The Priest's Graveyard Read Free

shoot last, knowing he
     would not run. The one who would run, that’s the one I would shoot first if I wanted to get them all.
    The one who didn’t like what they’d done was the most likely to run. I slowly angled the gun at him, and when the sights were
     lined up, I pulled the trigger.
    The booming recoil knocked me back behind the stove, out of sight, as the man’s body thumped to the wood floor. I quickly
     righted myself and took aim at the second one who was spinning around, trying to determine where the shot had come from. His
     eyes fixed on the stove. Then on me. And I shot him through his forehead.
    This time I’d braced myself and wasn’t knocked back. I turned the pistol on the third soldier who still didn’t know which
     way the shots had come from, and I shot him as well.
    The gun’s echo faded, leaving only the sound of my pounding heart in my ears. There were six dead people in the house and
     most of me wished it were seven.
    I dropped back down against the wall with the pistol loose in my right hand and my rage gave way to pain once again. But I
     had done some right to fix the wrong, hadn’t I? I had done what was right for my mother’s sake.
    In some ways I took my first steps to becoming a priest that day, and my own house was my first graveyard. Or maybe I have
     it all wrong.
    That was how it all started, born in innocence when I was only fifteen. But that wasn’t where it ended.
    Dear God, have mercy on my soul…
    Father Andro flipped through the journal and saw that the remaining pages were empty. He set the book down and closed the
     cover.
    “I am so sorry, my dear. God forgive us all for the terrible tragedies of that war. Danny’s suffering cannot be overstated.”
    “So you understand what he did? Why he did it?”
    “Yes. I was here during the war—you must know that.”
    But would he understand the rest? The journal was only a litmus test of sorts, a way for me to determine whether I could trust
     the father with the rest of our story. Our story because Danny and I shared the same story now. We were both as guilty.
    “And the rest?” Father Andro asked.
    “The rest?”
    “He writes here that this is how it all started.”
    “The rest happens in America.”
    “I assumed as much.”
    “You’ll tell no one?”
    “I’m a priest, Renee. Bound by my oath. There is nothing you can tell me that would change that.”
    I sat back and crossed my legs, suddenly eager to tell him everything. As he said, he was a priest. Who could better understand
     than a priest who had shared a similar history with Danny?
    “The rest begins with me,” I said in a soft voice.
    “Then tell me about you,” Father Andro said.

1
    Eighteen Months Earlier
    I can remember some things about myself but not everything. My name, Renee Gilmore, for example, is something I could never forget—how could
     I, after my failures had been so often pounded into my skull?
    You’re throwing your life away, Renee. You’re screwing up, Renee. You’re an embarrassment, Renee.
    That much I could remember as I lay in the alleyway with my face planted in the concrete. I also knew that I was in my early
     twenties. That I was barefoot. That I was dressed in a T-shirt and jeans. That my mother and my father were both long gone
     or dead.
    Mostly I knew that I had to get up and get moving if I wanted to live, although I must admit I was having some difficulty
     remembering why I wanted to live. A basic instinct, you might say, but when you’re strung out on heroin, basic instincts have a way of feeling
     irrelevant.
    These are some of the things I could remember then.
    But if you had asked me in that state, I certainly couldn’t have told you other things about myself that should have been
     as plain as day.
    I couldn’t have told you that I preferred to wear only silver accessories, or that my first kiss was with Tobias Taylor on
     a dare when I was six, or that my favorite food was a grilled hamburger with