Chapter 10Confession
The fourth confession of the morning at St. Luke's Parish Church sent shivers down the spine of Father Gerald Byrne. As the voice, quite clearly that of a young woman, a teenager perhaps, on the other side of the confessional screen described her inner torment, it brought back memories to the priest, painful memories that he'd rather remain locked away in the deepest part of his soul. But, even as the young woman divested herself of sin before God, hoping for an absolution, Byrne knew that those memories, now resurfaced, could never be put back in the convenient mental box where he'd managed to store them for so many years.
As the woman/girl eventually fell silent, waiting for his response, a new and terrible burden came to rest on the shoulders of the Catholic pries
