Charity had always loved the feeling that she had when she went into the church.

She loved the quietness, the coolness of the stone, the way the Sunday hymns seemed to echo as a memory down the nave. She loved the smell of the place — of old books and wooden pews, of sunlight filtered through stained glass.

Most of all, she loved the sense of perfect safety that she always felt there.

The church was ruled from above by God and maintained from within by her father. By their joint efforts, she had always felt, no harm could ever come to her so long as she was within its walls.

For a few moments after she entered, she merely sat in one of the familiar pews, smelling the scent of the wood and breathing in the heady fragrance of the white flowers that adorned the altar, feeling the tranquility of stillness. Her previous urgency to find her father had melted away as soon as she stepped inside, being replaced by a feeling of serenity.

In the whirlwind in which she had so recently found herself, serenity seemed to her like a precious commodity. Therefore, she allowed herself the luxury of revelling for a few moments in the quiet.

But, trickling back to her — slowly and then fast, like the building up of a flood — all her fears about her father returned. Where was he, and why had he broken with his usual routine?

She had thought that she might find him here, perhaps in conversation with some parishioner who had drawn him away from his usual pursuits. Or perhaps — she admitted this to herself — she had hoped to find him in prayer, asking God desperately how he might heal the breach with his beloved daughter, whom he had wronged so gravely and who was now gone from him.

But he was not there. Her domineering father, who all her life had filled every corner of her thoughts with his heavy presence, was absent, and it frightened her. Not that same aimless fright that she had dispelled when she stood outside the church.

No, this fear was more concrete and came from a different place in her heart. It was the fear that a child feels the first time she realizes that perhaps she needs to take care of her father even more than she needs her father to take care of her.

A sound, however, cut through the footsteps.

It was the sound of someone walking through the back of the church. The space was concealed by a heavy velvet curtain, but the footsteps were sufficiently sharp that the curtain did not muffle them.

She did not know what it was about the quality of the footsteps that caused her to hide. There was no reason for it that she could consciously name.

Yet as soon as she heard a sound, she hurried, her feet silent on the stone floor of the church and into the little vestry. There she stood, barely daring to breathe nor make any other sound at all, but listening intently to everything that unfolded.

Charity sat there in silence for a few moments, and the footsteps grew closer and closer before stopping abruptly.

The church was quiet for so long that eventually, she gained the courage to peep out of the vestry and see what was going on in the nave.

Her father was in one of the pews, entirely alone. He was kneeling, with his hands clasped before him and his head bent in supplication. She could see that his lips were moving silently, and by their shape and the way that he paused for breath, she could tell at once that he was reciting the Lord’s Prayer.

Once the familiar words had drawn to a close, he stopped and spoke aloud. He opened his eyes and looked straight ahead to where the cross hung on the wall, as though he hoped to converse directly with his maker.

“O, Lord,” he said, his voice cracking on the syllables, “I have sinned,” he said aloud.