The priest disappeared into one side of the booth and she entered the other, kneeling on the step. Her breaths sounded harsh and heavy in the confined space. Her pulse hadn’t settled from the scene at the apartment. The priest was silent as he waited for her to begin.
Lacey was dead, and for some inexplicable reason, she felt responsible in part for her death.
Though they’d met only once, she had been the epitome of a cry for help. The bruised neck and swollen eyes. But Dayton had shut down her insistence that he intervene. A pang lacerated her chest and she wondered if there was a reason he had denied her help.
In a darker corner of her mind, she wondered if he had been the boyfriend whom Lacey had spoken of. Kenna was no stranger to his love and bruises and the addictive properties they carried.
“Bless me Father, for I have sinned. My last confession was five months ago.”
She had started attending Mass again after the falling-out with Dayton, when she’d woken up from the spell he had placed her under only to realize she had strayed from God.
“Someone needed my help, and I did nothing. Maybe, if I’d said something, I could’ve saved them.”
“Child, we cannot go back, only forward. What matters is that you are here, in this moment, seeking penance. If this person you speak of has perished, take comfort in the knowledge that it was God’s will.”
Kenna bit her tongue lest she demanded the priest explain to her how a murder was the will of God.
The advice was limited and tired, but she supposed if she had to sit inside a booth every day and absorb the confessions of the guilty she’d too run out of useful things to say. She thanked him and they each prayed before she slipped out of St. James into the veil of night. A raindrop plopped on the crown of her head, followed by another, as she pulled her coat tighter to guard against the wind.
She imagined it was Lacey’s way of letting her know she was at peace. No longer suffering.
A tightness ruled Kenna’s throat once inside the station wagon, wondering if her tears would one day soon fall from the sky. If it was God’s will to rip her from the fabric of creation.
16
WHERE WE LEFT THINGS
An enlarged print of Dayton’s Polaroid collection rested on the cold metal table between Kenna and a pair of cops. They had listened to her frantic rambling with passive faces. Now they seemed ready to throw her out onto the street without sparing an iota of consideration.
The thinner of the two officers pushed the print toward her. “I’m sorry, ma’am, but there isn’t anything we can do with this.”
She clutched it to her chest and stared at them, as if her penetrative gaze would somehow bestow them with an ounce of empathy. “You’re absolutely sure?”
“They’re just pictures. There’s no signs of foul play within them and we’d need at least that to even stir consideration for a search warrant, at which point we’d hope to find those images, but they’d likely be gone. But the pictures you’ve shown us don’t indicate anything malicious. Perverted, sure.”
“So, that’s it?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She headed for the door, but as her hand clutched the knob, the larger officer called to her.
“Oh, and hun? The next time you come down here and try to slander an upstanding member of our community, try bringing some real evidence.”
Kenna pushed herself up on her palms. Cold sweat soaked her temples. Her shut laptop lay amid the comforter.
Once her pulse leveled out and rational thought returned, she supposed falling asleep while reviewing the Polaroids had acted as an open invitation for the unpleasant dream. The officers, though infuriating, had been right.
No signs of foul play.
The one remotely abusive thing she would’ve been able to prove was the bite-induced bruise spanning her shoulder, but her body was contorted in a way that obscured it. She wondered if Dayton had intentionally shifted her before taking the shot. Her finger wiggled on the trackpad, and the image reappeared on the screen. Everyone else was on their back, no suspicious arrangement of sheets or posture.
Maybe he had turned Kenna to fit the narrative of the way he saw them together. He didn’t want to remember her as another person he’d hurt.
Saint Kenna. She studied her sleeping form, the white lingerie and moonlight, and wondered whether that was who she’d truly become. A sinner’s saint.
Frustration welled in her throat as she stared at the inscriptions in black ink. The absence of last names rendered them one half of an unsolvable puzzle and, in that moment of quiet defeat, she realized how futile the hunt for answers had become. Yet a low-burning flame within her insisted that she keep going.
Lacey, with her purple skin and plaid scarf.