother, my hands trembling against my knees, completely emptied of the arguments I’ve been using to guard my soul. Paulie’s voice stayed even. “Then we’re finally talking about the right thing.” Paulie didn’t say anything else. He didn’t need to. I kept my back pressed hard against the passenger seat, staring out at the blurred dashboard lights. I was acutely aware that whatever waited on the outside of this glass would not be the same now that I had spoken her name. The car moved on through the dark, the space between us filled now with something heavier than silence. Not panic. Not clarity. Just the undeniable weight of having said what couldn’t be unsaid. Paulie didn’t say anything new in that final stretch as he turned the car toward the residence. He hadn’t needed to. The oppressive silence did the work, pressing against me all the way in the car. (Felicia, POV) Friday morning, as she sat at her desk with her hands folded, Felicia listened to the sounds of the office settle into their familiar pattern: Beatrice having her coffee and eating a muffin Felicia brought in. The computer was on but asleep, the screen dark. Father Jason’s door remained shut. She waited, not because she didn’t know what to do, but because whatever had changed between her and Father Jason could not be reached through work. She decided she could no longer handle the atmosphere between them. “These muffins are delicious, Felicia," Beatrice said between sips of coffee. “If I’m not careful, I’ll have to buy new clothes.” Smiling, her teeth sank back into the soft cake. Felicia kept her hands folded until her fingers felt numb. She unfolded them, resting them flat across the keys without typing. Her throat tightened once, surprising her. She swallowed, blinking at the dark monitor before she woke it up with a quick movement of the mouse. She kept coming back to Father Jason’s avoidance, which was worse than rejection. Not because rejection wouldn’t hurt. It would. She knew that. She’d lived inside the aftermath of her parents’ repudiation. After she walked out of her childhood home, never to return, she knew what clean absence felt like. It hurts, but it has an edge. It has a boundary. It tells you where you are. But this was different. This left her completely unanchored. One thing she knew: she needed clarity. Yet she didn’t know how to say it out loud without making it sound dramatic or needy, as if she were asking for something extra. When Father Jason finally appeared in the doorway, she felt the shift in the room before she saw him—the slight, involuntary tightening in her shoulders. He held a thin folder in one hand, his grip tight enough that the paper shook slightly. “I’ve got something for you,” he said, already moving toward her desk. She stood, her chair scraping the linoleum too loudly. “Of course.” He set the folder down beside her keyboard, careful not to let their fingers brush. The pages inside were uneven, some handwritten, others typed, the margins crowded with notes. Not his usual order. “I’ll need this back by tomorrow,” he added. His voice was even, professional. Too even. Felicia nodded. “That shouldn’t be a problem.” Neither of them moved. She waited for him to say something else—to explain the rush, or to soften the exchange with something ordinary. He didn't. Instead, his gaze slid past her shoulder, already looking toward the hallway. “If you need anything clarified,” she said gently, “just let me know.” He paused. His shoulders stiffened, a brief look of hesitation crossing his face before he shook his head. “No. I’m sure it will be fine.” And with that, he was gone back into his office. Felicia sat back down slowly. She opened the folder and scanned the first page, then the second. The words were good—thoughtful, careful—but they circled their subject, skirting something she couldn’t quite name. She marked a few spots where the phrasing tightened abruptly, where a thought seemed to stop short of its own conclusion. Then she remembered his explicit instruction: do not add or subtract anything from what he gave her. She closed the folder again without typing a word. Across the room, Beatrice glanced up over her glasses. “Everything okay?” “Yes,” Felicia said, her voice a little too quiet. “He’s just… pressed for time.” Beatrice smiled sympathetically. “That unexpected speech will do that to him.” Felicia returned the smile, but it didn’t settle. When she turned back to the folder, she began typing, keeping strictly to what was on the page, resisting the familiar impulse to smooth, to anticipate, to help beyond what had been asked. She left the rough edges intact. After she had partially finished, she knocked on his closed door. “Come in,” she heard him say. “Father,” she said, stepping just inside the doorway. “I need to ask—did I do something?” Her voice was low, kept within the room so Beatrice wouldn’t hear. Jason's expression changed—too fast, and heavily guarded. He opened his mouth as if he meant to answer, then stopped. “No,” he said finally, and the word arrived like a decision rather than an explanation. Felicia nodded once. She turned to leave but then pivoted back. “It’s just that… you seem… when you talk to me… distracted. I wondered if I did something wrong.” She watched him carefully. He ran a hand through his hair, his eyes dropping as his right hand squeezed the bridge of his nose, his left hand gripping the corner of the desk to steady his posture. When he finally spoke, his words were measured, careful. “Ms. Guzman, everything is fine. Of course you didn’t do anything wrong. Okay?” She met his gaze, and his broke first, returning to the papers on his desk. He didn’t ask why she would think she’d upset him; he didn’t acknowledge that the distance between them even existed. She left the room, closing the door behind her. She returned to her desk, her fingers instantly finding their rhythm on the keys, steady and mechanical, as if nothing had happened. But it had. Felicia sank back in her chair, the sudden stillness of the office a sharp contrast to the conversation she’d just left. She began to replay it all again, but the memory was starting to warp. Had she just invented the entire scene in Nate's room? Was her mind really that far off? She rested her forehead against her palm, staring down at the dark plastic of her keyboard. Everything is fine, he’d said. The words repeated in her head, over and over, until they reshaped themselves into a quiet, terrifying relief. If he was fine, then she was safe. It meant her feelings were still hers alone; he hadn’t looked through her mask and seen the truth she feared most. He hadn't decoded the look she'd given him as she knelt by her son's bed—the desperate, unsaid wish that he’d stop lingering in the edges of her life and just step into the frame. (Jason) The click of the door latch sounded clean, final, and my knees gave out immediately. I dropped back into the desk chair, my hands hanging between my knees, waiting for the room to stop tilting. Ms. Guzman, everything is fine. The name felt heavy on my tongue, a deliberate, cold weight I had thrown up between us to keep her at a distance. I thought I had managed the cadence of my voice. I thought the flat, professional delivery had hidden the tremor in my chest. But as I pulled my hands up to my face, my palms were slick with sweat. I couldn't look at the closed door. I ground the heels of my hands into my eye sockets, pressing down until the darkness bloomed with sharp, geometric spots of white light. The pressure didn't clear my head. The dull ache behind my eyes just sharpened, a stubborn heat expanding against my skull. I snatched my whistle from the blotter, the metal chain slipping twice through my fingers before I could grip it. There was no time to think about the way my breath had caught when she asked if she had done something wrong. No time to look at my left hand, which was still stiff from how hard I’d gripped the edge of the desk just to stay upright while she stood there. She had been watching me the entire time. My eyes fell on the legal pad. The text on the top sheet was a sharp, downhill slant, the letters crowding each other as they slid toward the margin. I looked at the ink, then down at my hands. Had the pages I gave her earlier looked like this? |
un: 
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