Absolution(96)

He would sit as still as he could on the hard wooden pew between them, until he could stand it no longer. Then he would fidget until an elbow in the ribs or a sly whisper from his parents would force him to stop. He wanted to make his parents proud.

The enthusiastic voice of Father David – younger then, and with twinkling eyes that fascinated him up close – rang out from the altar, in Latin and in English. He understood that it was important, but as a child it meant nothing to him other than the milkshake he would get at the diner on the way home.

As he got older, it became more of a curiosity. He had questions that needed to be answered. What would happen if he didn’t go to confession before he took communion? Would God be angry with him? And what about heaven? If you couldn’t see it when you were in a plane, could you see it from a spaceship? Why didn’t angels fall right through the clouds they were sitting on? He got used to the tiresome looks his parents would give him when he asked. Eventually, he stopped asking.

It had all been so easy then. He had been seventeen when his mother died. It had changed his view on everything, skewing it permanently. After she passed away, neither he nor his father could bring themselves to go to church regularly. What was the point? If God really existed (and he was seriously starting to doubt that), He obviously didn’t care about his mother or He would never have let her suffer like that. They went to church at Easter and for Christmas Eve Mass, and that had mainly been out of a sense of duty.

And during the last four years, Jack hadn’t gone to church once. He thought himself beyond forgiveness, so what was the point in asking for it? He couldn’t face going to confession, he would never be able to receive communion. If God could torture his mother the way He did, then He must surely have forsaken him.

Yet from the brief conversations he had had with Father David since his father’s death, apparently Dad had been attending church regularly during the past few years. Why, after all this time? Did it have anything to do with the accident, with what happened to Ally? Or was it because of him – Jack – and what he had done? He found himself wondering if his father had been praying for him, and it made the hair on the back of his neck stand on end. The guilt and shame seemed to multiply suddenly, and he found his breath coming in short gasps as his lungs failed to respond.

Please… do something. Help me.

All it took was one night – one moment – and the world turned upside down. He tried to slow his breathing and concentrate as he played The Game. He squeezed his eyes shut tighter, putting all his energy into trying to visualize how his life would be now if the accident had never happened.



Ally was painting a mural on their living room wall, perched atop a ladder, wearing a paint-splattered pair of navy blue overalls. Her long hair was caught up beneath a bright pink bandana, and she brushed wisps of it away from her face as she concentrated, painting one brush stroke at a time, slow and steady. She hummed quietly to herself as she worked, completely oblivious to the fact that he was watching her.

The walls were littered with black and white photographs, mostly ones she took while they had been travelling around the country on his bike. Memories of their life together surrounded them. Then she turned and noticed him standing there and she smiled – the kind of smile that made his knees go weak even now, all these years later. She put the paintbrush down and climbed down the ladder, talking all the while, smiling that smile.

She crossed the floor with a skip and threw herself into his arms, wrapping her own arms around him and giggling as he twirled her around, the bandana coming loose and releasing her hair, smelling of paint and vanilla.

He lay her down on the couch, covering her mouth with his and smiling to himself as he felt her body respond. She wriggled beneath him as he lay down on top of her, her legs wrapping around his waist and locking behind his back as his lips sought out her neck. Her arms snaked around his ribs as she pulled him closer, leaning into him…



A sharp rap on the window brought the fantasy crashing down. His eyes shot open and the worried face of Father David stared back at him.

For a moment, he wasn’t sure if this was fantasy or reality and he blinked, trying to put things back in their rightful places – fantasy there, reality here.

The priest’s mouth was moving. He stared at him blankly, taking a few moments to realise that he needed to wind down his window to hear him. Feeling oddly detached, he did so.

“Jack? Are you alright?”

Jack automatically nodded, incapable of anything else.