The Trinity Game

God?
    One thing Nick was right about: This wasn’t about Daniel and his uncle. It wasn’t even about debunking a con man or protecting the sanctity of the Church or searching for a miracle. It was about the dozens of Louisiana oil refinery workers, who Daniel now believed would die the next morning, unless he did something about it.

T he head of security at the Belle Chasse oil refinery told Daniel to get back on his meds and hung up in his ear. Understandable, really. He probably would’ve done the same thing in the man’s shoes.
    He had known it might come to this, had hoped in vain that it wouldn’t. But now there was only one thing left to do. So he directed his laptop’s browser to the website of the
New Orleans Times-Picayune
newspaper, found the staff directory, and looked up the telephone extension for Julia Rothman, his heart racing.
    Julia was an intern at the
New Orleans Times-Picayune
when they were together. She’d since worked her way up to senior investigative reporter at the paper. She was quite the maverick, had been fired and rehired more than a few times, had won several regional journalism awards for exposing political corruption in Louisiana. Her series on government failure post-Katrina had been nominated for a Pulitzer. Daniel knew all this because, against his better judgment, he’d followed her career on the Internet all these years, unable to let go completely.
    His heart now pounding as he reached for the phone, his mind flooded with the memories of the headiest year of his life…
    Eighteen years old, high school graduate, New Orleans Golden Gloves champion, and madly in love. She was twenty-one, unafraid,and scary smart. And the sex was incredible. Not that he had any basis for comparison—she was his first, and would be his only.
    They first met at a neighborhood party in the lead-up to Mardi Gras, and the sexual spark was there from the get-go, but she deflected his first advance. He was welcome to hang out in her group of friends, she said, but dating was out of the question. It took two months of “hanging out” in a group, at neighborhood parties, before she finally got over the age difference and agreed to a real date.
    One date was all it took. They fell for each other hard and fast, became a steady couple, and spent every free minute together. Daniel was taking a year off after high school, concentrating on his fighting and working at the gym, but he was slated to enter the seminary when he turned nineteen, and time was running out for them. As the months counted down, everything became more intense. The lovemaking, the fighting, the all-night metaphysical debates.
    He’d told Julia all about his past, and she understood his need to believe. But to her, God was a human invention—a way for people to strike back at their fear of death. As she saw it, secular miracles were all around us, and that should be enough. Friendship and love and sex and chocolate and children were all miracles. That humans had evolved and survived and thrived in a coldly indifferent universe, had brought meaning and beauty to their lives through art and music and literature, had brought understanding of the world through science—she saw all of that as a miracle. And she saw no place in the universe for a God; didn’t need one.
    Damn it, no. Lives are at stake, you cannot afford this right now. Focus.
Daniel put the receiver down. He went to the bathroom and splashed cold water on his face, returned to the desk, took a few deep breaths.
    Daniel could see the promise of a beautiful life with Julia, and he almost backed out of the seminary. But the wounds of his childhood were too deep, and her love was simply not enough to heal those wounds…
    He again picked up the phone, and this time punched in the number. After a few rings, she picked up.
    “Julia Rothman,” she said. Daniel tried to answer, but the words caught in his throat, so exquisite was the ache caused by the sound of her voice. “Hello?”
    He fought against a resurgent flood of memories. “Hi. Julia, it’s Daniel Byrne calling, we knew each other back in—”
    Julia let out a throaty laugh. “You don’t have to remind me how I know you, Danny.”
    “Well, yes, it’s just, it’s been a long time, so I didn’t want to assume…”
You are such an idiot.
    “You still a priest?”
    “Yes, yes, still a priest. You?”
    “Uh, I’ve never been a priest.”
    “No, of course. I-I meant…”
Shit.
“Listen, Julia, I