Page 46 of Of Sinners & Salvation
“Are you sure this is safe?” I ask.
“Oh, no, it’s not safe at all,” Walker says. “That’s why it’s the last place they’ll look. Stay a minute too long, and the tide will close this up and push you back every time you try to swim out. At least a couple people have died here, or so the legends go.”
“And you know about it, how?” Mercy asks, glancing around at the shadowy enclosure.
“Used to come looking for bones here as a kid,” Walker says. “It was forbidden by our parents, of course, which made it all the more alluring.”
His words draw my eyes to Mercy. Truer ones have never been spoken. She’s the forbidden fruit, the greatest temptation I’ve ever known. She’s everything I want, and the one thing I can’t have—a student.
Knowing she’d let me have her only makes it worse, makes the yearning painful in its exquisite impossibility. As she sits down on the sand, making herself comfortable after the long walk, I wonder how I’m going to survive the next three years of seeing her at Thorncrown, possibly having her in my classes, in my confessional. I tell myself it will go away over time, that the temptation will fade, but it does nothing to dispel my desire.Neither does telling myself that I’m far too old for her, or that it would be too imbalanced, unethical, and uncomfortable for the other men she’s with.
They take their places around her, and I step away, sinking onto a slick stone ledge. Moonlight shimmers over the churning water sloshing against the rocky shore, and further out, in a line reflected across the surface as the crescent descends toward the mainland in the distance. The long hike kept us warm, but now that we’re still, the damp chill in the air sinks into my bones. I shiver, glancing at the group that I will never belong to. Angel pulls Mercy into his side, and Saint takes his place on her other side. Heath sits beside Saint, leaning on his shoulder, eyes closed in exhaustion or contentment or a mixture of the two.
Walker stands at the water’s edge, watching the tide recede as the night stretches, that long, solemn hour before dawn. After a time, he turns back, glancing from the group at the center of the cave, to me at one edge, to the empty side across from me. He takes a step toward me, giving me the opportunity to decline the company. When I give the slightest nod, he comes to join me on the lip of stone jutting out from the wall.
“What’s on your mind, Daddy Dante?”
“You’ll make a good priest,” I tell him. “I wasn’t sure, when you asked about joining the ministry. But you read people well, and you take everything in stride.”
“Thanks, man,” he says. “But I’m not sure if that’s what I want to do anymore.”
“If you’re uncertain, it’s not your calling.”
“Yeah, that’s kinda why I left seminary school,” he says. “I’m not sure I belong there. I’m not sure I belong anywhere.”
“You seem to have belonged here at one time.”
“Yeah, we came here when I was a kid,” he says. “But my mom had a falling out with the family when she found out someof the shady things they were doing. Not like what y’all think they’re doing, but like, adoption-for-profit type thing. It didn’t sit right with her.”
“Or you, I’m guessing,” I say. “You’re here helping us, after all.”
“How’d you know this is what you wanted to do?” he asks. “That the priesthood was where you belonged?”
“I’m not sure I did,” I admit. “It was a family thing for me. My father was a priest.”
“He must have been a good one, if you wanted to do the same thing. I definitely don’t want to follow in my dad’s footsteps.”
“No, he wasn’t a good one,” I say, taking off my glasses to wipe the lenses on the hem of my shirt. “So, in that way, I guess I did follow in his footsteps.”
“Ah, come on, you’re not so bad,” he says. “Just because you want to bang Mercy? That means you’re a man, not that you’re a bad priest.”
“Why would you think that?” I ask, carefully replacing my glasses.
“Oh, you know, just because you were watching the other guys nail her like Pontius Pilate nailed Jesus to the cross,” he says, cracking a smile.
“You’re right,” I say, not correcting his error. “Desire makes me human. It’s acting on those desires that makes me a bad priest. Maybe it’s not my calling either.”
“Damn,” he says. “I guess we’re both having a crisis of faith.”
“Yes,” I say. “I think I’ve been having one most of my life. Watching the entire community celebrate and revere my father, the man who wore the face of my father in public, and knowing the man behind the face in private was an entirely differentperson, could make even the most devout Catholic question the church.”
“That’s rough,” he says. “So… A good priest and a bad father?”
“Something like that,” I say.
“Was your mom around at least?”
I nod. “She wasn’t spared his rage either. She took the brunt of it. And the kicker is, the one time I was able to defend her, the one time I stood up to him that made a difference, after watching him go after her for years and being too scared or too weak to protect her…”
