The Darker Side

exists?'

'Confession, so long as you are truly contrite, can only be a good thing, Agent Barrett. I truly believe that.'

'Smoky. Call me Smoky.'

'All right. Smoky, do you have any sins to confess?'

I have many sins, so many, Father, sins of pride, sins of envy, sins of lust. I have murdered men. In self- defense, it's true, but some part of me enjoyed killing them. I love that I got to kill the man who took my Matt and my Alexa from me. It pleases me forever. Sins?

I have sinned against my family, my friends, those who loved and trusted me. I have lied--a lot. I drink in the night. I have only lain with two men in my life, but I have done it with abandon. Sometimes for love, sure, but sometimes just for the pleasure they could give me. Is it a sin to have taken joy at the feel of cock in my mouth, to have whispered into Matt's or Tommy's ears 'fuck me fuck me fuck me, dear sweet God, fuck me'? Does God appreciate my bringing Him there, making Him a part of that sweaty moment?

I have gazed on the suffering of others, on their victimization, on their murdered and mutilated corpses, and I have taught myself how to turn away. How to shut off the images and the emotions, to go home and eat spaghetti and watch TV as though their pain never existed or didn't matter. I have made a job out of hunting evil men. I get paid a salary because people die.

Are these sins?

I shift on the kneeler. All those things that had run through my head may or may not be sins. None of them are the thing that wakes up the monster in my mind.

See me, it says, but the voice is gentle this time, and the voice, of course, is me.

I feel tears running down my face. I'm going to tell him, I realize. I was always going to tell him, I knew it the moment I walked in here. That's why the sweat and nausea went away.

'I did a terrible thing, Father,' I whisper. 'I think because I did this thing I'll never let myself feel real joy. I'll never let myself really love someone again. Because I don't deserve it.'

Saying it aloud brings out the anguish in earnest. The griefmonster tries to crawl up and out of my throat as a wail. I fight him down, let him detonate inside me. It's too quiet here; Alan would hear me. I clench my hands together in a single fist and I push it against my mouth. I bite down till I break the skin. I taste a little of my own blood and shiver with my own pain.

Father Yates has been quiet, waiting. He speaks again. His voice is gentle. Safe. He reminds me, for a moment, of my real father, not God, but my dad, who always kept the creatures under my bed at bay.

'Put it into words, Smoky. Just let it go. I'll listen, I won't judge. What you say here will never be repeated by me to another. Whatever burden you're carrying, it's time to put it down.'

I nod, tears still running down my face. I know he can't see me nod, but my throat has closed up, and I can't speak. He seems to sense this.

'Take your time.'

I sniffle and he waits. As the moments pass, the hand clenching my throat loosens. I'm able to speak again.

'After the attack, I was in the hospital for a while. Sands had cut my face down to the bone in most places. He'd sliced me on other parts of my body and had burned me with a cigar. None of it was life threatening, but I was in a lot of pain and they were concerned about infection because some of the wounds were so deep.

'I was set on dying, Father. I had absolutely, positively, one hundred percent decided that I was going to be blowing my own brains out. I was going to get out of that hospital and I was going to go home, get my affairs in order, and kill myself.'

'Go on.'

'This is all stuff everyone knows. I had to see a shrink--and you know how that turned out. The point is, people know I wrestled with the whole suicide thing. They know about the rape, and they can sure see the scars. That's all safe stuff. Stuff they can understand and excuse. 'Of course she was suicidal, look at what she went through, poor thing!' You understand?'

'Yes.'

'And some part of me, Father, some part of me ate it up. All that sympathy. Poor, poor Smoky. Isn't she strong? Isn't it admirable how she overcame and went on?'

The bitterness is rising in me like black coffee, or sour milk. I can almost taste it in my mouth. It's the flavor of self-loathing. No, that's not strong enough. Self-hate.

'So tell me that thing they didn't know, Smoky. The thing that wasn't admirable.'

The rush of hostility makes me a little dizzy with its ferocity. Heat blooms in my cheeks and forehead. Pure anger, the do-or-die of an animal with its back against the wall. This secret is going to go down fighting. It can see the light, and the light makes it rage and scream.

'Fuck God,' I breathe, and love the taste of the words, the thrill of them.

'I'm sorry?'

'Fuck God and His forgiveness. Why should I ask that asshole to forgive me for anything? What did my mother need to be forgiven for? Did you know that in the last days she begged us to kill her? She was in so much pain, she begged us to do it, to take her life. And she was the most devout Catholic I knew!'

'And did you?' he asks, his voice calm.

'What? Fuck you. No.' The rage is a tidal wave, it has swept me up and I am helpless against it.

'Then tell me what you did do, Smoky. You don't have to ask God for forgiveness, if you don't want to. But you do have to ask yourself.'

I grind my teeth and grip my hands together until they're numb.

'Forgive myself ?' I snarl in a whisper. 'What, just because I say it out loud here, it's suddenly going to all be okay?'

'No. But it'll be a start. I can't tell you why it makes a difference to tell someone else what we've done, Smoky, but it does. It's only words, but yes, you will feel better. You need to tell me what you did and then realize that the world didn't end because you told me.'

That calm is unstoppable. It's a little juggernaut of faith, patient and inexorable. If he had to empty a swimming pool with a spoon, he'd do so without complaint, however long it took. It makes me feel safe and hostile in tandem. I want to hug him and slap him all at once.

'I was pregnant,' I blurt out.

Silence.

I think, for a moment, that he's judging me already, but I realize he's just waiting.

'Go on,' he says.

'Just a few months. It was a big surprise. I used a diaphragm. Matt and I weren't old, but we weren't exactly spring chickens either. It just . . . happened.'

'Did your husband know?'

You're too smart for me, Father.

'No. I wasn't sure I was going to tell him either. I wasn't sure I wanted to keep the baby.'

'Why not?'

'I don't know. Selfishness, I guess. I was in my late thirties, career on the rise, all the usual excuses. Don't misunderstand, I hadn't decided to get rid of it, not for sure. But I was thinking about it, and I was hiding it from Matt.'

'Did you have a lot of secrets in your marriage?'

'No. That's the thing. Well, part of the thing. Matt and I, we were lucky. I know all about the ways a marriage can go off the rails. Men cheat, women cheat, men lie, women lie. Mistresses kill the wives, wives kill the husbands, or maybe they're fine, but cancer kills them both anyway. Sometimes it's a long, slow death. Years of little secrets turn into big distrusts, and the marriage is less about love than endurance.

'Matt and I? We never had that. We had fights. We could spend days not talking to each other. But we always came back together in the end, and we loved each other. I never cheated on him, and I'm sure he never cheated on me.'

'This moment then--hiding this from him--this was unusual.'