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Philippe trudged into Saint-Séverin, near his office in the Fifth. He hadn’t told even Elodie what he had said to God. A pastor for twenty-five years taking God’s name in vain to God’s face. He sighed as he lowered himself onto one of the stiff wooden chairs lined up to face the altar.
Inside the Gothic pile, where the columns soared skyward and clerestory windows let in light reminiscent of heaven, he was chilly even on a warm summer day. Philippe noted that the stone columns, erected in the early thirteenth century, were pitted, gouged, and scarred at their bases from all their years of being in proximity to people.
Even though these columns and arched ceilings were made of stone, what if they gave way? They’d held for eight hundred years, but they had to fall sometime. Why not right now? To punish him. To put him out of his misery over Meredith.
A tourist snapped pictures of the plain, modern altar. Philippe loved the contrast between the medieval and the contemporary.
He looked high above him at the far-away ceiling where the gray stone arches intersected. A brown stone rosette sat at each intersection. Those would be the first to fall.
But he didn’t feel an earthquake rumbling through the stone floor. He didn’t see cracks forming in the ceiling. No earthquake, no cracks, no rosettes and stone ceiling tumbling to earth in a cloud of dust. No, God wasn’t sending the roof down on his head today.
“I’m sorry,” he said. That would be the last time he’d say it. God had forgiven him, it was time to forgive himself.
If only God would save Meredith. What was taking so long? Would she ever break free? Would she be scarred for life? Oh dear God, what are you doing?
Philippe shifted his body, and his feet scuffed the stone floor where so many generations of French people had stood. When it came to God and his mysteries, it was humbling for Philippe to admit that, for all his years of reading his Bible, studying at seminary, thinking about God all the time, serving as best he could, he was just like everybody else. Everybody bit the apple. Nobody was any better, not the church ladies, and nobody was any worse, not Meredith.
And not him. He was like everybody else, just another bozo on the bus.
