Whiskey Island (64 page)
“There’s a plug to the left.” He guessed what she was going to do, but he didn’t help her. This was Megan’s sacred ritual, to be performed only by her.
She found the plug and switched on the lamp. It glowed like a beacon in the window.
“This is for you, Rooney,” she said softly. “Please find your way home safely. When you do, we’ll be right here, waiting for you.”
January 19, 1884
O
f all the sins a man can commit, the worst is the one that gives him the greatest pleasure.
I finish this story now, so that at no time in the future will what happened be in doubt.
Rowan removed Lena from the kitchen, then from the house. He carried her and the baby the entire way to Katie Sullivan’s. I’m told Seamus himself appeared there later, a knot on his head and limbs nearly paralyzed with cold. He will recover, although I predict no man will ever get the better of Seamus Sullivan again.
I stayed with Simeon’s body and waited for Rowan to return. We were of one accord, I believe, on what to do with him, although I am a priest and he an officer of the law. The night was particularly dark. Simeon himself had probably waited for just such a night, a night made for the sin he planned. As I stood in the kitchen, I contemplated exactly how we would remove Simeon’s body without being detected, and bury it where years might pass before anyone discovered his bones.
The lake was rough that night, with waves tossing high and icy winds whistling along foaming whitecaps. I knew that we could not weight Simeon and commit him to Erie’s ravages without putting our own lives in grave danger. The winter had been mild until that point, and the ground might still be malleable enough to dig, although only just. I knew it would take us the rest of the night to break through the frozen ground with picks and perform this terrible deed, and that we would pay for it in aching muscles and blistered palms.
As I was contemplating how to remove the body, the man at my feet stirred. I had felt for a pulse when first encountering the scene and had found none. But at that moment I realized that I had been terribly mistaken.
Simeon stirred again and made a chilling sound low in his throat. As I watched, his eyes opened—malevolent eyes, the devil’s own, peering at me as they had peered at Lena in the hours when he had abused her.
I know nothing of married love except the things a priest learns in the confessional. I have never loved a woman, or, until that moment, I thought that I had not. But as Simeon tried to sit up, rage engulfed me. I knelt beside him, but not to pray for his soul. I wrapped my fingers around his throat, and as he struggled weakly, I squeezed harder, until his struggles ended forever.
Rowan found me that way, fingers still grasping Simeon’s pasty flesh, hatred in my heart. He pulled me to my feet and looked in my eyes. And he knew what I had done, and why.
I tell this story here, so that the truth will be known after my death.
Lena Tierney did not kill James Simeon, and Rowan and I could not let her go on believing that she had. Yet how could I tell her that I killed him
for
her? That the thought of what he had done to her, the thought of her suffering at his hands, had so enraged me that I had killed him to avenge her?
Wouldn’t she then have realized that her priest, her confessor, felt far more for her than his vocation permitted?
In the end, Rowan told Lena that he had done the deed. I believe she will go to her death believing this. And it might well have been true, if Simeon had come back to life at Rowan’s feet, instead of at mine.
But the real murder of James Simeon was done by me. I killed him out of love, and although I will ask forgiveness each day for the rest of my life, I will not receive it. For I feel no real remorse and never will.
We located the rig that Simeon had hired to take Lena away, and paid a man to return it to the proper livery. Then Rowan and I buried Simeon on the farthest reaches of Whiskey Island, in a pit near an abandoned boatyard. It almost seemed as if the grave had been readied by unseen hands, the dirt piled high beside it, waiting only for us to shovel and smooth it. Snow fell as we departed, to hide the night’s work.
When the deed was done we returned to Lena’s house to find a cuff link still resting on the kitchen floor. Rowan took it, as a reminder of the things that had passed. I believe he wanted that talisman to prove to himself, in the darkest hour of every night, that Simeon is indeed dead and will never return to haunt Lena and her son.
I will be haunted until I die. Not by the murder I committed, but by the sacraments I will be called upon to perform. Rowan and Lena will marry when her grief over Terence’s death has dulled, and they will bring her mother and Terence’s family to live with them. Of this I have no doubt. I will celebrate their wedding and baptize their children. I will know, deep in my heart, that this is as it should be, for they will be happy together.
But I will be haunted, nonetheless.
Someday before I die, I will give this account to Rowan Donaghue and ask him to keep it or dispose of it, as he sees fit. He is a good man and fair, and I know he will do what is best.
The story has now been told. Judge me not harshly, for I am just a man. I did only what any man who loves a woman would do.
From the journal of Father Patrick McSweeney—St. Brigid’s Church, Cleveland, Ohio.
ISBN: 978-1-4268-2903-1
WHISKEY ISLAND
Copyright © 2000 by Emilie Richards McGee.
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
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