Fat Tuesday(41)

She had hoped that finally speaking the words out loud would provide instant relief from her guilt, but she didn't experience any such release. Indeed, the pressure inside her chest increased until she thought her ribs might crack. She had difficulty breathing. Her short, choppy breaths sounded loud in the enclosure.

Quietly, the priest said, "You also know the Church's position on abortion."

"It wasn't an abortion. I miscarried in my tenth week." He assimilated this, then said, "Then what is your sin?" "I made it happen," she said in a broken voice."Because of my ingratitude and uncertainty, God punished me."

"Do you know God's mind?"

"I wanted my baby." Sobbing, she rubbed her abdomen."I loved it already. But I was afraid ..."

"Afraid? Of what?"

Afraid Pinkie would stick to his word and force me to have an abortion.

That was too ugly to confess, even to a priest. Pinkie had made it clear to her when they married that she would not be having children.

Period. End of argument. The subject was closed. He didn't want the competition. Nor did he want her to be disfigured, even temporarily.

He had said that if she felt the urge to nurture, she could nurture him without becoming grotesquely misshapen.

So when her contraceptives failed her and she accidentally conceived, she didn't tell him. She feared that he would insist on an abortion.

But she was just as fearful that he wouldn't.

What if he had mellowed on the subject of children and changed his mind? What if he had reversed his thinking and welcomed the idea?

Did she want her child to be reared under Pinkie's control?

While she was still debating the dilemma, the problem had been solved for her. One terrifying afternoon, when she felt the tearing inside her womb and saw the blood trickling down her legs, she knew in her heart that she had willed it to happen. A precious life had been sacrificed to her cowardice.

The priest repeated his question, asking what she was afraid of.

"Of Hell, Father. God knew I was ambivalent about having a baby, so He took it from me."

"Did you do something that caused you to abort?"

"Only in my heart. Please pray for me, Father."

Desperate for understanding and forgiveness, she reflexively reached out, pressing her palm against the screen. Head bent, she wept.

Suddenly, against her palm and fingers, body heat, as though the priest had aligned his hand with hers on the opposite side of the screen It was a fleeting sensation, and when she raised her head, only her hand was silhouetted against the mesh.

But whether physically or spiritually, she had been touched. A peace she hadn't known for months stole through her. The bands of guilt around her chest dissolved, and she took several cleansing breaths.

Speaking with quiet reassurance, the priest granted her absolution and gave her a penance, which seemed moderate when compared to the enormity of her sin. It would take more than this penance to assuage her guilt, but it would be a start, a move toward redemption, a way out of the morass of guilt in which she had been floundering.

Slowly lowering her hand from the screen, she wiped the tears off her face and left the confessional with a soft, "Thank you, Father."

The scent of her perfume lingered for as long as Burke remained inside the confessional.

It was time to get out. He mustn't still be in the booth when the priest appeared to begin scheduled confession. Each second counted.

Nevertheless, he was reluctant to leave. In that small confessional chamber, he had shared a strange sort of intimacy with the woman of his fantasies, the moonlit woman in the gazebo.

Who just happened to be Pinkie Duvall's cheating wife. And Pinkie Duvall was the enemy he had sworn to destroy.

Prompted by that thought, Burke forced himself to move. When he stepped from the booth, his eyes swept the sanctuary, hoping for a glimpse of her, but she wasn't in sight. He glanced toward the door.

The bodyguard he'd seen her with in the French Market was no longer at his post. She was gone.

He took a handkerchief from the hip pocket of his black trousers and blotted perspiration from his forehead, then from his upper lip, which felt naked without the mustache. A stranger had gazed back at him from his shaving mirror this morning.

Without further delay he left the church through a side exit.

Gregory lames was already in the car, waiting for him. Burke said nothing as he got behind the wheel and drove away. The car seemed excessively warm. He switched the air-conditioning system from heating to cooling and turned it on full blast. The black shirt was sticking to his back beneath his coat. The reversed collar was bugging him.

He tugged at it irritably.

"Didn't it go well?" Gregory asked nervously.

"It went fine."

"The lady showed up?"

"On schedule."

After following Remy Duvall for a few days, it had become clear to Burke that she was never alone. Either she was inside the mansion and completely inaccessible, or in the company of her husband, or with the bodyguard. She never went anywhere unaccompanied. The only time she was by herself was when she went to church to pray.

"Pray?" he had exclaimed when Ruby Bouchereaux told him of the occasions on which she saw Mrs. Pinkie Duvall.

One of the madam's carefully penciled eyebrows arched."Which surprises you most, Mr. Basile, that she goes to church to pray, or that I do?"