Chapter Eighteen – Raphael
Benjamin died at seven-thirty in the evening.
I made it to the hospice at seven forty-five.
His skin wasn’t even cold when I’d kissed his forehead. The nurses said it happened quickly. That was a lie. The cancer had been eating through him for the past six months.
Now he was gone. Welcomed into Heaven and into the loving embrace of our Lord.
I had come to confess to Benjamin, but I arrived too late to say goodbye.
And my sins would die with him.
No other man would understand what I had done. No one would see through the sins and recognize the pain beneath. Only Benjamin would know I hadn’t acted in defiance. I fell because I had no other way to rationalize the darkness inside me.
A darkness that split, cracked, and faded in the light of Honor’s touch.
She’d kissed me, and I’d felt whole.
She’d touched me, and I’d felt healed.
She’d offered herself to me, and I’d felt…
Something more damning to a priest than just the temptation of lust. Something that would ruin us both. I could confess away the filth of sex, but what stirred deep in me wasn’t so easily cleansed.
My first, only, and primary concern had to be to the church. To Christ. To my parish.
Anything more, even something as pure and natural as the wrong feeling for the right woman, was a greater betrayal to my collar than what happened on that altar.
Even Benjamin would have warned against those feelings.
I stayed with him for a while, but without his voice, without his guidance, it only pained me. I’d lost my mentor. My spiritual and surrogate father.
The only man I’d trusted with the truth of my past.
I left the hospice and let the nurses and funeral directors handle him. The diocese would arrange the funeral Mass. At least I’d be there. I couldn’t let him go without offering my own final prayer. Benjamin deserved that.
He’d tried so hard to help me.
It wasn’t his failure. It was mine.
I returned home to sit in the dark and quiet. I’d cleaned the house, but I still smelled candied apples. Still saw her outline in my sheets. Imagined her in my kitchen. The forbidden fruit that conquered me wasn’t plucked from a tree, it had been baked in the oven. And before I tossed the chocolate cake away, I had a piece.
It was the best cake I’d ever had.
And in another world, another time, another life, I might have been able to enjoy it. That slice. More slices. Maybe we always would have had cake after dinner.
I had whiskey to drink, but the glass stayed half full as the ice melted. My phone rang after a few hours, close to midnight.
The damn phone tree. I imagined they heard the news. Except the phone number wasn’t Judy heralding a charge.
It was the hospital.
I answered with a rasped greeting. The nurse chattered quickly, the usual for a page to someone in dangerous need.
“Father Raphael, we had an admission tonight from your parish.”
Not good news, but it rarely was. “Do you need me?”
“She’s stabilized now, but it might be good of you to come and give a bit of comfort. Her daughter is here now.”
“Who?”
“I’m sorry, Father. I’m only relaying the message. The patient was admitted by ambulance. Drug overdose.”
My blood drained, cold and useless.
Drug overdose?
Honor’s mother. Donna.
I swore, grabbing my car keys. “I’ll be right there.”
I sped to the hospital. Fortunately, it was late, traffic was light, and the police were without their radar detectors. But nothing would have kept me from reaching Honor.
My poor angel. She’d confessed more than just her reservations about her mother. She’d whispered her fears without words. Relapses. Debts. Sicknesses. The loss of her father. Everything wound within her mother’s former addiction, and even a woman as bright and good as Honor couldn’t see past the darkness to forgive what had happened.
I rushed into the hospital, and the staff directed me to the ICU’s waiting room. They didn’t know Donna’s condition, but they didn’t call me into her room. That was good news. At least I could deliver that to Honor.
I found her sitting alone on a bench in the back of the waiting room, her purse at her left, an uneaten candy bar to her right, and a bottle of Coke at her feet. She hugged her legs to her chest and rested her head on her knees. Tiny. Waiting.
Not broken yet.
But close.
“Honor.”
She looked up, her eyes widening as she saw me. Shock stiffened her movements, but she shed her fears and scrambled from the chair.
I took her in my arms, clutching her close as her fists twisted in my cassock.
Her words muffled in my shoulder. “If you’re here—is she…?”