Confessions by Ryne Douglas Pearson Read Free Book Online

apologetic. A realization that she has intruded on something. It is a reaction I did not intend. But feigning small-talk is beyond me at this moment. At this new place in my being.
    “I’ll let you be,” she says, and steps past me to Katie’s grave. The hand which had held mine comes out of her pocket once more and rests atop the headstone. She holds it upon the cold granite for only a moment. Her gaze meets mine briefly, the look in her eyes one of punctuation. The end of something. Goodbye. Without a word she looks away and moves past, weaving through the headstones. In any movie worthy of celluloid I would call out to Chris, and she would turn, and some understanding would come just in the look between us. But life does not spill flickering from a projector in a darkened space for communal experience. It is mostly solitary, often unknown but for those in the midst of its plodding suddenness. Sometimes life shatters the ordinary, as words from a dying man have for me. Sometimes it is a mostly forgotten acquaintance walking away, and not calling out to them as they make the distance too great to bridge with voice.
    When Chris is gone I turn back to my sister’s grave, and again I am confronted with my reasoning for coming here. I can ask forgiveness from God for my failings in the dark hours just passed. For withholding comfort from a dying man as he begged for such with his last breaths. This I can seek through private exchange with the Almighty, or in hushed confession to one of my colleagues. Here, though, I stand wondering what it is I should expect from this communion with my absent sister. Are there words I should speak over her resting place? Should I expect some cathartic release from doing so?
    Or am I here because what happened is more prelude than postscript.
    We got away with it…
    The terrible past given texture with his words. The vague descriptor ‘two assailants’ less so now. One bloodied face has been painted on a blank wondering. A name has been affixed to the same. Eric.
    We…
    Still, there is another. An unknown. A partner in the taking of my sister’s life.
    A flock of spritely birds streaks over the cemetery. I look up and track them across the brightening sky, their number moving in symmetry, as if guided by some singularity. Toward some place. Or purpose.
    Where, from here, do I go? I ask this of myself as the flock disappears over the slumbering neighborhood surrounding the cemetery. What is it that I will do with what I now know?
    Were another life mine, one where I was not bound by the strictures of my calling, I would certainly share what was told me with those charged with solving my sister’s murder. Were I another person entirely in this alternate personal universe, one who embraced vengeance above justice, I might seek out the remaining party in this new reality and visit upon them all the pain which I and my family and all who loved Katie have experienced since her killing.
    After my actions so few hours ago, where I let who I am come before what I am, I wonder if I am worthy of calling myself a priest. I fear that I have toed one foot over a line that, once crossed, cannot be erased and drawn further along a path at my convenience. That line is there for a reason. A sacred reason. And if I do not understand that, and accept that, even embrace it, then what have I been in the years since taking my vows? A pretender? I have no illusion of being perfect, either as a man or a man of God. Adornment with a stiff white collar is no guarantee of purity or propriety. Those of my calling have demonstrated the ability to sully their name and their church with maddening frequency, and though their numbers are small in comparison to the greater body who give with hearts willing and motives pure, actions do thunder, while vows crumble with barely a whimper.
    We deceive ourselves in solitary certainty. Am I that kind of person? That kind of man?
    I look to Katie’s grave again. I know that a