Page 57 of Priest (Priest 1)
I climbed up the stairs and walked to the back door of the rectory, navigating through my kitchen in the bluish light of early dawn. I still had a couple hours to sleep before I had to get up for morning Mass, and I hoped that something would be different in the morning, that the way forward would be clear, but I knew it wouldn’t, and that knowledge was so very, very depressing.
“Late night?”
I nearly had a heart attack.
Millie was sitting in my living room in the half-dark, wearing a matching sweat suit.
“Millie,” I said, trying to pretend that I hadn’t almost pissed myself. “What are you doing here?”
“I take walks every morning,” she said. “Very early. I don’t think you would have ever noticed, given that you seem to sleep in until the latest possible moment.”
“I haven’t noticed, you’re right.” Was she inviting me on a walk now?
She sighed. “Father Bell, I know.”
“Pardon?”
“I know. About you and Poppy. I’ve seen you skulking through the park during the mornings.”
Oh shit.
Oh shit oh shit oh shit.
“Millie—”
She held up a hand. “Don’t.”
I sat heavily in a chair, despair and panic coiled together in my stomach. Someone knew, someone knew, someone knew. Of course it was always going to be like this. I was never going to have the luxury of choosing for myself how this all played out, and I was a fucking idiot for ever thinking otherwise.
I looked up with wide eyes, and what came out was not gracious or kind or selfless, but pure lizard brain survival. “Millie, please, you can’t tell anyone.” I slid to my knees in front of her. “Please, please don’t tell the bishop, I don’t know how I could live with myself…”
But then I trailed off because I was doing nothing less than begging an honorable woman to abandon her honor, all for the sake of an unrepentant sinner.
“I’m so sorry,” I said instead. “You must think I’m such a terrible, awful person…I’m so ashamed. I don’t even know what to say.”
She stood. “You can say that you’ll be careful.”
I looked up at her. “What?”
“Father, I came here to warn you, and there’s a reason I did that instead of going to the bishop. This town needs you, and it definitely doesn’t need another scandal about a priest.” She shook her head with a small smile. “Especially when it’s about something as innocuous as falling in love with a grown woman who would be perfect for you…if you weren’t a priest.”
“Millie,” I said, and my voice was broken, desperate. “What do I do?”
“I don’t have that answer for you,” she said, walking toward the door. “All I know is that you better make a decision soon. These things never stay hidden, Father, no matter how hard you try. And there’s no way a woman like her would be willing to be your secret mistress f
or the rest of her years. She is worth far more than that.”
“She is,” I echoed, a cold, iron weight crushing me as I realized that I was no better than Sterling. I was making her do essentially the same thing, except I wasn’t even doing her the service of being upfront about it…or offering her anything in return.
“Goodbye,” Millie said, and I nodded a goodbye in return, miserable and agitated, too miserable and agitated to even think about sleeping.
Had it just been a couple weeks ago that I’d given Poppy Lizzy’s rosary? And now everything felt like it was falling apart, like broken rosary beads scattering wildly across the floor, too numerous and fast for me to chase.
Millie knew. Jordan knew. Poppy maybe didn’t even want to be with me…
I went for a long run, and then got to the church early to unlock it and prepare for Mass, distracted throughout the whole service by my encounter with Millie, by my earlier non-fight with Poppy, by the fact that now two people knew about my affair and that was two people too many.
Secret mistress.
