Vengeance. Mystery Writers of America Presents B00A25NLU4

would catch one or more of them trying to steal a glance at her from a side pew. She possessed an elegance that could make men sob in anguish because they would never touch her. Her hair fell past her shoulders in silken strands that shone under the ceiling lights like onyx.
    She tended to gaze at the ground, either because she didn’t want to encourage any suitors or because she was desperate to disappear. This habit lent her an air of innocence. When she looked up, there was a gentleness and purity in her oval face and chestnut eyes that took one’s breath away.
    It didn’t take long for the comments to start.
    “There they are,” a widow said. “The Thorn Birds.”
    “His third leg still work?” a former altar boy said.
    “If it didn’t, it does now,” his friend replied.
    I am forty-five years old. I’ve been a priest for seventeen of those years, and over time, it has been my observation that ethical and moral standards are deteriorating, nowhere more so than in the Catholic Church. And no one has disappointed the faithful more than the Catholic priest. As a result, people have become cynical. It’s just a profession, they say; there is no special calling. For some folks, it’s unimaginable that a heterosexual man such as I would not lust for a woman such as Maria, would not lie in bed wrestling with temptation every night.
    And yet, I must insist: I do no such thing. I do not think of her in the way that other men do. I do not want to touch her. I do not want to possess her. I pray only for her and her son’s health and salvation. Seeing them alive and healthy at Mass fulfills me in every way. Such is the joy of priesthood: contentment beyond the scope of sexual fulfillment. In the twenty-one years since a priest gave me a prayer book and changed the course of my life forever, I’ve said the Lord’s Prayer three million, six hundred, and sixty-six times. That is how much prayer it has taken me to reach such a state of contentment.
    I was not always this way. There was a time in my youth when I would have broken doors down to get to Maria, and no one would have tried to stop me. I was once the golden boy, a star collegiate baseball player with a bazooka for a right arm, a flame-throwing pitcher drafted in the third round by the New York Yankees. I had all the girls I wanted, and then the only one I ever needed died in a car accident when I was behind the wheel.
    The day before the killers came for Maria, the same gang of kids tried to break into the church. They attempted, unsuccessfully, to jimmy open the padlock to the front door with a tire iron, and they ran away when I limped over from the rectory. I wished I could have caught one of them and had a discussion with him, helped him channel his energies into something more useful, such as the boys’ baseball team I coached in the Rotary league. It consisted of misfits and orphans, the shunned and unwanted. But this gang of kids was too fast for a one-legged priest.
    “Hey, Father,” the same boy said from his hiding place in the stadium across the street. “You need me to hear your confession, Father?”
    It was just past 9:00 p.m. when I got back to the house, sweat rolling down my cheeks from one minute of exertion. That’s all it took on a sultry June night. Manuel was waiting for me at the bottom of the stairs, like the first time. After reassuring him there was nothing to fear, I dialed 911. I didn’t want to bother the cops, but I had no choice. The kids had tried to enter the church. The church belonged to everyone, but its safekeeping was my responsibility.
    This time it didn’t take the cops ten minutes to get there. It took them twenty.
    “Doesn’t look serious, Father,” Mr. Clean said as we studied the old wooden door to the church.
    “See the dent here?” I said, pointing to a welt in the church’s door. “That’s where they pushed off with the tire iron.”
    Pencil Mustache tilted his head at me. “Just kids, Father. You actually saw them, though. Like, with your own eyes. Right, Father?”
    “Yes, Officer. I saw them. I may have only one arm and one leg, but I still have vision in both eyes.”
    Sirens sounded in the distance. The radios attached to their belts squawked. One of them answered the call, barked a clipped response into the microphone, and nodded at his partner. “We’ll write it up, Father,” Mr. Clean said.
    “Yeah. And we’ll drive around and take a look for you,” Pencil Mustache