Page 140 of Harvest of Sighs (Thornchapel 3)
Becket stares down at his empty glass.
“I feel like there’s two of me,” he says after a minute. “One for the church and one for Thornchapel. In my eyes, both versions of myself serve God. But here, that service truly only benefits myself. At St. Petroc’s, I help over two hundred parishioners. Wouldn’t it be selfish not to choose the church?”
“Don’t priests and monks lock themselves away from the world all the time?” I ask. “How would choosing Thornchapel be any different from being cloistered away like them?”
“A fair question,” he concedes. He lets go of his glass with one hand and strokes the silky crown of Poe’s head where it rests against his knee. “But there are other reasons why Thornchapel would be a selfish choice.”
And I have nothing to say to that, not this morning. Not when I’m still sore and bite-marked from my own selfish choices.
The rain dashes against the windows while we sit, filling the silence.
“When will you go?” Auden finally asks, sounding very unhappy. He’ll miss his friend, and I realize I will too. Becket was the priest who said my mother’s funeral Mass, the priest who let me inside his church not to pray but to hurl accusations at God’s feet. I trust him with my soul, and more importantly, with the curvy librarian tucked into a miserable ball by his feet.
I don’t want him to go.
“Tonight,” he says. “Well, this afternoon, actually. I’ll need to be in Plymouth tonight so I can meet with my counselor in the morning.”
“Are you okay?” Poe asks, and it’s the most important question, the one we should have asked from the beginning. “Are you doing okay with this?”
“No,” he says bluntly, his hand still on her head. “I’m not okay. And yet I know I’ve been straddling two paths for too long, praying a single foot on each would be enough—but it’s not enough, not even close. Wherever I choose to serve God, I must do it with my whole heart, and the time has come for me to choose.”
Poe nuzzles his hand. “You’ve always given everything your whole heart. You surrender to yourself better than anyone I know.”
Pain carves itself into his expression. “Sometimes,” he says in a ragged voice, “that has been to my detriment.”
For a moment, I think he’s talking about loving Poe, but the look on his face . . .
Horror. Like he’s remembering horror.
But the expression fades and then he glances up at the clock on the mantel, his shoulders slumping in resignation. He cups Poe’s head and then leans down to kiss her forehead. “It’s time for me to go. Goodbye, Poe. Goodbye, you two,” he says to me and Auden. “If you see Delphine and Rebecca, you’ll let them know everything? Give them my goodbyes? I’m not sure how much internet access I’ll have while I’m gone, so I don’t want them to think I’ve ghosted Thornchapel altogether.”
“They wouldn’t think that,” Auden assures him. “And we’ll give them your goodbyes. Here, hand that to me.” He holds out his hand for Becket’s empty glass, and then Becket stands up. Poe does too.
Auden gives her a subtle nod, and then her eyes flick over to me, seeking approval. I nod too, knowing she wants to give Becket a more private goodbye.
“I’ll walk you out,” she says, and with a final look at Auden and me—and the library too—Father Becket Hess leaves us to face his future.
I immediately get up and get another drink, and without a word, Auden joins me, extending his glass for me to fill it.
“Table full of fancy drinks and we’re drinking the same shit as always,” I mumble, looking back at Delphine’s hard work.
“I daren’t touch them unless the hostess allows it,” Auden says, a bit dryly, although his eyes are still somber. “And mind your tongue. This is a single malt scotch from a rare cask. It’s hardly shit.”
“What Becket said,” I say, after taking a drink. “About straddling two paths. About choosing where to put his heart.”
I stop, not sure where I’m going with this, or how to continue. But Auden must sense it before I do; he somehow knows where this is going.
“St. Sebastian,” he says. “Don’t. Don’t do this.”
“I thought I couldn’t trust you. After you lied to me, after you kissed me in my mother’s office, I thought you’d stop at nothing to have me, I thought you’d wage war on the space between us until ther
e was none left and I was yours again.”
“Don’t,” he says. “Please.”
I can’t stop myself. I won’t. It needs to be said. Like Becket’s reckoning, this sword has been dangling over us for months, and it’s time to look up and name it.
“Don’t you see? Don’t you understand what happened this morning? That was me—all me. I thought I couldn’t trust you, but the truth is that I can’t trust myself.”
