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Chapter Fourteen
Finn
Father Doyle staredat me over his glasses. “This is very fast, Finn, my child. Do you have something to confess?”
I scowled at him. “Aoife is not pregnant.” I glared at her when she choked back a giggle. “Tell him, Aoife.”
Her lips curved. “I’m not pregnant.”
Sighing, I mumbled, “You could have said that with more conviction.”
She snickered, and Father Doyle glared at her disapprovingly. “You think it’s a laughing matter to be with child?”
“No, Father, but Finn’s reaction was too amusing not to laugh.”
Father Doyle narrowed his eyes. “Your parents are dead?”
She stiffened, and because I knew her secret, I knew why. “Yes.”
“Shame, shame, for two good Catholic souls to be taken from their daughter while she’s so young. They were, I presume, Catholic?” That was what he really wanted to know.
“Indeed, Father. Both of them. My parish is over on Hawk Avenue.”
Doyle stiffened. “You’re a part of Father James’ flock?”
“Yes.”
“When was your last confession? We stick with the old ways here, Aoife. I know Father James is very slack on that front.”
She cleared her throat. “A while ago?”
Doyle tsked. “We’ll have to remedy that.”
I shot her a sympathetic look, and she grimaced at me, then tightened her fingers about mine.
The priest’s office was dour, cold, and very, very brown. Except for the avocado green desk chair he sat in, one that he’d used since he’d first accepted me into his flock after I’d run from home. Everything was the same. Old and worn.
The walls were clad with wooden panels which made the room even grimmer, and a set of three windows looked out onto a street.
It was like stepping into the seventies when you came in here, and outside was the promise of the return to the modern world.
“I’m sure, Father. I’ll be attending on Sunday if that’s okay?”
“More than okay, my child,” Doyle said, beaming at her.
I’d told Aoife that Sunday service was an important part of life for all of us. Even Conor, who’d broken his parents’ heart by coming out as an atheist.
When that had happened, I honestly thought Aidan would have preferred him to come out as gay. And Aidan was one of the biggest homophobes I’d ever encountered. He was of the ‘Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve’ belief. But then, he was old-school. So old-school he belonged in this office with the rest of the time warp.
When I’d told her of the duty we’d now be performing as a couple, she’d moaned, “No sleeping in?”
I’d grinned. “Nope.”
Doyle grumbled under his breath. “Still, this expediency is very strange, Finn. You’re certain you’re not with child, Aoife.”
“Very certain, Father.”
“To bypass the calling of the banns, you know how traditional we are, Finn.”
