‘Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.’
I close my eyes, and for a moment I’m back there, back in the confessional, dirt beneath my fingernails and a shovel in the boot of my car. Father Julian’s voice plays from the tape and at the same time I remember his words, voicing them in my mind a moment before I hear them. He sounds calm. We could have been talking about anything, and at the time I remember being curious about what might have been the worst confession he’d ever heard. Was mine going to be it? Or would mine be tame? And if Father Julian was listening to the confessions of cold-blooded killers, why in the hell wasn’t he doing something about it?
‘What does it make you, Father, when you commit a sin and feel nothing?’
‘I think that…’
‘Does it make me human? Am I still a man, Father Julian, or am I a monster?’
‘The fact you are here answers your question. However, what you do next also counts.’
‘I’m not going to the police.’
‘You need …’
‘He killed her, Father. He killed her and he probably would have killed others.’
‘That doesn’t make it right.’
‘But it doesn’t make it wrong either.’
I press stop and the voices shut off. If I could go back in time, would I do the same thing again? I don’t know. I think of Patricia Tyler and her request of a promise — Make him pay, she told me. Make sure he can never hurt another girl ever again.
I eject the tape and start unspooling the thread, not needing — or more accurately not wanting — to hear the rest of what I had to say. I can learn nothing from it. All it can do is make me hurt.
I carry the tape outside and touch a match to it. It shrinks and melts and the recorded memory burns away. Father Julian never blackmailed me and I figure he never blackmailed anybody else who was confessing to murder. It would have been too dangerous for him.
I sit back down inside. I start drumming my fingers, and then I go back into the list of names. I scroll through them, looking for something else, and soon I find Sidney Alderman’s name. I check the date. It’s a week after his wife died. I hunt out the tape and cue it up.
‘I guess you would call it a sin,’ Alderman says. His words are slurred. ‘Does that make us even?’
‘Have you been drinking?’
‘Drinking? Yeah, and why the hell not? She’s gone. I need something to keep me company.’
‘You still have your son.’
‘My son? You mean your son, don’t you?’
There is a pause that stretches out long enough for me to think the rest of the tape is going to be blank, but then Father Julian’s voice cuts back across the speaker and the conversation continues.
‘She told you.’
‘Part of me always knew. Or at least suspected.’
‘I’m sorry, Sidney.’
‘That’s it? You don’t want to give me an excuse? You don’t want to tell me you accidentally fucked my wife and got her pregnant?’
‘Please, Sidney, I didn’t mean anything to happen.’
I press stop. Jesus, just what kind of man was Father Julian?
How many marriages did he end? I press play. Both men are dead, one because of me, and perhaps the other because of me too. The two ghosts from Recent Past carry on talking. Neither could know they would end up sharing more than just Lucy Alderman and would share a similar fate.
‘Yeah, well I didn’t mean anything to happen either.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘Bruce … he’s, well, he’s different now. I see him differently.
He’s not my son and I don’t know what to do about it. One thing I do know is, I don’t want you anywhere near him.’
‘Are you going to leave?’
‘Leave? No. I’m not going to leave. See the thing, Father,’ he says, almost spitting out the word Father, ‘is this. She’s dead because of you. And I want you to know that. I’m going to be here every day for the rest of my life and you’re going to see me around, and you’re going to remember.’
‘What do you mean she’s dead because of me?’
‘Come on, Father. You can figure it out. You read the papers, right? That guy who killed her, he said she stepped out from nowhere.
Well that ain’t quite true. She was pushed out from nowhere.’
‘You pushed her?’
‘I hated her. She lied to me. She cheated on me. She kept the same fucking lie all those years. Were you still screwing her, Father?’
‘You killed her?’
‘You can’t do anything about it except see my face every day.
I want that guilt to kill you. It’s killing me. Does that make us even?’
‘I… I don’t…’
‘I thought it would make me happy. But the funny thing is, it doesn’t. In fact I feel worse. I love her so much. I blame you, and I want to kill you, but I don’t have the courage.’
‘Sidney, you need to …’
‘Don’t tell me what I need to do. You know, I even bought a gun. I was going to use it on her and then on you. But I can’t.
What happened to Lucy, well, that will hurt you more than what I could ever do.’