Page 35 of The Sinner and the Gunslinger
I’ve done it before when I thought she’d died. What if something happens again?
“Bless me Father,” I sigh, “for I have sinned. It’s been... fuck knows how long since my last confession.”
“Quattro settimane.” Cisco’s eyes crinkle as he holds up four fingers. The tattoo of a cross covers a jagged scar on his ring finger.
“Of course, you’d be counting.” I chuckle.
“One of us must, no?”
We share a small smile.
“Go on,” he prompts.
“Well, I guess you know about the lie Wes and I told to come here.” I hold my breath. Leila’s face flashes in my mind. Usually, she’s scowling, but after today in the barn, she’s smiling at me. “You know I lived in a group home when I was young.”
He nods.
“Well, for most of that time, I knew Leila.”
“The Sinner?” His brows knit together. “The angry one?”
I smile. “Yeah.”
He nods, indicating I should continue.
“She was family to me.” I lean forward and brace my elbows on my knees. “She reminded me of my sister, although I’d never had a chance to meet her. Not really. For about half a decade, I protected and sheltered Leila. I looked out for her well-being. Well, as best I could, being a teenager myself.” I rub my knuckles where the scars used to be. Thea’s healing erased them. “We were in the home for rejects. No one wanted to adopt me because of my reputation—I liked to fight. And the story of my sister’s death followed me everywhere. They all thought a bad kid like me obviously killed my sister. Leila faced similar prejudice. Everywhere she went, fires started.”
“She did not start them?”
I shake my head. “They blamed her, but she told me something evil followed her.”
“You saw this evil?”
“No. But I believed her. The same thing happened with my sister.”
Silence answers me. I glance at the priest and find his eyes filled with pain. But the moment he catches me looking, he puts on his clerical mask, hiding the evidence just as Thea’s healing erased my scars.
“And your sin?” he prompts.
“I lied to her. There was a big fire at the home. I promised I was going into a burning building to rescue her favorite toy, and that I’d be back. But I realized something when I got in there. The toy was called Snuggles. The demon that killed my sister said something about snuggling as he set them both on fire. It made me fear the same demon was after Leila too. It even made me think that the demon was after Leila all along and not my sister. I thought that if I left then and there, everyone would think I had died in the fire. I’d be free to hunt down the demon and... get away with doing things I couldn’t if I was alive.”
“She thought you were dead?”
I nod, then rub my eyes. “She thought it was her fault too.”
“Did you know she would blame herself?”
“Honestly, I could only think about protecting her at the time.” I shake my head. “The thought of losing her after I lost my sister was too much.”
Cisco is silent for so long I’m afraid to look at him. He already thinks I’m a piece of shit for what we did to him and Dom. Now this.
“Ezekiel.” The tone of his voice gives me nothing. I can’t meet his gaze. “I had a sister once.”
I look up. The pain in his eyes is a wound reopened.
“You did?”
He nods. The pain recedes momentarily, and a wistful smile tugs at his lips. “She was a beautiful, bright and talented ballerina. She was going to be a star.”
