My name is Father Leo Moss.

It had already been one of the more difficult days of my life when the accident happened.

I was driving home at about one in the morning from a bar, a bar where I would not have been

saved from my distress over a conversation I'd had six hours earlier.

Bishop Cain had called me over to Rossi Street unexpectedly for a talk.

She courteously and carefully laid out my options for transfer to a parish in either

Missoula or Denver.

She applied me with many compliments and thanks for my work and boisy.

But she explained that the distraction, the murmur, unfortunately caused by the investigation

into my alleged inappropriate financial conduct with a member of my congregation, had been

judged great enough by the right reverend Thomas to warrant a sort of disinfection of

the situation as the bishop put it.

I believe in you, she said, and shook my hand firmly, and gave me some papers to take home

an examine, and I thought, with some measure of guilt, if you believe in me, then the facts

should make a difference.

But the facts had not and would not make a difference.

I saw that clearly.

No one was willing to look deep enough or ask questions uncomfortable enough to bring

to light everything that should have been.

And so after signing those papers alone in the Vicarage, I slung off to a bar called

Reggie's Roost at on Route 21 south of the city, and I stood in my anger.

Just two beers for me, mind you.

...