The Blessed - By Tonya Hurley Page 0,56

ice.”

“I’m okay.” Lucy staggered into a seat in a pew and stared up at the wall she’d just been leaning against. It had to be a mixture of last night and the Stations. She remembered being frightened by them as a child. It was like some sort of horrific flipbook, watching a man unjustly accused, convicted, humiliated, tortured, and nailed to a cross. It all seemed so inevitable, a condition she’d been fighting her entire life. In fact, nothing scared her more. “He was the Son of God. How could he let himself get sucker punched like that?” Lucy murmured. “I mean, Jesus Christ already.”

“The fix was in,” Cecilia said. “He played the hand he was dealt.”

“And he knew it,” Sebastian added, coming up behind them. His face hardened as he stared at theirs. The look of distress was plain. He joined them for the last two Stations.

XIII . . .

Jesus Is Taken Down from the Cross. They beheld a gorgeous painting in front of them, of Jesus, now with a gold halo, being caressed by his loved ones. Prayed over. Adored.

“I do love how they take the agony and suffering of the reality and mythologize it in such a beautiful, glorified way,” Cecilia said. “It’s just a story anyway.”

“Yeah, but a good one,” Sebastian said.

“Greatest Story Ever Told,” Agnes added.

“So they say.” Lucy nodded.

“One that people were once willing to die for,” Sebastian said.

“And kill for,” CeCe added, noting the other side of the coin.

“Religions are just people. Some good, some not,” Sebastian said. “Like everything else. Can’t blame Jesus for all of it.”

“There are assholes everywhere,” CeCe said.

“A sermon we can all get behind,” he concurred.

“You know the old priest in The Exorcist played Jesus in that movie The Greatest Story Ever Told. I met him at a premiere,” Lucy added.

“Only you would name-drop Jesus,” Cecilia said.

XIV . . .

Jesus Was Laid in His Tomb.

As they reached the last station, Lucy was feeling detached, not from the others but from her body. She wasn’t totally sure if she was there, or anywhere at all. She felt like she was floating, watching the whole scene play out from about ten feet above the ground. It happened to her sometimes at crowded clubs, but never in a quiet, laid-back situation like this. It wasn’t just Lucy. They were all starting to feel strange. The wind pounded, the thunder rolled and lightning flashed, but it was a less violent sound, coming from the church entrance, that really got their attention. Especially Sebastian’s.

“Who’s that?” Agnes said, on high alert.

The church door slid open just a crack but it was loud enough for the occupants to hear. The girls instinctively crouched down behind the pews; they did not want to be found. Sebastian remained standing, like a shaft rising from the floor.

“Are you expecting someone else?” Lucy whispered over to him.

“No.”

A lone figure hobbled through the vestibule and into the church, pushed forward by the wind, undeterred by the darkness. Even in the dark, Sebastian could tell the man was slight, frail, probably old, far too old to brave these elements at this twilight hour.

Sebastian kept watch.

The girls could hear the anonymous footsteps approaching.

“Who is it?” Lucy whispered nervously.

The man moved slowly, but confidently, forward. He clearly knew his way around. Sebastian recognized his walk, his outline, even in the candlelight.

“Father Piazza.”

He stopped and turned his head from side to side, up and down, peering out into the darkness. Looking like someone who’d returned to his hometown after many years, only to find it changed, altered, but not completely beyond recognition. Just enough of it remaining to reminisce over or mourn for. He hadn’t been back since the church had been deconsecrated and his parishioners scattered to other churches, not even to see it from the outside. But now he had to come, even in such a horrific storm. Risking his own life if it were the last thing he ever did. Piazza recalled his tepid effort to save the church and the congregation from the developers and his relief that he had failed. He was preparing for retirement after all, and even the diocese was in no mood to increasingly subsidize yet another money-losing facility. Sebastian had been the last piece of unresolved business for him. He loved the boy and tried hard, along with the city caseworker, to find a good home for him in the community. Time after time, he tried. Time after time, he failed. Sebastian was becoming increasingly