JACOB
Running up the steps of the parish at exactly nine in the morning, I had a metal box tucked beneath my arm and a feral determination to find answers to my questions. Anger coursed through my veins, only deepening with every passing hour, my body tense and energetic despite my lack of sleep. I'd spent the entire night reading over my father's confession, damning the man that raised me and staring at several pictures that sickened me.
Bursting through the door, I found Father Timothy standing at the stoup just inside the doors, his hand moving to bless the water.
"How long have you known?" My voice boomed against the vaulted ceilings and thick walls.
He didn't so much as flinch in response to my anger. Calmly finishing his prayer, he lifted his knowing eyes to pin mine with understanding. "Perhaps we should go somewhere private to have this conversation."
I ignored the calm tone of his voice, refused to let it soothe me. "How long?"
Glancing back to ensure we were alone in the immediate area, he returned his gaze to me. "Since before your father died. But I won't have this conversation out here." Turning he took a few steps before saying, "Follow me."
My jaw ticked with frustration, but I quietly followed nonetheless. It didn't matter where and how he gave me my answers, just that he gave them at all. Barely able to control the fury coursing through my body, I walked with him past the large stained glass windows, gold crosses and statues of Mary, finally breathing out a steady breath when we reached his office down the long hall.
He led me inside, turning to stare back at me once I'd walked fully inside.
"Close the door," he requested. My hand hit the knob at the same time someone called for him from the opposite side of the hall. His annoyed expression matched my own. Stepping past me, he spoke low. "Wait here. I'll see who it is and take care of their issue quickly."
He was gone before I could stop him. I considered rushing after him, demanding his time over whatever issue that other person had in mind, but I knew doing so would only work against me in the end. Father Timothy hadn't done anything to warrant my level of aggression, except for keeping his mouth shut on a secret that could tear his parish apart.
I found myself pacing as one minute bled into another, whispers running through my mind that led to memories that led to pain. The questions were endless, the betrayal suffocating, but allowing the weight of my father's confession to crush me would only weaken me and knock me off course.
My jaw ached from clenching my teeth, my hair messy from constantly running my fingers through it. And when I came to a point where I felt like I would start screaming, I turned towards the far wall of Timothy's office and froze in the face of the cross.
Not just a cross, the large wood and metal symbol was an ornate crucifix, the detail stunning right down to the nails that held Jesus in place. My heart felt heavy to realize how evil and painful this symbol had become.
The door opened and closed behind me, soft footsteps approaching before stopping at my back. I didn't turn to Timothy when I finally said, "It's such a morbid symbol, isn't it? The image of a man tortured and killed. Of all the ways Jesus could be remembered, this is the one we hold most dearly. Like we're still celebrating the destruction of a good man."
Seconds passed before he finally answered, "I guess that all depends on how you look at it."
"When I look at this, I see the torture and destruction of purity. The proof that even when faced with God and the power of his hand, humans are still evil enough to turn their backs on it. To use it in order to feed their own selfishness and greed. When I was young, this symbol was the ultimate bearer of my guilt. It became so much more when I was ordained as a priest. Hope, maybe, or a promise. But now...now all I see is another means by which human beings hurt each other on a daily basis."
A moment of silence beat between us. I assumed Timothy was absorbing my words and considering how he could respond to them. Softly, he answered, "What I see is a symbol of ultimate sacrifice. A pure being enduring the worst forms of suffering and torture just to save us all."
Pivoting on my heel, I met his gaze. "Tell me then how everything he stood for so easily fell to shit. How the men who stand as symbols of His goodness and His sacrifice are sometimes the most evil."
He winced at the accusation, at the lack of emotion in my voice, at the truth in the words I'd spoken.
Elijah's words echoed in my head, his insistence that after Jesus had risen from the dead, man was left to fall again. I understood what he was implying, and now that I'd read my father's confession, I felt guilty for not seeing what had clearly driven him mad.
"You've known for several years what happened under the roof of this parish. And yet nothing, not a damn thing, has been done about it."
Shadows crossed over his eyes, guilt and regret lining his brow in deep wrinkles. There was no conviction to his voice when he answered, "You know how it is, Jacob. You've been a priest long enough to understand."
I could feel the beat of my pulse just beneath my skin, could feel my blood pressure rising until it was a steady drum pounding inside my head. "Actually, Father Timothy, I don't know. I've come to you so that you can enlighten me."
It was impossible for him to miss the threat in my tone, the menace, the barely controlled violence that flooded me. His throat worked visibly to swallow down the fear he felt. "We should sit down, I think. Take some time to discuss this in detail."
I smiled, the expression not quite reaching my eyes. Timothy moved quickly to take a seat behind his desk, no doubt praying that the large and heavy oak furniture would act as a barrier between his body and mine.
Stalking closer, I didn't sit down before carefully setting the metal box on the desk, its bottom clicking softly against the wood. Somehow that quiet sound carried more guilt and accusation than anything I'd ever known. Timothy moved as if to reach for it, but I splayed my hand over the top.
"I want to know what he told you, first. Then I'll let you see what's contained inside this box."
My father’s confession contained a lot of sins. I wanted to know if Timothy had heard them all.
Pulling at his clerical collar, Timothy settled as much as he could against his seat.
I jutted my chin in his direction. "It strangles you, doesn't it? The small strip of white cloth that has become a symbol of your faith."
A bark of laughter shook his thin shoulders. "It definitely has a way of silencing me. Of making me question things."
I knew what he meant. That collar had made me question my entire existence when I was faced with Eve. Slowly taking my seat, I thought back to her. Saw the complacency in her green eyes staring back at me. Just like another set of green eyes I'd known. Two sets actually, now that I was beginning to understand my obsession.
Leveling my gaze on Timothy, I sat silent, not-so-patiently waiting for his explanation.
He spoke carefully, his words more political than heartfelt. "I'm sorry, Jacob, that nothing has been done. And that nothing had been said. But this is a delicate situation."
Delicate, my ass. He just didn't want to risk losing his job. "I'm not here to talk about what kind of situation we're dealing with. I'm fucking familiar with that. What I want to know is where are the two sons of bitches who thought they had the right to touch my brother?"
Did he know they were dead?
Timothy went completely still as the words left my mouth, the room sinking into silence once the reverberation of my voice died off leaving the question to linger between us. Slowly, he sat forward in his seat, the wood creaking beneath his weight. Crossing one forearm over the other on the surface of his desk, he kept his eyes trained on me, sympathy swirling beneath the deep shadows of guilt. "I don't know."
So, my father hadn’t openly confessed everything…
He breathed out heavily after answering me, the fingers of one hand drumming over the skin of his opposite arm. "All I know of that particular situation is what your father told me during his confessions."
Eyebrows shooting up, I asked, "Confessions? As in plural?"
"As in multiple. Five or six, maybe. Your father had tucked away quite the collection of skeletons in his closet. By the time he was finished confessing, I'm sure he went to meet God with a clear conscience."
My teeth slammed together, my jaw ticking with the effort. "Hopefully God sent his ass into the pits of Hell as soon as he arrived."
Timothy blinked at the censure in my voice, maintaining the appearance that he was calm and collected despite my obvious hatred toward the man who raised me. "Regardless of your father's eternal fate, what I know of the others is that there was a shakeup within the parish while Jericho still lived in town and attended here. From what I know, Jericho had every intention of going to school, earning a degree and attending seminary school much like you did. However, he made...accusations...prior to starting school."
My lips tipped up into a snide grin. "Let's stop beating around the bush. It's a waste of both our time. I know what you meant to say is that my brother finally came out and spoke about the two men who had been abusing him his entire life, the two men who sought protection from my father."
"As far as your father knew, they were only disciplining Jericho-"
"With their cocks?"
The older priest's eyes clenched shut at the reminder that the attention given to Jericho hadn't been what most would consider good or pure.
The situation didn't entirely make sense to me. After reading what my father wrote so many times that the words went blurry beneath my strained and tired eyes, I'd spent the late evening and early morning hours attempting to understand how something so evil could have happened. How I could have missed what was being done to my twin brother? It wasn't just when we were young. Perhaps if it had been, there would be some believable excuse. But from what I knew, the abuse lasted late into Jericho's teen years, possibly continuing even after I'd already left home.
Opening his eyes, Timothy reached up to scrub his palm over his face. "The priest assigned to this parish prior to me, as well as the music director who led the children and youth choirs were transferred shortly after your brother came forward. The situation was handled quietly in order to spare the parish."
A fire had been lit inside me, rolling and growing until the heat threatened to strangle my lungs. Dragging in a breath was difficult. Keeping from screaming even more so. "So, what you're telling me is that two grown men abused a boy for over ten fucking years, and the only punishment they received was to be transferred?"
"This type of situation-"
"Is delicate. Yes, you've told me that already. But didn't the Church consider that my brother had been delicate as well? Every day, every week, month and year that those two bastards raped him, he had been just as delicate as the situation."
Pinning me with his gaze, he managed to keep a straight face. I would have gone across the desk at him if I didn't notice the anger rolling behind his eyes - an anger that matched my own. "I never claimed it was right, Jacob. There's a reason I hinted to you where you could find your father's buried secrets. But, as a former priest, you have to understand the Church's reasoning for keeping this quiet."
"To save money?" I posited, "or to save face."
Timothy cringed. "To save the faith, Jacob. If something like this were to come out, you know as well as I that believers and non-believers both would blame the Catholic Faith. They would question their own belief systems based on the actions of a few evil men who had taken advantage-"
"So, instead of punishing them and jailing them as they should have been, the Church made the decision to transfer them? Are they free to continue molesting small children?"
I knew the answer, but did he?
"I assume they're both so old now that even if they wanted to-"
My fist slammed down on the desk, the metal box rattling over its surface. Timothy flinched, but gave no other indication that he would back down. I took several steadying breaths before asking a question that eluded me over the course of the night that I racked my brain for answers. "Why Jericho and not me? We were the same age. We lived under the same abusive hand."
Sitting back in his seat, Timothy's eyes darted to the wall behind me, to the crucifix that hung there, the image of a dying Christ staring over at him. "How does evil choose any victim?" he finally asked. "Ease of access, maybe. The strength of the person? None of it makes sense to me."
Biting back a response that wouldn't have been fair to the man sitting in front of me, I refocused my anger on the two men who were guilty of Jericho's abuse. Not just two, but three. While my father hadn't been sexual in his abuse towards my brother or me, he had remained silent on what he knew happened to Jericho. "What, exactly, did my father tell you?"
The wooden chair creaked again as Timothy adjusted his weight. He wasn't fidgeting, just slightly uncomfortable. I understood his hesitancy to talk. Confessions, especially those made on the deathbed of a believer, were sacred. They were a conversation with God made through the holy men on this Earth who acted as a vessel of sorts. As priests, we are sworn to remain silent even when we know the information should be exposed, but our duty to remain silent is steadfast and irrefutable. The faithful need to know that they can confess their sins without fear of secular reprisal. They must be given a safe place to talk to God, a haven of sorts to unload all the sin and evil they may have committed. Their desire to appease their creator must be maintained by the protections provided by the Church. To allow our lips to fall loose, to allow our tongues to speak the secrets that were spoken through us to God, was to admit that secular law was more powerful than the Faith to which those believers subscribed.
Even now, with my father long gone and buried beneath the ground, Timothy stumbled over his vow to guard those secrets, and his own morality to make known the evils that had been committed beneath the roof of this parish and my childhood home.
Fortunately for me, his morality won that battle.
"Your father was a devout man, Jacob, as I'm sure you know. Everything he did in life he did for the Almighty. He gave God the use of his hands as a doctor to heal people and save lives. And, in his belief, at least until the day came where he knew he was facing death, he'd given over those same hands to God for the purpose of raising his sons. He truly believed that the punishment you and your brother suffered was for your own good, that he was fighting against the forces of the Devil to ensure that both your souls could be saved." He paused, breathing out heavily before darting his gaze back to the crucifix hanging behind me. "He didn't know what was happening to your brother when it first started. And from what he told me, he didn't find out until years later when Jericho and you were close to fourteen. He swore to me that if he'd known, he wouldn't have condoned the sexual abuse of his son.”
"However," he said, straightening his shoulders against the high back of his chair, "when he did discover what had occurred, when Jericho admitted it to him during one of the punishments your father was giving him, he, at first, believed your brother was lying."
I knew Timothy was being honest about this part. It matched what was written in my father's confession.
"Your father told me that Jericho only admitted the abuse at the parish because, through the years it was ongoing, he'd been made to believe that it was his fault it was happening. Jericho claimed that he believed he was temptation personified, for lack of a better word. That he had been told the priest and music director were innocent of evil because they had fallen prey to his lustful charms. Rather than seeing those words as proof that two men had intentionally warped the mind of a small child, your father initially believed that your brother was guilty of pride. What other person would assume that they were so desirable that two godly men could not resist the temptation to sin?"
My hands fisted over my lap, not because I was surprised to hear what Timothy was telling me, but because Eve had also been made to believe that she was the ultimate temptation. Jericho's warping of her mind hadn't been some original thought created from his evil need - it had been a repeat of the treachery committed by the men who'd first abused him. I'd already gone over the details of that realization in my head while spending the night pacing the floors of my childhood home. I'd already connected the dots that clearly illustrated how Jericho had known exactly how to brainwash Eve before he'd ever had the first chance to meet her.
"I think, at first, your father's refusal to believe the accusations Jericho made was a disassociation of sorts, a dividing line between his Faith and his opinion of his own son. He knew both his children to be wicked, as he put it, that like most impetuous youth, you two had a habit of being up to no good. It was difficult for him to see-"
"That the truly wicked are the men hiding behind the guise of faith while committing the worst of sin? That they are the men who should be feared above even blatant psychopaths and murderers?"
Inclining his head in agreement with my assessment, he reached out to straighten the cuffs of his sleeves. His voice was soft when he answered, "At least with most psychopaths, you see the evil coming. But with men hidden within and protected by the Church, by men who, in truth, should be the most holy, you never see it coming until it's too late."
"So, my father did nothing."
Nodding his head again, he cleared his throat and answered, "And the abuse continued until Jericho finally came forward after you left home."
Understanding hit me like a runaway train, plowing me over and tearing me apart. I was left as tattered ribbons with one screaming truth crushing my heart. Jericho had a reason for attacking me like he did, at least in his mind, he did. Because, whereas he had been used and hurt in so many ways, it appeared as if I had been the twin to escape unscathed. It made sense, maybe not to an outside person looking in, but in what was left of his fragile mind, I was just as much to blame for what happened to him.
After discovering the truth, I wondered why he'd never told me. Why he'd kept such a horrible secret from his twin. But then, as the evening hours carried on and I rolled all of this through my head, only one reason came to me: I'd never protected Jericho from my father, even after I'd fought back when he'd tried to continue abusing me. Why would I then help him against a form of abuse that was far worse than even my father could deliver?
The sad truth of that realization struck me far harder than anything I'd experienced in life. Flooded with guilt for everything that happened, I couldn't help but feel complicit in the destruction of my twin.
When I'd first come to this city to find answers for my brother's madness, it had been with revenge driving me forward. The same revenge was fueling me now, but rather than it being focused on the bastard that had delivered my Eve, it was towards the men who had originally created the monster, Elijah.
Opening the metal box, I pulled out my father's handwritten confession as well as the photographs he'd left tucked inside. Without bothering to look at them, I tossed them in Timothy's direction. By that point, I didn't need to look at them again. The images were already seared into my brain.
"They were photographing my brother. It wasn't until my brother stole some of the pictures and took them to my father that he believed Jericho's claims." Sad laughter fell over my lips, grief stricken breath beating in and out of my lungs. With flashes of the torment I saw in the grainy, black and white images, I fisted my hands and closed my eyes. "Even after being presented with the evidence, my father did nothing to stop the sexual abuse."
Timothy picked up the photos, his face twisting in revulsion before sliding them under the letter my father had written. Out of sight, out of mind, I guessed, but this particular crime wouldn't go away so easily.
"Why did you bring this to my attention? Did you want me to find out?"
"I thought you should know in case your brother ever contacts you. After the allegations were made, he was quietly asked to walk away from the Church, paid a significant sum to keep his mouth shut and never mention it again." His fingers drummed over the desk just inches from the confession and photos. "Have you see your brother lately?"
I couldn't understand why he cared. "Why does it matter?"
He sighed. "I was hoping you would know where he could be found. I've been quietly looking for him."
My gaze snapped to his. "Why?"
Fingers drumming again, the sound was a quick succession of taps that ended as abruptly as they began. "How much do you know about your father's death?"
My brows pulled together with confusion. "That he died of old age. I don't fucking know. I just heard that he'd died when the executor of his estate contacted me. That was all I cared to know and I never dug any deeper. You told me yourself he was sick, that he gave you these confessions while dying."
His lips pulled into a thin line. "I never told you that your father was sick. I simply said that he'd made the confessions because he knew he was close to death."
Stilled by the implication of his words, the tight fist of my hand released, my palm rubbing over my jeans to dry the clammy sweat. "Are you saying my brother killed my father?"
"I can't tell you what happened, Jacob. All I know is that he knew he was going to die and he was found dead at the base of the stairs in his home. The back of his head had been dented in from blunt force trauma."
It didn't upset me to hear my father had died violently, not in the slightest. But what did worry me was why this priest was so interested in finding my brother. I didn't need the authorities digging too far deeply into my brother's activities. That particular problem was mine alone.
Snatching the confession and photos from the desk, I dropped them in the metal box and slammed the lid. "Can you find the priest and music director? Will the Diocese admit where they were transferred?"
Nodding his head once, his voice was morose when he agreed. "Of course, Jacob. I can do that. But it will take time. Can you come back here in a week to give me time to dig around?"
Frustration was choking me. The last thing I wanted to do was spend a week in this city. "Yeah. I can do that."
It was too important to find out exactly what my father had confessed.
"I'll see you in a week's time, then. But if you feel the need to come to me sooner, the parish's doors are always open."
I highly doubted I would step foot inside this place any sooner than was absolutely necessary. Refusing to say as much, I stood and stormed out of his office.