Empire Falls

latticework, Father Tom’s dark silhouette was revealed, and the older priest’s stern voice urged him to recount his sins so that they might be forgiven .
    Miles had received his first communion the year before, so of course he knew that to conceal one mortal sin was to commit yet another. Since returning from Martha’s Vineyard he’d grown certain that he, not just his mother, had somehow sinned there, though he wasn’t sure what sort of sin it was or how to explain it to the man on the other side of the lattice. He knew he’d betrayed his father by promising to keep his mother’s secret, just as he was certain that if he broke that promise he would be betraying her. In either case it was a sin to try to keep a secret from God, who already knew. Why exactly it was necessary to confess what God already knew had been explained in religious instruction by the very man who now sat on the other side of the lattice, but the delicate logic of it was confusing to Miles at the time and eluded him entirely now. He had come to confession armed with a list of sins he hadn’t committed, sins he hoped were equal in magnitude to whatever he was concealing, and he further hoped God would understand that his reticence about coming clean didn’t stem from any desire to make himself look good. Father Tom listened to his litany of substitute sins and offered penance with the air of a man who is convinced not so much of the truth of what he’s just heard as of the general human depravity in which such behavior has its origins. At the altar railing Miles knelt and said his Our Fathers and Hail Marys and was about to leave when he heard the confessional door open and saw his mother following Father Tom into the sacristy .
    He sat on the steps outside for half an hour, and when his mother finally appeared her face was ashen. He guided her home as you might lead a blind woman, and when they arrived she went directly into the bedroom and closed the door behind her. The next morning, Sunday, they went to Mass, but during the sermon Grace became ill and after instructing Miles to stay where he was, she stumbled down the side aisle, one hand over her mouth, and out the side door. Perhaps anticipating this, she had wanted to sit nearer the rear of the church than was their custom, but even so, people turned to watch her stagger out, and it seemed to Miles that Father Tom made matters worse by pausing in his sermon until the church door swung shut behind her. There was an Esso station a block up the street, and Miles suspected his mother had gone there to be sick, but when communion began she still had not returned. Miles waited, then joined the very end of the line, though painfully aware that he should not receive the host. He’d lied in confession yesterday, and knew better than to invite God into his impure body. On the other hand, since he had gone to confession, it would seem strange if he didn’t take communion, so he received the wafer on a tongue so dry with guilt and shame that instead of dissolving, it remained there like a scrap of thin cotton cloth. He was still trying to swallow the host when he felt his mother slide back into the pew next to him, looking pale and weak. When she took his hand and squeezed hard, it seemed that what she was trying to convey to him was exactly what he feared most, that she was going to die as a result of what she’d done on Martha’s Vineyard. She’d caught something there and brought the illness home with her. Going to confession yesterday hadn’t made her better, so Miles wondered if she, too, had lied to the priest, if at the moment she’d realized it was Father Tom, who knew her, instead of the younger priest, she decided to keep her secret. Father Tom must have suspected as much and made her go with him into the sacristy, but even there she must have refused to tell him about Charlie Mayne .
    Miles was aware that this scenario was problematic. For one thing, his mother had gotten sick days before Charlie Mayne showed up; but he reasoned that maybe she’d made up her mind in advance to do whatever they’d done, and that was where the sin had begun, in the wickedness of a thought, as he’d learned in religious instruction. Maybe getting sick had been a warning from God that she’d chosen to ignore. This, then, was the price of her short-lived happiness .
    When they returned home from Mass, Miles half expected his mother to retire to the bedroom, but instead she told him she had