Page 114 of The Sinner and the Priest: Part 1

“About evil not surviving a name?”

“Sì.”

She is so silent that I strain my hearing to hear her breath. When I catch it, stilted and shallow, my heart bleeds. I place my fingers on the lattice, tips poking through so she can see.

“I am leaving tomorrow, Mercy, but I will wait for as long as you need me.”

Her breath grows sharper, faster, as if she is trying to control her emotions. I don’t want to cause her suffering. I just want her to heal.

I let go of the screen, and my fingers bump down until there’s nothing left. I’m about to reach for the door to end this when she speaks.

“Do you know,” she whispers, “that I feel cursed, too?”

“How so?”

“It’s stupid,” she mutters.

“Nothing spoken in here is stupid.” I tap on the wood. “It is the beauty of this box.”

“Beauty,” she spits. “That’s the curse.” Gasps. “God, it sounds so ridiculous to say it out loud.” An incredulous, pained laugh. “No one with my looks has the right to feel hard done by them, right?”

I stay silent. Give her the room to breathe.

“People have surgery to look like me,” she says. “But I was born like this, and I’m just supposed to feel grateful?” Her voice pitches high. “Do you know what beauty gives you? Do you know what it gives a child?” She heaves in a breath. “Nothing. It gives nothing. Only takes. It takes and takes and takes … until one day, the only way to stop it is to take it first.” Another, sucked in breath. A shuddering gasp. “I started taking it from myself first, thinking there would be nothing left for them. And then when I came here, I learned to take it from them. I took it from that priest. I took it from everyone until I was the only one left with the power to say mercy.”

My heart is breaking. Screaming. I want to find all of ‘them’ and swallow them whole.

She picks at the lattice, and I let her. I would let her pick apart my skin before her own.

“Only one person ever made me feel like … he didn’t see the beauty.” The lattice splinters. “But he still heard.” Wood peels. “He heard what my mother wanted him to hear.” Pieces fall. “He believed them and then he⁠—”

She gasps. Her hand disappears from the lattice.

The silence is deafening.

“Mercy?”

“That’s my confession. My sin.”

“Beauty?”

“Why not?” she sneers.

I clench my jaw. “Because it is not something that comes from within. It is a label given by others.”

“Yes, and it’s the cause of so much ruin.”

I ruin things. I ruin lives.

That’s what she told me in the changeroom. After I kissed her, she tried to tell me it was her fault, that I wasn’t thinking clearly because of something she made me do.

“You don’t ruin lives,” I say.

“Pretty sure it’s in my job description.”

“Mercy.”

“Padre.”