Page 24 of Priest

“Do you have any brothers or sisters?”

She shakes her head. “I always wanted a sister. Someone I could talk to and do things with. I have a lot of cousins, but they’re not exactly people I gel with.”

“You’re from around here?”

She shakes her head. “Texas, but my family has always had ties in New Orleans. My mom died when I was a little girl in a car accident; a head on collision. And my father… well, let’s just say that he never acted like I existed in his company. Now he’s gone too, and I don’t even feel anything… does that make me a bad person?”

So she’s got no parents? But she does have lots of cousins and other family, not ones she’d care to interact with, though. She’d rather be homeless, living in a shelter. I find that incredibly sad.

“Of course not,” I say. “If you feel that way then that tells me your father wasn’t a good man.”

“He wasn’t,” she admits. “He did a lot of bad things.”

“Then it’s okay to not feel anything. I don’t know what you’ve been through, but if you’re on the street, then I’ll take a wild guess that it wasn’t good.”

She shakes her head. “It wasn’t. But that part of my life is over now. I’m free.”

“So, what can I or Father Dan or Linda do to help you get back into the community?” I have to be gentle with her.

She stiffens slightly. “I won’t be staying here. I just need enough money to get to Texas.”

“Does your family live there?”

“Most of them, but that’s not why I’m going.”

“Then why?”

She shrugs, and instantly I know she doesn’t want to tell me. “It’s a place I know well. I don’t know New Orleans… I can’t stay here, not long term.”

“Well, we can look at options in Texas. They may have somewhere you can transfer to, they have sister shelters, if that would make life easier for you?”

“It’s just an idea… I have… I have something to collect, an inheritance, or something.”

I frown. Okay?

I mean, I could give her the bus fare, it’d be nothing. But something tells me that she’s in two minds. I also don’t like the idea that she’d be all alone in another state.

“Are you definitely sure that there’s no family that can help you out short term?”

She turns to look at me as I meet her gaze for a second. She looks… sad again. Her newly found vigor and excitement slowly dissipated. “There’s nobody I’d trust.”

I nod. “Got it.”

“Sometimes you can have the biggest family in the world, but that doesn’t mean you're close to any one of them, if that makes sense.”

“It makes perfect sense.”

“I always thought I’d have a big family too, someday, but now I don’t know why you'd bring a child into this world when there’s so much misery and suffering.”

I watch the road as she turns to look out the window. “I guess I like to believe that there are good people in the world, too, even if sometimes it doesn’t feel like it.”

“You’re right, that was unkind of me.”

“No,” I say. “It’s the truth; sometimes there is so much suffering. My purpose is to try and relieve that just a little bit. Every act of kindness, no matter how small, could be the one thing that saves somebody. That’s how I like to look at it, and it’s what gets me through those dark days.”

She turns her head sideways against her knees, still hugging them to her chest. I wonder what’s behind those icy depths. I know she’s intelligent, and articulate. She’s not somebody who’s been on the streets for long, certainly not years. “You’re a good man, Priest.” Her words are soft.

“I try to be. But I wasn’t for a long time.”

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