Sweetest Sin(81)

But at the moment he died, when he took his final breath? I hadn’t been there to hold his hand.

I’d never forgive myself.

I declined invitations to join my fellow priests for a dinner to honor our friend. But I didn’t want to remember Benjamin. Didn’t want to think of the day he welcomed me into his home.

Or I’d remember what came before.

And I fought every day, every night, every beat of my heart, and my every cursed breath to forget my life before Benjamin saved me.

I went home and sat in the dark. At midnight, she knocked on the back door.

I knew it was her. No one else would visit so late.

The door opened, but Honor stilled as she looked at me. No cassock. No collar. Just a t-shirt and sweats over an aching body. The parish could survive without me for a time. I took the funeral and the next day off and planned to sleep away my misery.

Honor clutched a cake carrier. She stepped inside but handed it to me with an averted glance.

“Pineapple upside-down cake.” She prevented me from popping the lid. “Maybe…wait until I’m gone.”

Prudent.

I set the cake on the kitchen counter, but Honor didn’t follow. She twisted her fingers in the folds of her dress. Concert black. She hadn’t changed from the funeral. St. Cecilia’s choir sang for the Mass.

I didn’t remember hearing a word.

“I found something in the church,” she said. “Took a picture.”

She offered me her cell, but I knew what she had found. I didn’t bother with the picture on her phone, not when I had the real one in my living room. I grabbed the frame resting on the end table and handed it to her.

The photo was of me at age fourteen—one of the first pictures I had taken of me where I actually smiled. I stood next to Benjamin, posing with him in his new robes, bishop purple instead of priest black.

We both had copies of the photo. The women’s group must have made a collage of his life to put in the church. They included this moment. Smart. It was one of the greatest days in both our lives.

“Bishop Polito?” Honor stroked the photograph. Her finger drew slowly over the image of me. “You said he was your mentor.”

I wasn’t ready for this conversation. I took the frame and sat on the couch.

“He meant more than that.”

I gave her nothing else, but how long could I deny this confession? Honor approached, gently sitting on the edge of the coffee table to face me. Relentless woman.

She shrugged. “In the homily…”

Honor waited to for me to speak. I didn’t. The bishop presiding over the Mass said many beautiful things about Benjamin. None of it personal, just words and empty platitudes about his commitment to god, his ministry, the accomplishments in his life. Nothing about his kindness. Nothing about his patience. His insight. How he could take a boy, broken and lost, and prove to the unlovable that good people did exist. That not everyone would hurt him. That life was more than suffering and pain.

But Honor already knew that. She heard enough from the homily to slip through my mind, my soul.

What did it matter now? She was already in my heart.

“Bishop Polito took on a ward fifteen or so years ago,” she said. “They said he raised the boy on his own. Put him through minor seminary high school. Helped him to take his Holy Orders and become a priest.”

I nodded. “It’s true.”

“It was you.”

“Yes.”

“But you said you had a family.” She frowned at me. Did she think I lied, or did the truth frighten her more? “You were the youngest of eight?”

“I was, but that was a different part of my life. That was where I came from. Benjamin was my real family. He took me in. Helped me, though God only knows how he did it. Without him…” My voice faded. “I don’t know where I’d be or what I’d have become. I doubt I’d even be alive.”

My gentle angel listened with glistening eyes. She had questions. Many of them. But this wasn’t a conversation for her. I’d taken enough of her innocence. I couldn’t corrupt her with my past.

“He died the night Mom was in the hospital,” she said.

“Yes.”

“And you stayed with me. Until morning.”

A sleepless night I’d never forget. We hadn’t kissed. Didn’t have sex. Just rested in each other’s arms. Those few hours meant more to me than any of the breathless, passionate moments when I had moved inside her.

It was a warning, a sign, which wouldn’t go unheeded.

Honor shook her head. “Why didn’t you tell me your friend—your father—had died?”

“Your mother was sick.”

“And he…”