Page 35 of Sin With Me

The room was dark. Curtains had been pulled to cover the bright sun coming in from the outside. I wasn’t sure how Father John was planning on leading this evening’s mass, but he always managed, and he never let Father Cameron take the lead. Come to think of it, I’d never heard Father Cameron lead mass, not even once, and I attended every Sunday.

“Thank you, dear. You know, you remind me so much of Joanna. She used to bring me tea just likethis.”

“I don’t know any Joanna intown.”

“She used to work here and live in the parish house. Then one day, she left and I never saw her again.”

“Why did she leave?”

“Pace used to be what a priest would call a living hell. Violent criminals, murders, and death.”

“This smalltown?”

He nodded. “Drugs, prostitution, money smuggling, tormenting our citizens…” He sighed.

I still couldn’t picture the image he was painting. It was impossible to think of Pace as anything close to violent. But then again, Father John was old, and his memory became more like Swiss cheese every week. I didn’t like the way he looked. I didn’t like seeing him this weak. “Father John, tell me what happened.”

“One day, they justleft.”

“Just likethat?”

“Well, there might have been a chess game involved,” he chuckled. “And a lot of God’s grace.”

“What do youmean?”

But he waved his hand in dismissal. As Father John squeezed a few more coughs into a tissue, I looked around his room. He liked to keep photographs of him and his parishioners in his office, but I hadn’t realized that he had them in his room as well. I was about to leave when my gaze caught a specific photograph. I picked it up and off the mantle and brought it closer to myface.

Is that my mother?

The image was old, in predominantly sepia colors, but the resemblance was uncanny. She stood in front of what appeared to be a chapel. I didn’t have any family artifacts left over from my mother’s younger years. In fact, my mother had never kept anything from her childhood. Even if she had, I wouldn’t have known; after the house fire, we’d lost everything

I picked up the photograph and turned it over on the other side. I held my breath as I read the meticulous handwriting that was identical to my mother’s.

Learn from yesterday, live for today, and hope for tomorrow.

“Father John, where did you get this picture?” I asked.

“Oh, that’s my Joanna I told you about.”

If I had any doubts about why my mother had sent me here before, they all disappeared. She had a reason. His name was Jack, and I had to find him no matterwhat.

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