Bethany Magdalena Javier, “Maggie” to her friends, was very comfortable, not only in her skin but in whatever skin she had to wear on any given night. Sometimes the skin she wore was of a leather-clad dominatrix, who punished men for her pleasure and theirs; other times, the girl next door, who would give someone the opportunity to act on a childhood crush. Sometimes Maggie was aggressive, others demure, at times playful. She shifted through these skins on demand, but she always remembered that she was never anything she didn’t want to be. She was in control.

Being an escort was her choice. Her life.

When Maggie got the call that day and was asked to look Catholic, she pictured her skin immediately. A white button-down top, tied off under her breasts and exposing her midriff while showing her cleavage. A plaid microskirt and thigh-high red stockings because, after all, it is the Christmas season. Black Mary Jane with heels that are high, but not too high. Pigtails and glasses and red lipstick would complete the look. “Catholic schoolgirl” fantasies were far from unique, and dressing the part was easy, even if it was her least favorite skin.

She was raised Catholic. She was sure her mother would disapprove.

“Just so you know,” she said to the man on the phone, “it’s $50 and hour, three-hour minimum. Blowjobs are $50 apiece; penetration is $75. No anal.”

“How much to have you stay all night?” the man on the other end said. He had a soft and kind voice, almost fatherly. “Flat rate.”

Maggie paused and did some quick calculations. Sleepovers would pay her month’s rent if they followed the rules. And she usually left once the client fell asleep. “$2500,” she said. “Half on arrival, and if you break any of my rules, I’m gone.”

“Agreed,” the voice said. “Tomorrow night, 8:00.” He gave Maggie the address, and as he hung up, she realized he never left a name.

***

Her usual car service got her to the address at 7:42, the corner of 4th Avenue and 82nd Street in Bay Ridge, and when they pulled up, she double-checked the address on her phone. Her GPS had her as arrived. “Did we get this right?” she asked the driver.

“This is the address you gave me,” he said with a shrug.

She paid the driver and stepped out onto the curb. Even with her wool peacoat on and her flannel gray stockings, and even though it was an unseasonably warm 46 degrees at night, a chill pimpled her skin.

The Church of St. Jude Thaddeus stood before her, and it took up the entire corner, from the middle of the block on 4th Avenue to the middle of the block on 82nd Street. The red brick cathedral stood eighty feet high at least, with impossibly vast and intricate latticework built into the masonry. The tall, square, polished brass doors gleamed against the light of the city at night, and the building seemed like a castle that kept watch over the neighborhood.

At the corner, the white porcelain statue of the Crucifixion towered over her. Maggie made a quick sign of the cross – north, south, west, east – tugged down at the bottom of her skirt and pulled the lapels of her coat tightly across her body. She looked up at the statue and saw the same pained expression on His face. She turned back to her driver, double parked at the corner with his hazard lights on. “Stick around a sec,” she said.

She walked up the 82nd Street side of the building to the rectory and knocked on the door. “This has got to be a joke,” she said to herself. She knocked again and looked over to her driver, still idling at the corner.
The door opened a crack, and an older white gentleman was on the other side. Maggie couldn’t think of another single word to describe him; he looked like a gentleman. The man was tall and slender, wore a well-tailored charcoal gray suit. He had close-cropped hair that had long gone white and stylish square-framed glasses. Dark eyes, a perfect smile on a kind face. He reminded her of a cool grandpa on a sitcom. “Can I help you?” he said, and Maggie recognized the same fatherly voice from the day before.

“Uh, yeah, I think,” she said. “I don’t know if this is the right place, but I’m Maggie, and I was supposed to be here at eight.”

“Of course,” he said as he swung the door out wide. “Come on in.”

Maggie hesitated a moment, but she waved off her driver and followed the older man into the building. It was warmer inside than out in the chilly December night, but she still had goosebumps on her arms. The chill raced up and down her spine even as her palms grew clammy from sweat.

***

“May I take your coat?” the older man said. Maggie took a deep breath, pulled off her coat and handed it to the gentleman, who draped it neatly over his arm. “Follow me,” he said. He seemed unaffected by what Maggie was wearing, and even less affected by what she wasn’t.

“There must be a mistake,” she said to the man as he turned down the hall. “I’m not sure I’m supposed to be here.” She followed him down the short hallway, brightly lit with wooden walls, to a flight of stairs. While the corridor had carpeting, the stairs did not, and the clop of her heels echoed in the stairwell as they ascended.

The top of the stairs opened into a sizeable living space. To the left was a small kitchenette next to a window, to the right was a living room area squared off by a small sofa and end table along the wooden wall at the stairwell side, and a desk and chair along the wall on the far right. Between them was a good 20 paces of space covered in forest green carpet. Several small pictures hung on the wall in modest black frames at varying heights. Maggie thought that the décor shouldn’t have worked, but she liked it anyway.
She tapped the gentleman on his shoulder at the top of the stairs. “I think there’s been a misunderstanding,” she said. “I’m an escort. You know this, right?”

“Oh yes,” the gentleman said. A smile spread across his face, and Maggie wasn’t sure if it was creepy or reassuring. Maybe a little of both. “I’m aware of exactly who you are, Ms. Javier. You are exactly where you’re needed.” He pointed her to the “living room” side of the open space. “Have a seat,” he said. “I’m going to make sure everything is ready. In the meanwhile, would you like a drink?”

Maggie raised an eyebrow. “Water, please,” she said. The gentleman hustled over to the kitchenette and filled a glass for her. He handed her the glass, and she sat and had a sip.

“I’ll be back in a moment,” he said, and Maggie saw that creepy, reassuring smile again.

“I never caught your name,” she said.

“How rude of me. My name is John Grace. You can call me John. Or Mr. Grace. Whatever you prefer.” With that, he opened the door at the far end of the room and slipped inside.

Maggie stood up and looked at the stairway. I could run, she thought. I should run. But John Grace had her coat and with it, her cell phone and all her money. She wouldn’t be able to run very far, dressed as a Catholic schoolgirl with a way-too-short skirt. And it was a long, cold walk back to the city. She downed the glass of water and put it on the end table.

As she surveyed the room, one of the paintings caught her eye. A seagull stood on a beach surrounded by discarded human food – popcorn, scraps of bread, a blueberry pie – while the rest of the flock stood in the background and looked on helplessly. The bird in the foreground crowed at the sky. Underneath the painting was one word: greed.

She moved to the next, a caricature of a fat man with a monocle and a cigarette on a long holder dangling from his mouth. The man stared into a mirror on his wall, and a distorted reflection stared back at him. Vanity.

Beneath that: a drawing of a morbidly obese woman with her hands crossed on her throat – the universal sign of choking. Gluttony.

To the left of that: a painting of a young man kissing a lady on the cheek as a book slipped from her hand.
The man looked to be a squire of some kind, or a peasant. The woman looked to be wealthy and wore a bright red gown. The book hitting the floor was a Bible. Lust.

Below Lust: a magazine photograph of a child with a video game controller in his hand. He had a look of complete disdain on his face: eyes half-open, the right side of his face drooped into a bored frown. Sloth.

To the left of Sloth was a painting of a naked man with a club in mid-swing as he stood over another man.
Wrath.

The last one was another photograph, black-and-white, of a man’s hand in the pocket of a woman’s fur coat. Envy.

Maggie cocked her head to the side. “Interesting,” she said aloud.

A voice said “Yes,” and Maggie jumped. John Grace had come back into the room, his footsteps muffled by the green carpet. “The Seven Deadly Sins,” he said. “Any one of them are supposed to send you to Hell. Most people actively commit all seven at some point.”

“Hmm,” she said under her breath. “Three out of seven right now.” A shrug. “Could be worse.”

“Everything is ready, Ms. Javier,” John said. He reached into his pocket and pulled out an envelope. “Half up front. As agreed.”

Maggie peeked inside the envelope and saw a cashier’s check with her name on it for $1,250. At least it’s not gonna bounce, she thought.

John gestured to the bedroom door. “Just go right on in,” he said. “He’s waiting for you.”

“’He?’” Maggie said. “You mean I’m not here… I mean, I thought you were…”

“Oh, no, no. I didn’t ask you here. Father Michael did.”

Maggie’s eyes widened. “Father Michael? You mean you made the call for a priest? You do realize I’m an escort, right? Why I’m here?”

John chuckled and sounded not unlike a young Santa Claus. “Do you know why you’re here?”

Maggie turned the doorknob, took a deep breath, and walked through the door.

***

The bedroom had a strong chemical odor to it, almost as if someone burnt plastic and allowed the smoke to settle into the walls, the carpets, the bedding. A soft hum filled the room, intermittently disturbed by a whish-whoosh sound every couple of seconds.

Whiiiiish.
Whooooosh.

The room was devoid of furniture save for the hospital bed, head elevated to almost 90 degrees, and the oxygen concentrator to the left of the bed. A machine about Maggie’s height sat to the right of the bed, and plastic tubes led from it to the bed and under the blanket. A man lay in the bed, or what remained of a man, eyes closed and mouth open. His skin was pale and papery and still was loose on his face. Sky blue veins crisscrossed his face, going purple at his pruned and sunken eyes. A cannula from the concentrator rested in his nose and looped around his ears. An orange crust had formed at the corners of his mouth.
Maggie folded the envelope she held and placed it in her bra. She pushed the door until it clicked closed. She moved to the foot of the hospital bed and looked at this man – her client – and realized John Grace was right.

She had no idea why she was there.

The man’s eyes fluttered open, and he took a deep breath. His eyes darted around the room before they settled on Maggie at the foot of his bed. “Oh, hello,” he said. His voice was weak and breathy; his lips trembled as he spoke. “I must’ve dozed off.”

Maggie shivered where she stood and crossed her arms in front of her chest. “My name is Maggie,” she said. “You called for me.”

“Yes, of course,” the frail old man said. “Maggie. Short for Margaret?”

“Magdalena. Bethany Magdalena Javier.”

The old man laughed, then coughed. Maggie reached for him, and he put up a hand to stop her. “Your mother must have been a Catholic,” he said. “As it turns out, a Catholic with a sense of irony. Who knew?” He fumbled around the hospital bed for the controls and adjusted the head of the bed until he sat upright. “I’m Father Michael Nicholas,” he said. “Pleased to meet you.”

“Father,” Maggie said. She looked down at her shoes, her tiny plaid skirt, then back at the old priest. “You are aware I’m an escort, right?”

He nodded.

Maggie looked him over for a moment and assessed his fragile old body. “I’m not exactly sure why I’m here.”

“You think that, because I’m a priest, I wouldn’t have a need for the company and comfort of an escort? That my vow of chastity would lead me to not speak to someone like you?” Father Michael smiled and laughed. “You don’t give yourself enough credit.” He pointed to the ceiling. “If someone like you was good enough for Him, who am I to say otherwise. Besides, you’re not here for my pleasure. You’re a beautiful girl, but I’m much too far gone for that.”

Maggie relaxed as she heard that, and as the tension left her shoulders, her arms uncrossed and fell to her side. “Then why am I here?” she said.

Father Michael closed his eyes and sighed. “I needed to talk to someone,” he said. “Someone who wouldn’t judge me or agree with me because of who I am. Someone who can keep a secret. Who can perhaps offer comfort? Forgiveness?”

Maggie’s eyes opened wide. “I’m not sure I can do that,” she said. “I’m not qualified. What about your friend there, Mr. Grace?”

Father Michael winced as he chuckled. “John’s a good man and a friend, but he’s a man of God, and I fear he may not be willing to offer the unbiased ear I need.” He looked at Maggie again, and his breathing quickened. “Please,” he gasped, “please honor a dying man’s wish?”

Maggie stepped back from the bed and scanned the room. A stool sat to the right of the bed, next to the machine that fed tubes into Father Michael. She shimmied around the edge of the bed and sat on the stool. She reached between the guard rails on the hospital bed and took the old man’s hand. “What would you like to talk about, Father?”

Father Michael smiled and squeezed her hand. “There’s so much to say.” He gripped her hand for leverage and grunted as he turned his body toward her. It took three tries.

“For you to understand, I need to tell you a story,” he said. His voice still creaked but seemed stronger as he was no longer supine. “It was 1971, and I was 19 years old when I got my draft card in the mail. I believed in what we were doing over in Vietnam, you see. I wanted to fight for God and country. I was raised Catholic, like you. I was even an altar boy in my youth. I believed we were all soldiers in the God’s war against sin and believed the country was righteous.” Father Michael laughed, coughed, and sighed. “I was a fool.”

Maggie smiled at him and adjusted herself on the stool. “When did you change your mind about that?”
Father Michael sighed again. “Not nearly soon enough.” Tears formed near the corners of his eyes. “I had a girlfriend then. Diana. Beautiful girl, beautiful soul. We had known each other since we were children, grew up in the Church together, left about the same time. The time was contentious, and though we loved each other, we disagreed about a great number of things. Including the war.” He reached up and wiped away a tear. “Our views tore us apart.”

“She was against the war, I take it?”

“She was against any sort of suffering. Especially the kind we inflict on one another.” Father Michael coughed twice and cleared his throat. “She would hate to see me suffer now.”

Maggie squeezed the old man’s hand again and felt him squeeze back. She stroked the back of his hand and felt him relax. “When was the last time you saw her?”

“The day before I left for Basic Training. My family and friends threw me a party to wish me well. She knocked on the door and invited me outside. She said she couldn’t see me off like it was a celebration because it broke her heart that I had to leave. She understood why I felt I needed to do it and couldn’t agree. But then she gave me a kiss and led me to her car.”

Maggie tilted her head. “You didn’t,” she said, unable to hide her smile. Father Michael’s eyes twinkled as the smile crept across his face. It had probably been a while since he thought about that. “I thought you had to be a virgin to be a priest!”

“You take the vow after you join,” he said with a laugh. “And it was the 70’s. Free love, and all that.”

Maggie’s smile erupted into laughter. “I would’ve never guessed,” she said. “I can understand why you couldn’t confess that to your assistant out there.”

Father Michael coughed again and gripped Maggie’s hand. “My child,” he said, “lust is not my only sin.” He shifted his weight on the bed and rolled himself closer to her. “Not even the worst one.”

Maggie’s smile shrunk and she stroked his hand again. “Keep talking, Father,” she said.

“I went to Fort Dix for basic training. It was rough on us, mentally and physically. They had to train a bunch of kids to be okay with taking life. That was hard for me.” His voice trailed off, and he paused to catch his breath. A couple of deep snorts through the cannula in his nose and his breathing returned to normal.
“Killing is against who we are,” he said. “We are not meant to kill one another.”

“It’s the sixth Commandment.”

“Yes. That.” Father Michael took three quick, halting breaths. “It does something to the mind. It is why people get so uneasy in the presence of death. Like you are, right now.”

Maggie couldn’t respond; he was right, being so close to a dying man made her stomach skip rope. Instead, she gave his hand a short squeeze.

Father Michael relaxed his hand in hers. “Six weeks of training,” he said. “It took six weeks to turn us into killers. I thought I was one of them.” He shook his head. “Then they showed the war on the evening news. I’ll never forget the look of terror on that correspondent’s face as he ducked enemy fire. I saw soldiers get ambushed; I saw people get blown to pieces on land mines. Entire swaths of land, incinerated from the air. I was horrified. How could this happen? How could God let this happen?” He shook his head as tears trailed from his eyes. “I decided two things that day, that God didn’t exist, and that no one would make me kill.”

The words stung as they hit her ears. She had been no great believer herself, but Father Michael was a priest! “Everyone has a crisis of faith,” she said. “My mom used to tell me that the times that God seemed absent was when he was most present.”

Father Michael laughed, then coughed twice. “I respect your mother’s conviction.”

“How long did it last?” Maggie hoped the answer would ease her troubled mind, would make this make sense. “When did your faith return?”

A deep sigh. “It hasn’t.”

Maggie’s felt the pit of her stomach touch her toes, and the breath unable to take hold in her chest. The little sounds in the room – the ticking of a clock, the whooshing of the concentrator, the humming of the machine next to her – overtook her senses. She released Father Michael’s hand and fanned herself. “I don’t understand,” she said after an eternal silence. “If your faith never returned, then how are you a priest?”

Father Michael turned his head away from Maggie. "It was complicated," he said. "I was always good at learning things, at remembering facts and data. I'd been studying the Bible since I was 13. Not just because I was raised Catholic, but because the stories fascinated me. Such grand tales of an oppressed civilization, the rise from nothing, and the one to save them all. It was beautiful to me. It just was magical."

A hefty cough erupted from Father Michael's chest, and it sounded like something broke in him. Maggie stood up to run for help, to get John Grace, but Father Michael held his hand up to stop her. He hacked until his face turned purple and wheezed for breath right after. His lips were flecked with blood when the fit was over. Maggie fought the urge to ignore the old man's wishes and get some help. Instead, she dabbed the blood from his lips with a napkin. "You're burning up," she said. "I can feel it without even touching you."

"That's good," the priest said, still wheezing and gasping for breath. "Warm means I'm not dead yet." He pointed to the pitcher of water on the side of his bed. "Pour me a glass, will you?"

Maggie poured a cup of water for the old priest and held it to his lips as he sipped. "Why would you become a priest?" she said.

Father Michael swallowed and took a deep and clear breath. "I was a deserter," he said. "I went AWOL during wartime. It didn't matter that I was scared, it didn't matter that we weren't yet deployed. I thought they would have me court-martialed and executed if they found me, so I went to the one place where they couldn't touch me."

"The Catholic Church."

He nodded. "They didn't send students or priests to war," he said. "It was a double dose of safety for me. Only, I couldn't return home. The Army would be looking for me there. I changed my name and joined the seminary. Once I was there, I excelled." He laughed and cleared his throat. "The irony was not lost on me, that my loss of faith led me to a school for faith. I learned philosophy and theology. I investigated the links between the time the stories were written and re-told and the present day." Father Michael grabbed Maggie's hand again and squeezed it. "It got difficult sometimes. There were days I want to cut and run, just disappear. Then I thought about Diana, how she was right about the path I took before, and how she might be proud of me if she knew."

“Did she?” Maggie stroked the old man’s hand again, feeling his paper-like skin under her fingertips. “Did she know?”

“I don’t think so. I don’t know what Diana thought. Or my family. The Army told them I disappeared, no one could find me. I know she eventually moved on with her life. Got married, had some kids. She saw me once, at a market. I recognized her immediately. We made eye contact, and I left before she could put together who I was.” Father Michael sighed again, and his sunken chest seemed to collapse into the bed. “She looked good.”

“Why did you stay?” Maggie said. She took a deep sigh and ran her hand through her dark hair. “Being in New York must have been torture for you, knowing your family – that Diana - was just right there and you couldn’t say anything to them.”

“I dealt with it. Even though I didn’t believe, I still had a duty. I guess I was a different kind of soldier.” Father Michael turned his head away from Maggie. “It’s easier to follow orders when no one has to die. It’s sad how much of our moral compass is defined by loss. By tragedy.” He coughed twice more and heaved two deep breaths.

Maggie again held water to his lips and cradled his head as he drank. Loss. Tragedy. The two words rattled around in her head. “You have no idea,” she whispered to herself.

The old priest swallowed the water and took a breath. “My child?” he said, barely above a whisper. “Do you know this pain?”

She thought about her step-father - whose face her mind wouldn’t allow her to remember - and his first visit to her bedroom, a week after her fourteenth birthday. The smell of rum had hit her before he crossed the threshold. He climbed on her and told her that it would make them family, and that would make her mother happy. When she cried about the pain, he covered her mouth and told her to be quiet. As the tears streamed down her face and she slapped at his arms, he silenced her muffled voice with a hand on her throat and told her it would hurt less if she just let herself enjoy it. He held her down until she was too tired, too dizzy to struggle. And while he grunted and finished inside her, she decided that this wasn’t her, this was just a shell she wore. A skin. It was whatever he wanted her to be to protect the real her underneath.
And every night that he came back, she put on that skin. She hid inside it until he left.

And then came the missed period.

“I think everybody knows that pain,” she said to Father Michael as a tear slid down her cheek.

The old priest slipped his hand from Maggie’s and reached for her face. His hand trembled until his fingers touched her cheek, and his palm followed. “Oh, my child,” he said, his voice as steady and warm as the hand on her cheek. “I sincerely hope not.”

She sniffled and placed her hand on the warm and leathery one that offered so much comfort. She looked at the old man’s face, and as she formed a smile, Father Michael did as well. “You’re good at this,” she murmured.

“Years of practice,” he said.

She let his hand linger there a moment before she took it in her own and placed it back on the bed. “You studied,” she said as she regained her composure. “You trained. You went through all the steps. You became ordained. How did you manage to still not believe?”

Father Michael took a deep breath. “A child believes in Santa Claus,” he said. “That child lives their entire life believing in Santa Claus because believing in Santa Claus encourages them to be good children, that there’s a reward for being good. One day that child grows and stops believing. That child does whatever he or she wants, without reward or admonishment. Hopefully, that child is a good and decent kid, kind and considerate. That child grows into an adult and has children of their own, and even though they no longer believe in Santa Claus, they believe in the spirit of the story and believe in the idea that being good is a reward in and of itself.”

Maggie laughed as Father Michael finished his story. “You do realize that you used Santa Claus as an example of religious belief, right?”

“No,” he said. “I used Santa Claus as an example of using faith to help people be better.” He shifted his weight in the bed again and inched closer to Maggie. “I stopped believing. I lost faith. But I tried to guide people’s faith, to steer them toward good, just decisions. I offered them forgiveness when they asked for it, gave them what they needed.” Father Michael heaved a couple of labored breaths. “It won’t be long now,” he said.

“What? What do you mean?”

The old priest smiled. “Sweet girl,” he said, “everyone needs to confess their sins before dying. It’s why…”

“Shh,” Maggie said. “Get some rest. Save your strength.” She held Father Michael’s hand in hers and felt it gradually lose its grip as he fell asleep. She found herself in the dark, surrounded by the noises in the room – the oxygen concentrator, the large machine next to her, the clock – and the weight of this man’s secrets. All the regret he must have had, all the stuff he could have done with his life had he not become a priest. To actively doubt the Divine while spreading the Word, what kind of man was he?

***

She drifted off to half-sleep and turned her thoughts inward. She was 14 again and had told her mother that she was pregnant. Her mother was less than impressed, but when Maggie told her that the father was the man she had married, it earned her a slap to the face.

“Whore,” she said, eyes red and wet. “Leave my house.”

Maggie tried to protest, tried to tell her mother that she was raped for months by this man, that he snuck into her room and did such bad things to her. She cried and tried to tell her how scared she was and that she didn’t know what to do. That she was sorry and she would do anything to make it up to her.

“Get out of my house!” her mother bellowed, tears streaming down her face.

Maggie was jolted awake by Father Michael’s hacking cough. His face went purple, and his eyes jumped open. Tears streaked down his face. Maggie jumped to her feet and poured another glass of water and held it again to his lips as he drank.

“Thank you,” he said as the choking stopped. He took a couple of gasps to return air to his lungs. “Funny, isn’t it? The one thing God gives us to move about in this world will eventually fail, decay, and become as dust.”

“The Lord works in mysterious ways.”

“Yes, well, sometimes He can be a jerk.” Father Michael crossed himself as he said that. “Thank you for staying, child.”

“Well, you paid for the whole night,” she said. “A deal is a deal.”

A weak smile spread across his face. “The one thing that keeps me up at night is the one person I thought I failed.” He reached for Maggie’s face and caressed it. “A young girl came for confession years ago and asked forgiveness for destroying her home. Her stepfather did unspeakable things to her, and when she told her mother, the woman lashed out and dismissed her from home.” A tear escaped Father Michael’s eye. “She was pregnant and had no way to deal with what had happened and what was going to happen to her. I wanted very badly to give her the number to the clinic, to make the appointment with her, to sit with her and help ease this burden on her.”

Maggie’s face trembled as tears shook loose and rolled down her face. She sniffled and closed her eyes. “Why-why didn’t you?” she said. “Why couldn’t you help her?”

“It was the closest I had ever come to renouncing my vows. Instead, I told an impressionable young girl who was looking for help that God’s will may seem unfair…”

“‘But it’s about the bigger picture, and life is the bigger picture.’” Maggie struggled to steady her breathing as the realization sunk in.

Father Michael removed his hand from her face. “I hated myself that day. Hated God. I did what I could to steer that girl to a better place, without showing my face, and without her knowledge.” Another cough forced its way out of his chest, and when Maggie tried to give him water, he waved it away. “I worked with the adoption clinic when she decided to put the baby up for adoption. I tried to get money to her so she could stay in school.” He opened his eyes to her again, and the tears came out like a burst dam. “I failed you, child,” he said. “I kept an eye on you the last few years; I called you when I knew it was my time because the sin I need to have forgiven is against you.”

Maggie couldn’t catch her breath as the tears flowed from her face. She wiped her face and tried to take a deep inhale. “I don’t know that I can do that,” she said. “I’m not qualified.”

He smiled. “I know the feeling.”

Maggie steadied her breath and offered a smile as she caressed his face. “I didn’t know you were looking out for me. Thank you, Father.”

“It was my pleasure, child.” He coughed again and accepted the drink of water. “Now could you go and get Mr. Grace in here?”

Maggie got to her feet and walked out of the bedroom. She was greeted by sunlight when she made her way to the open area, and her eyes took a moment to adjust. John Grace sat in the living room area, cross-legged and asleep. Maggie walked to him and shook his knee. “He asked to see you,” she said softly.

John stood up and stretched. He reached into his pocket and pulled out another envelope, another $1250 cashier’s check, and handed it to Maggie. John nodded at her and smiled. “I’ll get your coat,” he said. He disappeared into the bedroom and emerged a moment later with her coat. “Thank you for your time,” he said as he helped the coat over her shoulders. “I hope you gave him what he needed.”

Maggie turned and looked at John’s face and searched for a knowing look, a wink, something to betray that he knew why she was there, what she was told. Instead, she saw appreciation, genuine happiness at a favor done for a friend. “I hope so, too,” she said as she turned to leave.

She knew Father Michael was gone. And she forgave him for that, too.

Forgiveness was just a new skin she would learn to wear.