I bought furniture. I hung photos of Karl and Tre in my bedroom and put a miniature one inside a locket that I wore on a chain around my neck. As I worked and feathered my nest, summer became fall.
My hair grew out with renewed vigor, and short curls flattered me. I cut way back on my alcohol consumption and didn’t miss drinking at all. Rob gave me high fives for that.
I gave away my black hooded coat, bought new clothes. Louise said, “Let’s go get your nails done. Maybe splurge for a pedi, too, while we’re at it.” Seeing hot-pink lacquer on the ends of my fingers and toes was unexpectedly hilarious.
I socialized with new friends and wrote to my old, far-flung ones, Sabeena, Tori, Zach. And I went to church every Sunday.
Occasionally, I went during the week at lunchtime.
That particular Wednesday, the church was almost as empty as it was when I stumbled into St. Paul’s on my first day back in Cambridge. I went to “my” end of the first pew and had a one-way, silent conversation with God, and when I opened my eyes, I expected to see Father Aubrey.
I was disappointed that he wasn’t there.
I crossed myself and left the church and almost walked right into him as he was coming out of the rectory.
“I’m heading out for a burger and beer,” James said. “Care to join me?”
So far, I’d only had coffee that day, and I gladly accepted his offer.
Chapter 72
THE PICKLED Hedgehog was an Irish-style pub on Massachusetts Avenue, less than a ten-minute walk from the church. The interior was hunter green, and strip lighting sparkled around the ceiling’s perimeter. Father James Aubrey and I sat down at a table with a view of the street.
James said to the waiter, “Heineken from the tap. Brigid?”
“Same for me.”
When the waiter returned with beer, I told James about my new patient, a man who’d been living in his car until he found his way to Prism.
“Turns out he’s my age,” I said. “We went to middle school together.”
“Meth user?” James asked.
“Yes, sorry to say.”
The burger was perfect. The fries kind of sent me to the moon, and I was enjoying the company.
But James was distracted.
He kept his phone on the table, and when it buzzed, he said, “Excuse me,” and walked outside. I saw him through the glass, looking agitated, and then he got angry. When he returned to our table, he apologized and said, “I have a confession to make.”
“You’re confessing to me? Maybe we should have another beer first?”
“Maybe an IV from the tap.”
“That bad?” I asked.
“The absolute worst,” he said.
The last time a priest had made a confession to me, I had been holding his hand when he died. I looked into James’s sad eyes and said, “Talk to me.”
“I’m about to go on trial for something I didn’t do.”
“What are you charged with?”
“I am seriously afraid of shocking you, Brigid.”
“My shock threshold is pretty high.”
“I’m accused of sexually abusing a boy ten years ago, when he was fifteen.”
“Oh, no.”
Father Aubrey slugged down some beer, then gave me a wry look. “I’m not a pedophile. My accuser is lying. My lawyer is good, but he says we don’t have a bulletproof defense, and priests tend to lose child-abuse cases ninety-nine point eight percent of the time.
“He wants me to settle out of court. Save myself the stress of losing at trial. There’s only so much money my accuser can get from me, but to settle is to admit I’d done something to him. Which I did not do. And if I settle to get this done with, very likely he’ll go after the school and the archdiocese. I did nothing to him, and I can’t let him get away with saying that I did.”
I was shocked, after all.
In 2002, the Boston Globe uncovered a pattern of sexual abuse of minors by Catholic priests, which was followed by a nationwide scandal encompassing accusations in the thousands. The Globe revealed that the archdiocese had protected hundreds of priests, paying off potential litigants, passing the priests on to other parishes. When cases had gone to trial, the Church lost, and it was common knowledge that the Boston Archdiocese had paid out more than a $100 million in damages in the last twenty years.
“The man who is accusing me,” said James Aubrey, “was in one of my classes when I taught history at Mount St. Joseph. He might have had a learning disability. I worked with him after school a few days a week. It was nothing but class work.
“He flunked high school, and when I was charged with sexual assault, I didn’t actually remember him. I hadn’t even thought of him in ten years.
“I called him. I asked him, what the hell? He said, ‘You shouldn’t have done it, Father.’ He lied to me. To me.”
“He may have been taping the call.”
“Probably. These past months have been awful, Brigid. I say, ‘I didn’t do it,’ and people I’ve known for years look at me like I’m filth. That kills me. This whole thing is really testing my faith.”
James paid the check and asked, “Mind coming back to St. Paul’s? I want to show you something.”
Chapter 73