a godfather
The local church in Heartstone was led by a full-blooded Italian Leonardo Benetti. At fifty-two years old he did not have a single gray hair on his head, which was always cut short. Absolutely black hair without bangs and a clean-shaven face made Father Benetti’s appearance unchanged for many years in a row. Frequent sports in his youth still affected the priest’s size. With a height of one hundred and eighty-two centimeters, he had broad shoulders, but his arms, which were larger in girth than many hips, were not so noticeable under clothes. A particularly recognizable feature in Father Benetti’s appearance were his eyes, which were set deeper than usual. On the one hand, this feature made his face fearsome, but after the first acquaintance with him, this effect of his physiognomy ceased to affect those around him, because everyone remembered his manner of speech, which was like a balm for the soul.
As darkness fell several residents came to the padre for confession. The first was deputy Jenna Kramer. For several months she was depressed by thoughts about her experience. She told Father Benetti about her boyfriend Pierce Branigan, who was mauled to death by a black bear in the forest. She had a hard time coping with this loss. As soon as she came to her senses, Jenna began to be torn apart by a dilemma regarding the fetus in the womb. She didn’t want to do this, but she wanted even less to raise a child without a Father, not because it would be more difficult, but because the child simply wouldn’t know who his Father was. This was also compounded by the fact that Jenna became pregnant out of wedlock, and this also affected her. This circumstance could be hidden by quickly getting married. But the stars aligned differently. Until recently Jenna pushed away thoughts of an abortion, but in the end she decided to go for it. Now for four days she was tormented by insomnia.
– I’m thinking about it – Jenna muttered through tears rolling down her cheeks with her chin shaking. – Constantly. What would this child be like if he were born? – A tremble ran through her voice. Tears continued to leak even through drooping eyelids. The grief in Jenna’s body reached such a state that her lips stretched to the limit, revealing bared teeth. – It was part of him. His blood… And mine…
Jenna’s crying could be heard even outside the confessional.
– He left a part of himself, and I got rid of… – Because of the crying, Jenna’s words were cut off in the middle. – I killed the last thing he left me. It could continue in this child. I could…
Compared to other Catholic priests, Father Benetti had a much more progressive view of things. He understood one simple truth: there is no need to impose on people word for word what is written in the Bible, but it is better to show flexibility and give a person the opportunity to turn to God so that he does not have to radically disrupt his daily life and give up natural benefits modern civilization. Father Benetti never judged his parishioners. He didn’t see the point in conveying to people the idea that they were very guilty, because what’s done is done, and you can’t turn back time. Therefore, he believed that instead it was better to help the person survive what happened so that mental anguish did not have a detrimental effect on the psyche. After all, if a person comes for confession, this is already a sign of his repentance. The padre believed that it was better to help a person live with a light heart than to dump a burden on him, because of which the person would then experience such torment around the clock, as if he had killed or raped someone. And people went to church to get rid of the burden from their souls. As people came to church more and more often, over time they were imbued with religion more and more deeply, even if they had previously been avowed atheists. With this, Father Benetti gained crazy authority among the residents and parishioners became more and more over the years, so the growth in the popularity of religion in Heartstone was the merit of Leonardo Benetti himself. Knowing that the padre would not condemn them for what they had done, the residents willingly went to confession. For parishioners he was a servant of God, a psychotherapist, and a friend.
Second in line was Mandy Troy, who admitted that she had broken the commandment that commands not to commit adultery. She sincerely repented of the betrayal, but another question bothered her. She wanted advice on whether to confess everything to her husband. Father Benetti said that she must decide for herself what she should do, and suggested that this burden on her soul could well grow from year to year and each time it would become more and more difficult to bear. In fact, Father Benetti knew that Castor Troy – Mandy’s husband – had frequent sexual relations with another woman, which he admitted during the same confession and was unlikely to destroy the family if he learned that his wife had followed his example.
Twenty-four-year-old Riggan Brooks, who worked as a cashier at a gas station, told how he found a wallet without the owner’s documents, lost by one of the customers, and when he showed up and asked if he had seen the wallet, Riggan answered in the negative, since his boss was present in the hall, who was an inveterate swindler and would not forgive him for giving someone back free money. Riggan did not have time to assess the consequences of this or that decision, so he responded as quickly as possible, so as not to arouse suspicion.
– Holy Father, I don’t need anything that belongs to others at all. I really don’t want to keep this to myself. Just what was I supposed to do when… when…
Father Benetti advised him to take the wallet to the sheriff, and said that there was nothing shameful in Riggan’s behavior, since he lied in order to save someone else’s property and avoid a conflict with his superiors and there was nothing wrong with that.
Next, forty-four-year-old Emma Cooper confessed to the padre. Her relationship with her fifteen-year-old adopted son has become too complicated, she has ceased to find a common language with him and every conversation leads to shouting, thereby prolonging the ongoing quarrel. Emma admitted that on this basis, recently she involuntarily began to remind herself more and more often that for her this is not her own blood and such thoughts only inflame her anger towards her son. But because such thoughts come into her head about the lack of common blood with the boy whom Emma has been raising since the day he was seven months old, she begins to despise herself.
– I believed that I would become his mother, that he would accept me as his own. How can I sleep after such thoughts? Yesterday I almost said it out loud. Do you understand? I was half a step away from shouting in his face about how good it was that it didn’t fall to me to bring him into this world. And most importantly, I can’t help it. I am unable to control my emotions. I don’t know what will happen next, but I feel like it’s beyond my strength.
Father Benetti tactfully convinced her that any teenager at this age shows resentment and dissatisfaction with many of the demands of their parents and all Emma needs is just to show a little patience and soon she will notice that her son’s outbursts of anger have disappeared just as quickly, as they appeared. He also explained to her that she shouldn’t hate herself for thoughts alone; he said that this was stupid, since she took in someone else’s child and gave him love and maternal warmth, which already speaks of her true nature, and therefore she should not take fleeting thoughts seriously.
So every day, Heartstone residents of all ages and professions came to Father Benetti to pour out their souls and take the weight off their shoulders. In a sense, they were very lucky, since Father Benetti, in addition to his duties as a priest, also performed the work of a psychoanalyst, the only difference being that he did not take a cent for it. In other cities, people shell out a lot of money for such services, which not only does not make their souls lighter, but, on the contrary, creates another wound at the thought of how much a chat with a stranger costs.
The degree of trust in Father Benetti – and considering the skeletons that parishioners pull out of their closets during confession, it was impressive – gave him a reputation as the most respected man in the town. Sometimes it seemed to those around him that he personally knew more than half of the local population by name and face. Every parishioner looked to the padre as the greatest authority in Heartstone. The sheriff, the judge, the largest merchants in the town in their influence on