Chapter 1

 

        The war started today. Rain falls as the news repeats on my office radio. I adjust my collar, run my finger between it and my neck to relieve the chafing, cross myself and pray for those first victims along the banks of the Tigris.

        Artie. Artie. In the year since you died, through my grievous fault, Marybeth has come to me for solace and with her I find comfort as well. For weeks she has been watching the run up to this day and will call tonight about Daniel’s National Guard unit. If your son is deployed, would my promise to watch over him be broken? He’s too young to be sent halfway around the world, and I can't follow him to a war zone.

        By now the congregation must be gathering for a sparsely attended evening Mass and afterward the Sacrament of Reconciliation. How warm and safe they imagine themselves, during this season of Lent, as they huddle in the pews and gossip with their neighbors.

        I wrap the amice about my shoulders, pull the alb over my head, shove my arms through its sleeves and thank our Lord for the strength He provides. The thought of kneeling before the altar, silent but for the rattle of cheap Valium beneath my vestments, makes me shudder. I take the vial from my pocket, untangle my rosary and hide the pills in my desk. Now the stole, its fringes swishing, the maniple on my sleeve then the chasuble over all.

        Pacing around that uneven floor board, never repaired in all my years here, I am struck by a vision of the darkened church. Rows of empty pews become the rows on my wall calendar, with lines slashing across the weeks and months since the accident. For me it has been a year of tossing and turning in bed, of sleeping pills, of waking before dawn unable to exorcise my culpability.

        The telephone rings and makes me jump. It can only be Marybeth.