“Five minutes,” Abel says and turns to walk out of the small chapel to the side of the cathedral. It dates back a century before the cathedral was built, and they preserved it during the construction of the cathedral itself.
My classmates and I took first Communion here years ago. As I look down the aisle, I remember walking toward the altar in our pretty white dresses with hands bound by our rosaries. Before the ceremony, we’d made our first confessions. There had been eight of us, and I remember shifting uncomfortably in the pew as I nervously waited my turn.
I remember the creaking door of the confessional, the smell of it as I knelt on the hard wooden kneeler—no cushion for the sinner—and spoke my sins aloud.
The priest’s face was just a profile, barely that in the darkness behind the mesh. I hadn’t had much to confess, so I’d made things up. I thought if I didn’t, he’d think I was lying.
Afterward, I joined the others at the foot of the altar and say my requisite number of Hail Marys and a few more than Father had prescribed because I’d lied to him.
Being in here after all this time takes me back. I shudder and wrap my arms around myself. It’s cold, but it’s not just the cold that has me shivering.
I walk around the room barefoot, the engravings on the tombs so old they’re just scratches in the icy stone beneath my feet. I take in each of the twelve Stations of the Cross. Witness Christ’s crucifixion. But when I get to the altar and look up at him, I think about how he could let this happen. How, if God were real, could he let this happen to me? To my dad?
And Hazel.
She’d run away days before her wedding.
How could he let it happen to her?
Or maybe this is his plan. Maybe The Society is right, and God is behind them, and God wants one of the Moreno sisters.
I walk to the back of the church playing with the edge of the lace veil. The confessional is in the same place, and I go to it, touching the rickety old wooden door. Its grooves are dusty. No one uses this confessional anymore, I guess.
Pushing it aside, I enter the little space I’d entered one time before. It’s smaller than I remember. The mesh is metal now, the design a thousand crosses. I always wondered if the priests hearing the confessions knew who we were. If they remembered our sins.
I kneel on that kneeler now, then sit back on the small bench.
“God.”
I wipe my face, then instinctively pull my bangs down over my eye. I remember the look on Mercedes’s face when she’d seen it. Like she’s never seen anything so terrible. Bitch.
I take a deep breath in. The smell in here is different than I expect. A hint of cologne beneath the incense and wood polish. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe they do still use the confessional.
Sighing, I let my breath out, then close my eyes and place my knees back on that kneeler, bringing my hands together in prayer.
“If you’re there…if you’re real…” A sob breaks into my words, and I use the heels of my hands to wipe my eyes, careful of the mascara and black liner Mercedes applied.
I want to ask him not to let this happen. But that’s stupid. It’s happening. So, I ask a different favor.
I bow my head. “Don’t let him be a monster,” I whisper.
Something creaks.
I gasp, my eyes flying open, and I swear I see movement on the other side of the mesh separating confessor from sinner.
“Father?” I ask, peering closer when he doesn’t answer. “Is someone there?”
I hear the chapel door open, then my brother’s footsteps. It can only be him. “Ivy,” he bellows when he doesn’t see me. “For fuck’s sake, where are you?”
I look from the closed door of the confessional to the mesh behind which the priest would sit and back as my brother roughly yanks the rickety door open, making it rattle on its hinges. He then grabs my arm.
“You’re hurting me!” I cry out.
“Why are you hiding? You think I’m so stupid I won’t find you?”
“I wasn’t hiding, you jerk!”
“Christ. You’re a fucking mess.” He wipes what I guess is mascara from under my eye, then takes a breath in. He pulls the veil down over my face and seems to collect himself.
It’s almost time.