“Would you like a drink?”
I nod. Gabriel sits forward in his armchair, twists to the side, and pours out two glasses of wine. One is little more than a splash in the glass, the other is close to the brim.
The sissy inside me wants to refuse his offer, but I push aside Trinity the Wimp just as she starts yelling about how wrong this is.
“Why didn’t you attend Father Quinn’s counseling session?” Gabriel asks.
I had just brought the glass to my lips, but I snatch it away again. “He told you?”
Father Quinn replaced Gabriel when he’d left Redmond. I’d never liked him—he stank of Fisherman’s Friend sweets because he somehow thought it would cover up his halitosis.
I don’t remember much about the week after my parents were killed. I do remember hearing words like “shock” and “therapy” bandied around everywhere I went.
I’d also forgotten that he’d offered counseling. More than once.
“I couldn’t talk to him,” I say truthfully.
“Can you talk to me?”
I look up. He’s watching me with a most familiar look in his warm, brown eyes.
Patience.
Sympathy.
And with the wholehearted belief that whatever sins I had committed, we could overcome them together.
How the hell can a man like this possibly be involved with Ghosts and Keepers?
I almost want to tell him everything, just so we can have a good laugh about it and the world can go back to normal.
But I know my life will never be the same again, so does it matter what degree of fucked up I land on?
We’re all mad here.
No, we’re all fucked up crazy here.
“Trinity?”
My eyes snap back into focus. I take a tiny sip of wine, and then another because I barely tasted the first. It’s not as brutally sour as the one the Brotherhood poured for me.
“I don’t know how much you can help,” I say hesitantly before taking another sip. “You weren’t there at the end.”
Gabriel looks down, and shadows darken his eyes. For a heart-wrenching moment, I think I’ve already blown my cover and pissed him off. I fully expect him to toss me out of his room. Instead, he lights himself another cigarette.
“You don’t smoke, do you?” he asks.
“No.”
“You’re right to sound disgusted,” he says through a faint laugh. “It’s a disgusting habit.” A thick plume of smoke jettisons from his lips. He sips from his glass, and then sits back in his seat, his eyes on the fire.
“I often wonder if they would still be alive if I’d stayed at Redmond,” Gabriel says.
The wine glass clicks against my teeth as I turn to face him. I hurriedly lower it into my lap. “Why would you say that?”
“The same reason you wonder if you’d be dead had you been in the car with them.” He drags hard at his cigarette, his voice tight as he speaks without expelling any more smoke. “One of Satan’s many games, keeping us fixated on the past.” Finally, he empties his lungs and then takes another sip of wine. “So easy for him to slip in without you noticing when you’re so busy replaying events over and over to see if there ever would have been a different outcome. Like a spider crawling in under the door.”
The longer he speaks, the tighter my chests grows. I’ve never heard him talk like this. His sermons are dry—all repetition and loosely connected anecdotes taken out of context—but this?
If this is how his conversations went with my parents, then no wonder they’d stay downstairs for hours after I’d been sent to bed. Our house had thick doors. Even with my ear pressed to the wood, all I heard was the murmur of low voices.
“Your parents are dead, Trinity. That’s not something you can change or control. What you can control is how you feel about it.”
“I’m angry,” I say, without waiting for him to ask.
“At them, or yourself?”
I squirm in my seat. “Both.” Then I shake my head. “No. Just myself.”
“Because you didn’t go with them to church?”
I nod.
“And why is that? Why did you stay at home that night?”
I run my finger around the rim of my glass. It’s practically empty, but there wasn’t much of it to begin with. I don’t dare ask for more. I need Gabriel to see me as the same girl I was when he left Redmond—sweet and innocent and naive. Definitely not the undercover spy I turned into.
“We had a fight. They left without me.”
“What did you fight about?”
My cheeks warm-up, and I know it’s not from the heat of the fire, or the sip of wine.
“Something stupid. Something really, really stupid.”
Silence settles between us. The fire pops, shooting a spark onto the hearth. It pulses like a dying heart before it fades to nothing.
There’s a distant rumble. Is it starting to rain?
“No one alive is a good person, Trinity.”
My eyes snap to him.
He smiles faintly, but without looking at me. “You asked if your parents were good people.”
Suddenly I don’t want to know the answer. Instead, I absently sip at my wine before remembering it’s empty.
Gabriel holds out his hand. I give him the glass. This time, he fills it. But when he passes it over, he doesn’t let it go straight away.
We lock eyes over that forbidden wine, and I can see his hesitation from the way he frowns at me.
“It’s probably better if I don’t—” I begin, releasing the glass.
“They shouldn’t have treated you like that,” Gabriel says. His warm brown eyes are cold now, a muscle in his jaw ticking.
My heart claws its way up my throat.
Oh my God.
He knows.
He fucking knows.
I only realize I’ve gulped down a mouthful of wine when it scorches the back of my throat. I blurt out a hoarse, “How did—?”
But Gabriel doesn’t let me finish. “The way they confined you?” He glances away as he shakes his head. “Keeping you from the world like you were a sin?”
What the hell is he talking about?
His gaze touches me again, hot and livid, before jumping back to the fire. “I never wanted that for you, child. I told them time and time again that you had every right to lead your own life, but they refused to listen.”
“My…parents?”
“An immune system must be exposed to bacteria and viruses for it to build a resistance against them.” He waves a hand in my direction but without taking his eyes from the flames. “They left you defenseless.”
Why is he so upset? Did bringing up my parents hit a nerve? I know he was close to them, but—
“If no one’s good, does that mean everyone’s bad?” I ask.
He turns to me, blinking as he focuses on my face. “We are all born into sin. Only through confession and penance can we cleanse our souls.”
“I haven’t confessed in a long time.”
“Not since your thirteenth birthday.”
I swallow hard, and wish I could look away. Mom made me do it. She made me climb into that cubicle and confess my sins to Father Gabriel.
“Don’t let such silly things plague you,” he murmurs, a ghost of a smile coming back to his mouth. “There are worse things in the world.”