Thief by Greg Curtis Page B

not her. Never her.
     
    How he wondered, had his Aunt gotten on in the afterlife? Somehow, looking at Sherial, he knew both that there was one, and that it was probably nothing like he or anyone else had ever imagined. But that was an area he didn’t even want to think about.
     
    “My father had come looking of course, months later when they found out about Aunt Mabel’s death. But that was many months later. Aunt Mabel was a recluse. No-one even knew she had family, not even her beloved priests. My family had no idea of the true situation. They started hunting down monastery after monastery, never knowing the truth.” What hell it must have been for him, Mikel had thought, to send your own child away for what you thought was the best, then never to see him again. Always wondering whether it had been the right thing to do, where their son now was and how he was faring.
     
    “I should have told them the truth I suppose. But how? They believed so strongly in what she’d said, that what they’d done had been the right thing to do. How could I tell them the truth? That I was an abused child thrown to the wolves, who had graduated to become a world-class thief? It would have destroyed them. And me. I told them the monastery had moved on, that I’d become a teacher in Africa, that I’d had problems but sorted them out. I think those lies hurt me worse than any others I’ve ever uttered.” It was only the truth and yet it had been said with the best of intentions, and even now he wouldn’t dare undo them.
     
    “We didn’t keep in touch.” And they hadn’t. He couldn’t have kept up the pretence of his lies to them, not for long. Not without giving something away, or feeling something in him give way. Lies had kept them apart, yet the truth would have torn even what little they did have to shreds.
     
    “Did you find love?” Sherial didn’t say this so much in words as allowed for a gentle flowering of God’s concept of love to flow into his mind. It was a revelation to him, surely to anyone. Before Sherial had shown him, he’d never understood what love was, what it should be. It wasn’t even something that could be explained in words. It involved sharing - on every level. It involved giving, giving everything and knowing that you would receive it back with interest. There was passion and friendship, agreement and variety and harmony. There was the living of lives, by both parties for each other.
     
    But above all he knew it wasn’t for him.
     
    “Who could I love? Who could I place in that danger? Who could I ask to live with the knowledge of what I am, and lie for me? Else who could I both love and lie to?” And it was true. In order to love he had to trust. In order to remain as he was he couldn’t afford to trust. He couldn’t even retire, needing the reward of his good works to keep him running. His love life since Samantha had consisted of mere torrid interludes, none lasting more than a week and none giving him the satisfaction he craved. Instead he buried himself in his work. It was all he was, and perhaps who he was as well.
     
    “I am like nobody that has ever lived. I don’t just steal, I deceive, I lie, I cheat, and I hurt people. Yet for all that I am a criminal I also stand in judgement over so many. Mankind’s laws, God’s laws - every law, I have broken them all and will do so again. Crime is more than just work for me, it is my life. I am caught in its trap with no way out, and I’m not sure I want to leave. I don’t believe what I do is all that wrong. But I know it’s not right.”
     
    “I also take risks, sometimes terrible risks, and I can’t stop that either. I need the challenge. I need the rewards too. One day I will simply not come home. It is inevitable. But how could I leave someone else to deal with my fate? Perhaps never even knowing what had happened to me. I live outside of society, apart from everyone and everything else, manipulating so many to my ends,