Jordan’s face was as it always was—calm and beatific at the same time—and I knew without a doubt that he was right. A day of reflection after the heady exhilaration of the past three months was no small thing for me to muster, and it was also the exact thing I needed. It would be painful, to spend hours examining myself honestly and conversing openly with God, but necessary things are often painful.
“You’re right,” I conceded. “Okay.”
Jordan nodded, and he said a quiet prayer of absolution, and then we sat in silence for a few minutes. Most people were uncomfortable with silence, but Jordan wasn’t—he was at home in it. At home with himself. And that made it slightly easier to be with myself, even with all the unfelt feelings still looming above me.
At least until the phone rang.
Jarred out of our reverie, we both stared at Jordan’s phone on his kitchen counter. By this point, it was almost two in the morning, and Jordan stood quickly, because phone calls at this time of night were generally of the bad kind—car crashes, unexpected turns for the worse, hospice patients finally gasping their last breaths. The kinds of things where people needed their priest by their side.
I watched him answer the phone, silently saying a prayer that nobody was seriously hurt—a prayer purely out of habit, words spoken from rote—and then watched as his eyes flicked over to me.
“Yes, he’s with me,” Jordan said quietly, and my heart started beating in erratic staccato thumps, because it couldn’t be Poppy, it couldn’t be, but what if it was?
Oh God, what I would give if it were.
“Of course, just a moment,” Jordan said and handed the phone to me. “It’s the bishop,” he whispered.
My heart stopped beating then, plummeting down into my stomach. The bishop at two in the morning?
“Hello?” I said into the phone.
“Tyler,” and all it took was that one word for me to know that something was deeply, troublingly wrong, because I had never heard my mentor sound this upset. Could it simply be about me quitting?
“About that voicemail,” I said, “I’m so sorry for not waiting to speak to you properly. And now that I’ve had some time to think, I’m not sure that I do want to leave the clergy. I understand that I have a lot to explain and a lot to atone for, but things have changed for me today, and—”
The bishop’s voice was heavy as he interrupted me. “Unfortunately, I’m afraid that some other things have come to light…rather publicly, I’m afraid.”
Shit. “What things?”
“I tried calling you all day, and I called your parents and some of your parishioners, but no one knew where you were, and it wasn’t until tonight that I thought you might have gone to your confessor.”
It felt like he was stalling, like he was hesitant to tell me about whatever happened, but I had to know. “Bishop, please.”
He sighed. “Some pictures were released. On social media. You and a woman—your parishioner, I believe, Poppy Danforth.”
The pictures. The ones Sterling had blackmailed me with.
I knew that I was in serious trouble, that Sterling had made good on his promise and burned my life down, but at the moment, the chief thing that stuck out was the sound of Poppy’s name on someone else’s lips, as if her name spoken aloud was an incantation, and it was that incantation that finally ripped me open, punched a hole in my chest like bullet going through a pop can.
Tears started rolling down my face, hot and fast, but I managed to keep my voice steady. “Okay.”
“Okay, as in you already know about these pictures?”
“Yes,” I managed.
“Dammit, Tyler,” the bishop swore. “Just—dammit.”
“I know.” I was actively crying now and then something was nudged into my hand. A tumbler of Scotch, amber-colored and with a single spherical ice cube in the middle. Jordan was standing over me, and he nodded his head at the glass.
Things were bad indeed if Jordan Brady was giving me a drink. I wouldn’t have even guessed he owned a single bottle of liquor to begin with.
“Tyler…” the bishop said “…I don’t want to have to fire you.”
His meaning was clear. He wanted me to quit. It will be that much cleaner for the press releases, I thought. The repentant priest who had already turned himself in made a much better byline than the sexually rapacious priest who had to be fired.
“Are those my only two choices? Quit or be fired?”
“I suppose…if the relationship were over—”
“It is.”
“—there would have to be discipline and definitely relocation—”
I’d expected this, but the confirmation gutted me. I’d have to move. A new parish, new faces, all while the old parish had to sort through a rumor-cloud of my sins. No matter what, no matter if everything else went perfectly, I’d still lost this. My parish. My people.
My fault.
“—and even then, I don’t know how the cardinal would feel about this, Tyler.” The bishop sounded tired, but also something else—loving. It was deep in the timber of his voice. He loved me, and that made me feel even more deeply, unhappily ashamed to be having this conversation with him. “If you are truly committed to staying in the clergy, then we will figure out the next steps.”
I didn’t feel relieved by this, possibly because I was still so unsure of what I wanted, but I said, “Thank you,” anyway, because I knew what a giant clusterfuck I’d created for the archdiocese, and I knew even thinking of staying in the clergy would make it worse.
“Let’s talk tomorrow evening,” the bishop said. “Until then, please don’t talk to the press or even go online—there’s no sense in complicating things until we know for sure where we’re headed.”
We said goodnight and clicked off the phone, and then I drained my Scotch and fell into a dreamless sleep on Jordan’s hard, unwelcoming couch.
I went to Jordan’s Mass early the next morning, which was substantially better attended than my own morning Masses back home. I had called Millie the moment I woke up, to tell her where I was and how to get a hold of me. Millie—who surfed reddit and tumblr even more than I did—already knew about the pictures, but she didn’t say I told you so, she didn’t sound hateful, and so I had hope that she’d forgiven me in her own cranky way. She’d also volunteered to post a sign on the door, saying that office hours and weekday Masses were temporarily suspended, and so, with my church matters taken care of for the moment, I could focus on the here and now.
Although I couldn’t help but ask, “Have you seen Poppy?” before we hung up, hating myself as I did.
Millie seemed to understand. “No. In fact, her car hasn’t been in her driveway since last night.”
“Okay,” I said, heavily and tiredly, not sure how I felt about this news. What I did know was that it did not improve the feeling that there was a giant crater where my heart should be.
“Father, please take care of yourself. No matter what, the parish loves you,” she said, and I wanted so much for those words to be true, but how could they be after I’d ruined everything?
After Mass, I had the sanctuary to myself. Jordan’s church was old—more than a hundred years old—and made almost purely of stone and stained glass. No old red carpet here, no faux-wood siding. It felt like a real church, ancient and echoing, the kind of place where the Holy Spirit would hover, like an invisible mist, sparkling among the rafters.