Confessions by Ryne Douglas Pearson

familial connection long withered. Glimpse of a time when photos and letters were still dispatched to keep him apprised of events, monumental and mundane. They have abandoned him, even as he holds them dear.
    O God, come to his aid. O Lord, make haste to help him.
    The words are a soft plea in my thoughts. The beginnings of a prayer I will say for myself in a few minutes when I am alone in my room, making peace with myself and my God at the end of this day He has granted me. Standing here over Father Taylor, by proxy I offer it silently for him. Wondering if he has done so in his own name. For his own sake.
    I turn the light off believing that he has not.
    I step into the hall and ease his door shut. As I move toward my room I suddenly stop, dead still in the hall, the image of Father Taylor’s treasured photo striking me. Chilling me, even. For a moment it is as though some mental checklist ticks through my consciousness, trying to convince myself that what I am realizing is not so. And even when I am certain it is I move quickly to my room, wanting to find that I am wrong. That it is not so .
    My door opens quickly, revealing the simple room in which I rest and pray. The dresser is topped with accoutrements of my calling and items more personal. Stiff white clerical collar resting next to a framed snapshot of my mother and father, one of the few she allowed me to take with her prized camera, the pair of them seated on the bench tucked under the alders in the backyard of my boyhood home.
    I spin away from it and look to the wall opposite the door, window prominent at its center, more photos hung to either side. Me at the seminary. Tim and me in Las Vegas. A shot of the sisters from my previous parish. Two photos of me with Tim’s family at the beach in South Carolina, captured during a joyous summer weekend to which I was invited this last summer.
    My heart begins to thud. My throat goes dry. Soft, quiet sobs begin to percolate from deep within.
    I pull the drawer from my nightstand and dump its contents on the bed. Rosary beads and notepads and keys rain down among a happenstance collection of keepsakes. But not what I am looking for. Not what I am hoping for.
    She is not here. Katie. No trace of her exists in this most personal space of mine. No picture, no saved card bearing birthday wishes. No item of import to her that I have retained for its sentimental value. There is not a stitch of her being within miles of me. No hint of her but for the odd memory I allow to bubble up from the depths where they have settled since her depths, like a stranger lost in quicksand.
    “My God…” I utter the words too loud, and rush to my door, closing and locking it before turning back to my room. Without conscious design I have scrubbed Katie from my life. Wiped her like a stain upon my existence.
    My mother holds more of her in memory than I.
    “Katie, I’m so sorry.” Tears threaten, but do not fully form at the realization that I have abandoned my sister. In death, when all that she was should be cherished and held so very dear, I have let her go.
    I have forsaken her.

Chapter Thirteen
    The Slippery Slope
    “Is there anything else?”
    Chris puzzles at my question. Puzzles at my presence, as well, standing in the open door of her condo for the second time in twenty four hours. She’s wrapped in a comforter, pajama bottoms dragging past her bare feet. “I’m sorry…what?”
    I move past and into her condo, heading for her small desk in the living room. She watches me, stumbling up from sleep by the open front door. I turn the desk lamp on and find the folder of clippings, taking it in hand and turning back toward her. “Anything else not fit? Not make sense?”
    She seems to struggle with what I ask, distressed as she wakes fully and closes the door. “Michael, I didn’t bring this up to open old wounds. Like I said, I’ve dealt with Katie’s death on my own since it happened.” She pauses, as if catching herself in