“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.”

In his side of the confessional, Father Adichie was massaging one foot with his hand, his shoe sitting on the floor beside his chair. There were, it seemed, even more holes in the socks than there had been that morning. It was the new shoes. He was sure of it. They had looked nice in the shop, but this would be the third pair of socks he was going to have to throw out. They made his big toe ache as well. He squeezed it in his hand while speaking, the pressure relieving the pain slightly.

“It has been a long time since my last confession,” the woman continued. She shifted on her side of the confessional and Adichie caught a whiff of her perfume. Something with fruits.

“Tell me your sins, daughter,” he said softly for the twelfth time that day. Very few people came to confession anymore, he found. They either sinned less or felt less guilty when they did. The services were three-quarters empty, too. The week before, Adichie had given his sermon to less than twenty people. In the twenty-odd years since he arrived in Glasgow at St. Sebastian’s, the loss of worshippers in the church had happened slowly. But if you let water trickle from a bottle long enough, it would be empty in the end. Father Adichie would have taken it personally if every other church he knew hadn’t been the same.

“I don’t really know where to start to be honest,” she said. Adichie couldn’t place her voice. That was especially rare. Mostly, it was the same women who came to his confession hours every week to confess their tiny sins. Oh, Father, I snapped at my husband the other day when he forgot to do the bathroom while I was out—one Hail Mary. Father, I made some comments to my wee daughter-in-law that I think were a bit catty now that I think about it. It’s just that she never keeps a proper eye on my grandkids—two Hail Marys with an Our Father thrown in for good measure, since Adichie knew she would be back the next month saying the same sort of thing.

“Just start wherever you feel comfortable,” Adichie said, still rubbing his foot. “Maybe you could just tell me in a general way what your sin is. Some people like to start with that. Was it gluttony? Envy? Lust?”

When Adichie had been a young priest, he had hoped that he would occasionally get to hear a juicy, lustful story from some of the people who came to confess. Disappointingly, he had never once heard a good one. He had heard about the odd affair, but they were always incredibly mundane. Guy sleeping with a girl at work. Stuff like that. No juicy details. Hearing confessions always confirmed to him, in a dull way, the lack of evil in the hearts of most of the human race. The fact was that hearing confessions was mostly an exercise in staying awake.

“No, it’s none of those,” the woman said. “I don’t know what you would call it. Maybe wrath? But I don’t feel wrathful. It’s something I did on the internet.”

“Oh, I see,” Adichie said, hoping he didn’t sound as bored as he felt. The internet was a new but usually dull topic for confessions. Most people confessed to looking at non-specific porn. Some to having flirtatious pen-pals that their spouses didn’t know about. One memorable confession involved a man who was selling his wife’s pants on eBay without her knowledge. Adichie knew the man’s wife and, though horrified at the invasion of her privacy, was slightly amused at the thought of men buying underwear on the internet imagining them to have been worn by some nineteen-year-old beauty when in fact they had been worn by a chain-smoking fifty-year-old who worked on the butcher counter at Tesco and spent most nights down the bingo. Adichie had told him that he should tell his wife what he had done as part of his penance. He doubted the man had.

“Can I start at the beginning?” the woman asked.

Adichie looked at her face through the latticed window on the wooden wall separating them. The lattice cast a checkered shadow on her pale face, obscuring her features.

“That’s the best place to start, I find,” he said drily.

The woman laughed a little and began to speak. By the time she was finished, Adichie had forgotten all about his sore foot. He had forgotten about the burger he was planning to order when he got back home. He had even forgotten that he hated hearing confessions.

“My son,” the woman said, “is sixteen. I know you don’t have any children yourself, Father, but you probably spend enough time around them in the schools and things like that to know what teenaged boys are like. I suppose you even remember what it was like to be one. I’m getting on a wee bit myself, but I still remember what it was like to be that age. Hormones everywhere, you know? You don’t know if you’re up or down half the time with all the acne and exams and your parents being a pain and all that. You can’t blame them for acting out a bit.

“My Ross (that’s not his name—it’s not fair to drag him into this any more than he already is), he isn’t like that. He’s a good boy. Never got in with a bad crowd or any of that stuff you worry about when they’re wee and you look at them running about on their little legs and you hope they’ll be that sweet and cute forever. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that my Ross stayed just as sweet and cute as he was when he was as young as that, but even this year—and he was sixteen this year, like I said—he was still just a lovely lad. It’s not just me saying that, Father. All my pals say it. His teachers, too.

“I’m not saying he’s a wee swot or anything like that, either. He’s good at school but no genius. He doesn’t get any trouble from any of the other kids or anything like that. At least not that he ever told me. Just keeps to himself. That’s just the way he is. I know I’m a wee bit biased, but I always like that in a person you know? Someone that just knows what they like and doesn’t bother anybody else with anything. Just does their own thing. That’s my Ross.

“I’m really sorry, Father. I’m probably rambling on far too much. I’m not doing this right, am I? It’s just been so long since I’ve done a confession. I think I was maybe a wee girl when I did it last. Back when old Father Hogg was the priest, if you can believe that.”

“No, no,” said Adichie. His shoe was still off and lay, temporarily forgotten, under his chair. “Go on. There’s nobody waiting, so you say what you have to say your way. I think that’s what works best with this kind of thing.”

“Exactly,” the woman said, sounding relieved. “I feel exactly the same way, Father. Tell it your way and the truth comes out, you know? So, like I said, my wee Ross just turned sixteen, and I think that at sixteen it’s time to start cutting the apron strings a wee bit, you know? Like letting them go out on the weekends more and stuff like that. My Ross was never that interested in doing things like that, though. He was more into his computers. Not my thing. I use them for work but not other than that. My Ross, though, he takes to all this technology like a duck to water. It’s just his thing. He’s always playing his online games and stuff like that. Has been since he was even younger than he is now.

“But don’t you go thinking that I’m one of those parents who just let their kids do whatever they want online. I’m not naive. I’m not even fifty yet. I know what I’m doing with computers even if they’re not my favorite thing in the world. And stuff online is really dangerous, wouldn’t you say, Father? Especially for an impressionable young boy. So I’ve always had all the parenting tools. Website blockers and things like that. I also insisted—insisted, Father—on having the password and login information to his Facebook and Twitter accounts. There’s no fighting against social media. You can’t keep them off it these days, and you would be silly to try. All you can do is make sure they use it as safely as they can. So I made sure that I had access to all of his accounts so I could check that he was okay. There’s all sorts of creeps on those sites.

“But when he turned sixteen just before Christmas there, I knew I had to stop doing it. I wasn’t going to, but Jimmy—that’s my husband—told me that I should. He pointed out how much I would have hated my own mum checking up on me like that when I was Ross’s age. He was right, too. I think when you hit your late teens you’re entitled to the odd secret from your parents, you know? You can’t hide behind your mummy’s skirts forever. That’s the thing.

“I decided that I would throw out the passwords and stuff that I had and that I would tell him that I had. So that he would know that we trusted him and that we thought of him as an adult now. That’s important, don’t you think, Father? For a young man to know that his parents trust him to look after himself?”

Adichie let the pause last a little longer than he should, not realizing that she was actually waiting for answer this time. “Oh, yes,” he said. “My mother always said what makes a man is having people trust and depend on him. It’s very important.”

“Exactly!” the woman said, sounding pleased. “I decided that was what I would do. I would let him know that we both thought he was getting old enough to look after himself now. Old enough to be trusted as well. The thing is, and this is the first part of my actual confession, Father, I did something I shouldn’t have.

“See, though I had the password for all of his accounts, I never really actually used them after the first few months. Oh, I would go on now and then just to make sure that he hadn’t changed them without telling me, but I never actually looked at his messages or anything. I figured that as long as he wasn’t locking me out, he must have nothing to hide, you know? But when I decided to get rid of the passwords, something made me want to just have a little last look. I know that spying is probably a sin, but I was honestly doing it to make sure he was okay. That was all. Nothing more.

“So I was just sitting on the couch after dinner. Jimmy was watching one of those horrible crime shows he likes, and I was just sitting on my iPad and decided I would take a wee look. Just to see. So I went to the drawer where I kept the slip of paper with the password on it and logged into his Facebook account.

“Most of it was, I suppose, what you would expect. I don’t have one of those accounts myself. Jimmy does, but I can’t be bothered with it. Just seems a little boring to me, that’s all. All that farm stuff and posting pictures of yourself. What’s the point? Why would I want to see one of my nieces in some skimpy bikini at a beach or something like that? People’s holiday pictures are boring enough when they’re sitting with you and making you look at them. I’m not going to look at them voluntarily.

“Anyway, don’t mind my rants. I’m always moaning. So I looked at Ross’s page and it was exactly like all the others I had seen. Games and those stupid quizzes about what Disney character you are and all that stuff. I scrolled down, just having a look, and didn’t really see anything wrong. He didn’t post much to be honest. The odd YouTube video by one of those people he likes that play the same video games as him.

“Once, about four months back, he had ‘liked’ a picture of one of the lassies in his class at school in a Halloween outfit. Short-shorts and an inflatable hammer. I’m not really sure what she was supposed to be. Anyway, she looked very pretty, although I admit I did raise an eyebrow. I know her mum, and I think she wouldn’t have been very happy to see a picture like that on the web. But, then, maybe I’m wrong. Maybe nobody minds stuff like that as much as me these days. It’s all change, isn’t it? You see stuff now at half six at night on Hollyoaks you wouldn’t have seen in a porn magazine when I was a girl.

“Anyway, other than that, there was nothing really on his public page that made me feel like it wouldn’t be a good idea to let him have his privacy. Like I said, he’s a sensible boy, my Ross. He knows better. That was almost the end of it there. Put it this way, Father, I wish it had been. If I could go back in time now, I would have logged out and never said another word about it. I don’t know what made me go to his private messages. Just nosiness, I suppose.

“I opened up the messages and had a look. I recognized almost all the names scrolling down. They were all his wee pals from school. Most of the messages were talking about that Minecraft thing they’re so into these days. I didn’t open them. But there was one name, about halfway down the list of messages, I didn’t recognize. A girl’s.

“Now I know what you’re thinking, Father. That I was snooping. That I shouldn’t have looked. And you know what? You’re right. I thought about it later, and I wouldn’t have liked it. When I was his age, I had a diary. How retro is that? I wasn’t exactly pouring my heart and soul out into it like a character in a film or something, but I was still quite protective of it. It was this little black notebook. Nothing fancy. I wasn’t stupid enough to buy some glittery pink book with SECRET DIARY all over it like I was advertising for my brother to look in it. But, even though I didn’t keep very much of interest in it, I would have been horrified to think that anyone had been through it. It’s the privacy thing. I know that. And kids these days, their computers are their private places. I shouldn’t have looked when I had already decided to give him his passwords back. But I did, Father. I did.”

The woman fell silent. Father Adichie didn’t push her. It was common, when people had a lengthy confession, for them to take the time to gather their thoughts, maybe even to rethink confessing at all. He’d had more than one person stop in the middle of the story to claim they had some sort of emergency at work that meant they had to leave. Maybe this woman would be one of those. He rubbed the side of his face thoughtfully, noticing that he definitely needed a shave.

As if the rasping sound of Adichie’s palm across his stubble woke her up, the woman began to speak again. “So anyway, Father, I clicked on it. I opened up the messages he had been sharing with that girl. I won’t tell you her name. I’ll just call her something random. Mandy, say.

“Mandy’s wee profile picture showed that she was an absolute stunner, Father. About Ross’s age, I thought, maybe a bit older, but girls often look older, you know? It was her at a party all done up with a drink in her hand like an adult. Very grown up. I know that doesn’t really matter; it just sticks out in my mind. She looked so grown up in all her pictures. I know she was just a little girl, but she didn’t look it, Father, you know?”

Adichie made a non-committal sound, not wanting to disturb her flow.

“Anyway, that’s not the point. I had a look through their chat. Most of it was like the rest of his chats with people. Nothing very interesting. To be honest, they didn’t talk very much. Once or twice a month. But here’s the thing, Father.”

Father Adichie heard her chair creak as she leaned forward.

“I went back a little bit in their chat. Not good, I know. I don’t know what I was actually looking for. I just knew I was looking for something. And I found it.”

She took a breath and the chair creaked again as she sat back. “A few months ago, he had asked her if she wanted to go out with him.”

She left a long enough pause that Adichie felt he was supposed to speak again.

“I see,” he said. “Well, you know, I wouldn’t worry about that. It’s perfectly natural for a young man to—”

She interrupted him. “I know that, Father. God, I’m not as much of a prude as all that. I told you I remember what it was like to be his age. Of course that sort of thing is going to happen,”

“Right,” Adichie said, confused. “So, I’m sorry, but what is it you want to confess to? Is it just to looking at his messages?”

The woman sighed. “No,” she said quietly. “It’s not just that.”

“What happened?”

“I looked at all the previous messages. He worked himself up to it bit by bit and then finally asked if she wanted to go and see the new superhero movie, just the two of them. He didn’t come right out and say ‘would you like to be my girlfriend’ but it was clear what he meant. She definitely knew what he meant. And do you know what she sent him? Epipses.”

“Epipses?” Father Adichie repeated.

“The three wee dots?” she said.

“Ellipses?” Father Adichie asked.

“Yes, that,” she said. “Whatever. So she sent him that and then there was like five minutes between that and the next thing she said. Then do you know what she said?”

Adichie opened his mouth, but this time she didn’t wait for an answer.

“She said ‘no.’ She told him ‘no.’ He put his heart out there, took the chance of being made fun of, and she told him no. And why? What possible reason could she have to say that? I’m not going to be one of those mothers who says that her son is perfect or anything stupid like that, but he’s a lovely boy. A real gentleman. She would have been treated like a princess, but instead she says ‘no’?”

She was breathing hard. Adichie could hear her through the partition. She sounded like a large animal resting after a run. A horse maybe. Or a bear.

“I had to do something. I couldn’t just sit there and take that.”

Adichie wet his lips. “So what did you do?”

“I made a Facebook account,” the woman said. She paused, and this time Adichie didn’t say anything, sensing that she needed a moment to gather her thoughts. “I made a Facebook account with a fake name, saying that I went to her and Ross’s school. Then I added her as a friend. And then—” the woman made a high-pitched sound and Adichie realized she was crying.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

“Yes, yes,” she said. “I’m fine. I just—I did something I shouldn’t have.”

“What?” Adichie asked. His stomach did a slow flip, and later he would wonder if he somehow knew what she was about to say.

“Then I started sending her messages,” she said in a horrified whisper. “At first I thought about sending her stuff asking her why she had rejected Ross like that. Why she did it so bluntly. She didn’t even give him a decent explanation. Nothing. So I thought I would ask her about it. That was really all I wanted at first. An explanation. I just wanted to know why she felt she could just dismiss my boy like that. I just wanted to know. That was all.”

She fell silent and Adichie could hear her quiet sobs. He had the same feeling in stomach as when the doctor back home had called him to tell him that his mother hadn’t made it through the night. Before the doctor even said it, Adichie could hear it in his voice and he started to feel sick. This was the same. Something very wrong had happened here.

“But it wasn’t all,” Adichie asked, “was it?”

He could see her shaking her head back and forth in silhouette. “No, it wasn’t,” she whispered. “But it was supposed to be all. That’s important. There was no pre . . . premeditation or whatever they call it in those stupid police shows. There was nothing like that. I didn’t sit there planning what to say to her, planning to say things that hurt.”

“So what did you do?” Adichie pressed. He was leaning forward now, his sore foot forgotten, and he was bouncing his left leg slightly, a nervous habit.

She swallowed audibly. “When I added her, she accepted right away but sent me a message asking me how she knew me exactly. It was more words than she used to tell my Ross he wasn’t worth her time. That made me even angrier. I wanted to scream, you know? But I couldn’t because I was sitting on the couch across from my husband while he watched TV. So I just typed instead. I typed hard as if it were the iPad I was angry at.

“The first word I sent her was ‘bitch.’ Just that. In capital letters. Nothing else. I don’t know why I chose that word. I hate it. I hate even hearing it on TV, and I’m not someone who bothers much about swearing. But that word always has so much contempt behind it. My granny used to have something she would say when she didn’t like something. She would say ‘I can’t abide it.’ I used to laugh at that, but the word ‘bitch’ is like that for me now. I can’t abide it at all.”

“So why did you say it?” Adichie asked quietly.

She shook her head, her dark form barely visible. “I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t know.”

“What happened next?”

“Once I started, I just couldn’t stop,” she whispered. “I started saying the most horrible things. I even called her the c-word. I called her a slut. I told her she was ugly.” She swallowed. “I even asked her why she didn’t just kill herself.”

Adichie breathed in sharply, not meaning to. There was silence for a moment, and he was afraid he had scared her off. He waited. Held his breath.

“I know,” she said eventually. Her voice was thick as if she was crying. “It’s bad, isn’t it?”

“I’m sorry,” Father Adichie said. “I shouldn’t have reacted like that. A friend of mine took his own life, that’s all.”

“I’m really sorry to hear that,” she said. “You probably don’t believe me. You probably think I’m some sort of psychopath for saying that to this girl, but I’m really not. I don’t know why I said it. I think I was just protective of my Ross. I felt like he might have been hurt, you know? I wanted to hurt her back. That was wrong. I know that.”

Father Adichie didn’t say anything in return. He was fighting within himself to quell his revulsion. When he was in seminary, this was something they had been warned against. A priest was there to hear the confession and intercede with God on the person’s behalf. Only God could judge. He took a deep breath and forced himself to be calm. He had to hear the end now.

“Go on,” he said. “Please.”

“Well,” she said, “she pretty much told me to get lost and blocked my account. I thought that would be the end of it. I really meant it to be, Father. When I went to bed that night, I just felt so guilty. So guilty, you wouldn’t believe it. I didn’t sleep at all, I don’t think. I just stared at the ceiling and hated myself for what I had done.”

“Well,” said Father Adichie as gently as he could, “the important thing is that you decided to come here today and didn’t let it go any further. I think you know this isn’t—”

She interrupted him. “Sorry, Father, but I didn’t come here right after that.”

“What do you mean?”

“This all happened weeks ago. I knew I should never have done it again. That was the plan. It really was. But when I got up the next morning, I didn’t feel guilty anymore. Or at least not as guilty. Isn’t that strange? I felt angry. I felt angry that she blocked me without even hearing what I had to say. I know I shouldn’t have started being nasty like that, but she could have at least heard me out. She could have done that, couldn’t she?”

Adichie didn’t answer. He didn’t know what to say.

She rushed on anyway. “So I made another account and did it again. And again. And every time I did, I thought to myself that this was the last time. It was just one more time so that she could see how I was feeling. That would be it. And then there would just be something about her picture that just made me angry all over again. In a way though it was partly her fault. She kept accepting my friend requests. Why would you do that when you know that someone is out to abuse you like that?”

The woman was speaking rapidly now, excitedly. She sounded more than excited, though; she sounded furious. Furious and scared at the same time.

“Is it still going on?” Adichie asked.

“Eventually, after a couple of weeks, she stopped accepting my friend requests,” the woman said. Adichie felt his shoulders slump with relief. “And that was when I did the really bad thing. That was when I did the thing that, more than all the rest, I really shouldn’t have.”

Adichie felt cold. “What?”

“You have to understand that she wouldn’t answer any of the friend requests from any of the new accounts I made,” the woman said a little desperately. “Not one. And I didn’t want to be nasty again. I just wanted to apologize for all I had done. I wanted to tell her that the suicide thing was just a joke, you know? Dark humor.”

“Dark humor,” Adichie said faintly.

“Aye, just like that,” she said. “That was all I wanted to say. But she wouldn’t let me. She wouldn’t answer anything I sent her. So—so I still had Ross’s password. In all the stuff with this girl, I had forgotten about giving it back.”

You didn’t forget, Adichie thought quickly. You didn’t—you kept it in your back pocket just in case. He chastised himself inwardly for the thought. He had to hear her out.

“So I went on his account one night. It was really late. Him and his dad were both in bed. It was only me up. Even the dog was asleep. I opened up my iPad and I logged into his Facebook account. Even after I logged in, I wasn’t sure it was a good idea to talk to her. I almost closed it. I almost put it away and put the whole idea to bed. But I just couldn’t. I felt this need to apologize. I had to.”

“And did you?” Adichie asked.

She continued as if he hadn’t spoken. “I opened up his messages and his conversation with her. I was going to apologize to her. I really was. But then I saw something. He had sent her a message the day before. Just saying hi. That was all.

“But she hadn’t answered. The wee mark beside the message meant she had read it, but she hadn’t thought my Ross was worth an answer. She was ignoring him even though she knew he had a thing for her. She was ignoring him even though she knew how much a message would have meant to him. A wee hello or something. Nothing drastic. But she had just ignored him. Treated him like he was nothing.” She sighed, a long and shaky sound. “So I sent her some more bad messages.”

“What did you say?” Adichie whispered.

She choked back a sob. “I told her it was no wonder that people told her to kill herself. I told her . . . I told her . . . I can’t—” She was crying too much to speak.

“What did you say?” Adichie asked urgently. “What did you say?”

“I told her that if she didn’t kill herself then I would come to her house and do it for her,” the woman said in one breath.

Adichie clapped a hand over his mouth. For over a minute, the only sound was her breathless sobs. When he spoke, his voice was hoarse. “You sent that. And now it looks like it was sent from his account.”

“That was last night,” the woman said. “And this morning—this morning I had a call from the police. They’ve arrested my Ross. They’ve arrested my boy.”

“Arrested.” Adichie repeated, the full realization of what had happened horrifying him.

“I got the call about an hour ago. And I was on my way to the station, Father, I really was. But then I saw the church. I’m not a religious person, really. My mum was, but not me. But I needed to come in and pray. I knew that as soon as I saw that the doors were open. I had to pray to know what to do.”

“What do you mean, you had to pray to know what to do?” Adichie asked, already knowing the answer.

“To know what to do about this, Father,” the woman said, sounding surprised that he had to ask. “I had to pray to ask what I should do about my Ross being arrested. I could tell them it was me, but as far as the police know, it was a one-time thing for him, and if I confess, they’ll get the rest out of me. I know they will. I don’t know what the punishment is for this sort of thing, Father, but I do know that they won’t send a sixteen-year-old to jail. Will they?”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m not saying anything,” she said. He noticed without much surprise that the tears had stopped now. That particular prop was no longer needed. “I’m asking, Father. I’m asking what you think I should do. I saw that you had confessions this morning and thought I could ask you in person. Should I tell them it was me or not?”

“I—” Adichie began.

She interrupted him. “Before you answer, I just want you to bear in mind that I didn’t mean to do it. It just got away from me. I’m too protective of my Ross. That’s the problem. Mama bear, that’s me. You know how it is. Right?”

“You need to tell the police the truth,” Adichie said. “That needs to happen. Think of your son.”

There was a cold silence on the other side of the confessional. Then the woman said, “How dare you say I am cruel to my son, Father. You don’t have any children of your own. You don’t know what a parent’s love—a mother’s love—is like. You can’t possibly understand, so don’t presume to tell me how to be a mother.”

Her voice was icy. Completely different to that of the uncertain woman who had walked into his confessional earlier.

“Please. You have to turn yourself in. You have to!” Father Adichie said. Now it was he who sounded desperate. He could hear it in his own voice. “Please!”

“Tell me this, Father.” The woman’s voice was still cold and emotionless. “You’re not allowed to tell anybody what I told you here today, are you? Are you?”

“Please tell the police—”

“Are you?” she demanded.

“No,” he said quietly. “I’m not.”

“Then here’s what is going to happen,” she said. “I’m going to walk out of here right now, and you’re never going to see or hear from me ever again. You don’t understand a mother’s love, Father. Just remember that.”

“Wait,” Father Adichie said. The door creaked and light flooded the other side of the confessional. He got a brief glimpse of a thin face with blue eyes and greying hair, and then it was gone, and he was alone.

Adichie stumbled to his feet, forgetting for a moment he was wearing only one shoe and almost falling over. He threw open his own door, blinking at the sudden daylight. He looked around. The woman was gone. The only person in the church was a woman he recognized as Mrs. Duffy. She had been a weekly regular at his confession sessions since she retired and found herself with a lot more time on her hands to reflect on her various minor sins. She was sitting on the pew nearest the confessional, idly fiddling with her rosary beads.

“She was in a hurry, wasn’t she?” Mrs. Duffy said mildly. “Did you give her too many Hail Marys?”

“Something like that,” Father Adichie said softly, wiping the sweat from his brow.

Mrs. Duffy levered herself to her feet, her beads clutched in one knobby fist. “Well, either way, I’m glad she’s away now, Father. I’ve got some things I really need to get off my chest. I was in the shop today, Mrs. Patel’s, and I just snapped at her. And I’ve been feeling so guilty about it.” She tottered to the other door of the confessional and let herself in, closing the door behind her.

For a moment, Father Adichie considered leaving her there and seeing if he could catch the other woman, but he knew he wouldn’t catch her. She would have jumped in her car and left. For the police station. He took a deep breath, trying to slow his heart, and got another whiff of that fruity perfume. It tasted sickly sweet now, almost making him gag. He closed the confessional door and sat back down in his chair.

“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned,” Mrs. Duffy said.

Father Adichie didn’t hear a single word she said after that.

*