The Darker Side

'Very. You hide little things. It's part of living with someone. You have to keep some things for yourself. But you don't hide big things. You don't hide a pregnancy, and you sure as hell don't hide an abortion. That's not who we were.'

'Did he know before his death?'

'No.'

'Do you think you would have told him?'

'I like to think so. But I'm not sure.'

'What happened to the baby, Smoky?'

It's THE question, of course. See me, the voice said. I do, I do, in bright neon, under the light of 10,000 times 10,000-watt lamps.

'It's not so much that I aborted the baby,' I say, 'but why.' My voice sounds empty. I am exhausted. I think I'd rather be anywhere than here, right now. 'See, I wanted to kill myself, but I knew I could never do that with a baby inside me. So I asked the doctor to take care of it.' Tired, tired, so tired. 'It was the last little bit of Matt, right there inside me, ready to grow and be born and live. He didn't have to end there, we didn't have to end there, do you understand? Sands didn't take that from me. He didn't kill my baby. I did that. Me.'

I start to weep.

'Is there more?' Father Yates asks.

'More? Of course there's more. I'm here, don't you see? I got rid of that baby so I could kill myself, but in the end I didn't even do it! The baby died for nothing! For no reason at all! I--I--' I don't want to say the words, but I need to. 'I murdered that baby, Father. M-m-murdered.'

I can't talk anymore. All I can do is cry. I don't cry for myself. I cry because one of the last actions in my marriage was to lie. I cry for the idea of Alexa having a baby brother or sister. Most of all, I cry for that child. She, or he, had been a chance to put something back of the things Sands had stolen. I threw that chance away in a moment of agony. It's not about the right and wrong of abortion. It's about the reasons for the decision, the pain, the selfishness, the maybes, might-haves, could-have-beens. It's about the misery of realizing you've done something terrible you can never take back, can never make up for.

I cry and Father Yates lets me. He doesn't speak, but I can feel his presence, and it comforts me.

I don't know how long it goes on. The grief blows itself out, not gone, just quieter.

'Smoky, I'm not going to throw a lot of scripture at you, here. I know that your faith isn't up to that. I'll simply say, yes, what you did, why you did it, was wrong. You know this. But what is the real sin?

What is it that makes what you did so terrible? It is the fact that you threw away the gift of life. I don't care where you think that gift came from--God, primordial soup, a little bit of both--but life is a gift, and I think you know that. I think you know it more than most people, because of what you do.'

'Yes,' I whisper.

'Then, don't you see? Continuing to deny yourself forgiveness, continuing to deny yourself love, is to continue the same sin--because all of it means to deny yourself life.'

'But, Father--how can I let myself be happy, really happy? I can't change what I did.'

'You atone. You don't forget. You don't justify. You change. You're raising the daughter of your friend. Raise her well. Be a good mother to her. Teach her to love life. You have a man in your life? Love him. If you marry him, don't keep secrets from him. You have a job that lets you imprison those who would take life from others. Do that job well, and you'll save countless lives. It's right that you've suffered for this sin, but you're not evil, Smoky, and it's time, if you won't forgive yourself, to let someone else forgive you. I've given you your penance. Maybe it will take you a lifetime to do it. Now, I absolve you of your sins in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.'

They're just words. I'm not right with God, and I'm not sure I ever will be. I may never see the inside of a confessional booth again, and I secretly think Jesus might just have been a carpenter. But Father Yates had been right: saying it to someone else, out loud, and seeing that the world didn't end as a result, gives me a relief I had never expected. I feel . . . clean. The sorrow is still there and that's okay. Only the men I hunt don't regret.

'Thanks, Father.'

I don't know what else to say.

'It's my pleasure.' I can almost feel him smiling. 'You see? There's plenty of adventure to be had, doing what I do.'

'No kidding,' I agree.

Some people explore the outer world. They climb mountains, sail the oceans, hunt with the natives, so to speak. Some find their adventure in excess, as Hemingway did, running with the bulls, downing the booze, living larger than life. Then there are the Father Yates and me types, we spend our days spelunking through the inner world, where something new and maybe terrible always lies beyond the bend. 'Here there be tigers' the old explorers used to put on the maps. That warning applies most to the territory between the ears and inside the heart.

To think that you could come inside this wooden box and talk to another human being about the things you could never tell anyone else . . .

'Holy shit,' I whisper.

'Smoky . . .'

'Oh my God.'

Immerse yourself in the environment. I sure as shit had done that. And the answer had been staring me in the face. It was simple, it was direct, it was right.

'Smoky, are you all right?'

I stand up. Where did he get access to their secrets? Where else?

'Father, I think I have some bad news. I think someone else has been inside your confessional, and I'm not talking about God.'

29

'IT IS KIND OF A PERFECT ENVIRONMENT FOR PLANTING A bug,' Alan observes. 'It's dark inside, and people have their attention fixed on themselves, not on what's around them.'

We're standing just outside the confessional. I'd rushed out with my tears still drying on my face.

It makes sense. We'd looked at the idea of support groups, AA meetings, things like that, but why cast such a wide and imperfect net, if secrets were what you were after? The Preacher was all about religion. If you're a religious person, who do you tell your deepest, darkest secrets to, the kinds of secrets we've been seeing on those video clips?

Your priest.

You close that confessional door and let it all hang out. I had, and I was the ultimate lapsed Catholic. The obvious worry in terms of confidentiality would be the priest, that's where the penitents' concerns would lie, not on the esoteric possibility of someone bugging the confessional.

Father Yates paces back and forth. He is troubled, angry, perhaps a little sick. I understand. I think about what we just did in there, and I shiver a little thinking about someone else listening in. It must be ten times worse for him, because he'll feel responsible.

'If this is true, it's terrible, just terrible,' he mutters. 'Parishioners won't feel safe coming to confession. The ones that have are going to feel betrayed. There will be crises of faith.'

The poor man looks more agitated and upset than anytime since I met him. It's disturbing; I've become used to the comfort of his unflappability.

'Father, I need to ask you something.'

He stops pacing. He runs a hand through his hair.

'Of course. Anything.'

'I need confirmation. You said you hadn't watched any of the video clips of his victims. What about the one of Rosemary? He included that in his initial 'thesis.' '

'Absolutely not. I skipped through it. I couldn't watch that.'

'I need to ask you about the secret she revealed in that clip. It was something pretty bad, and it was something he already knew. I'm going to tell you what it was, and I need to know if she revealed it to you in confession.'