The Dark End of the Street: New Stories of Sex and Crime by Today's Top Authors by Jonathan Santlofer, S.J. Rozan Page B

visit?”
    â€œWill you?”
    He tapped a finger against his pale lips. “I doubt it. No. I’ve done my job, I think.”
    â€œI know what happened thirty years ago,” she said.
    â€œPlease.”
    â€œWally wasn’t the father of the baby, was he? It was his uncle. Another Christopher. The hereditary thurifer.” When he said nothing, Amanda continued. “That’s why Wally took Terry away. He was protecting her from one of the most powerful men in the church. And that’s why the church stopped using the incense, isn’t it? Not because Joshua Bauer was killed with the thurible. Because the hereditary thurifer had impregnated a teenager.”
    â€œShe asked to be trained,” he said after a moment. “The church had never had a female thurifer.”
    â€œBut Terry was your first female acolyte.”
    â€œYes. And of course the national church was busily fighting about the same time over female priests. The earth was moving under our feet.” He stood up, walked over to the rack of thuribles, pulled out a modest-looking one. “Start small,” he advised. “A thurible of this size will hardly be noticed at first. Remember, the coals are the sin, and the incense is the balm. And the smoke—”
    â€œThe prayers of repentance, rising to Heaven. I remember.”
    â€œIt was a terrible temptation,” he said, still turning the golden vessel this way and that. “It was so terribly wrong, but, as St. Paul says, we are at every moment slaves to Christ or slaves to sin. And the thurifer was, for a time, slave to his sin. To desire. To the needs of the flesh. Theresa Bauer was very beautiful. She and the thurifer worked together closely. Still, he had no excuse for his behavior.”
    â€œBut he let them blame his nephew.” A pause. “Your nephew.”
    â€œYes. And then, when Wally killed himself—” He shook his head. “The families eventually learned the truth.” The thurifer’s voice was fainter, as if he was drifting from her. “I have tried to tell each of the interim rectors the story. None would listen. None would believe. Father Bishop succeeded Father Dean. He laughed at me. Father Greely was here for four years after Father Bishop died. He listened now and then, but never took me seriously. Father Dean, however—well, he was a man of true belief. He confessed me, you see. Gave me penance in the orthodox manner.”
    â€œBut that didn’t help.”
    â€œIt was too late. Scripture teaches the existence of the too-late repentance. Our Savior preached to the dead, but the orthodox teaching of the church is that they were not able through repentance to secure salvation. They learned the truth but could not act on it.”
    â€œThat hardly seems fair.”
    â€œYou forget yourself, Mother Seaver. It is not our place to judge the will of God.” He put the thurible back in its place, straightened, and seized her with those grave gray eyes. “You, Mother Seaver, are the seventh rector of Trinity and St. Michael, or, counting back to the beginning of Trinity Church, the eighteenth. The decisions are yours. Will you reflect on all that I have told you?”
    â€œI will,” she promised, and meant it.
    â€œThank you,” he said gravely, and, for the last time, left her.
    X
    She opened the Prayer Book and, for a while, sat alone in the Lady Chapel. She considered visiting whatever Taites were left to check her conclusions, but there was no point; and besides, none of them attended TSM any longer. The rest of the congregation would tell her nothing, and contacting the authorities was out of the question.
    She was the rector. The decisions were hers.
    She decided to take a walk through the grounds of her church. In the bright morning sunlight, the birds sang noisily. Beyond the tumbledown wall, cars shuddered and honked and squealed. She heard playing children. The