Chapter 11: The Reckoning on the Shore
The weight of the pipe wrench was a cold, familiar anchor in Riley’s palm. He inched forward, each floorboard a potential cry of betrayal under his boot. The pounding had stopped, replaced by a low, gathering murmur outside—the sound of a collective breath being held before a scream. His heart hammered against his ribs, a frantic prisoner. The rectory’s dim hall seemed to telescope, the door at the end swelling in his vision. He felt the ghost of a steering wheel in his hands, the sickening lurch of impact, the glass rain. He was going to crash into another victim. His life didn’t flash, it soured: a blur of prison gray, his father’s disappointed silence, the empty bottle, Erin’s tears, and then, clear as a bell, Paul’s eyes in the lamplight, full of a terrible, beautiful trust.
The door exploded inward.
Splintered wood and the cheap brass lock clattered across the floor. A figure stood silhouetted in the twilight, arm already in motion. Riley saw the rag, the bottle, the flame.
“No—!” His shout was lost in the shattering glass.
The Molotov cocktail tumbled end over end, a comet of stupid, final violence. It hit the rug in the foyer with a soft, dreadful whump. Fire, greedy and immediate, leapt up the walls, tasting the old draperies, the dry hymnbooks stacked on a side table. The heat hit Riley’s face like a slap.
The mob—maybe eight or ten of them, led by Joe Collie and the Gunning brothers—stared, their faces morphing from rage to dumbstruck horror. They hadn’t thought past the breaking. They saw the flames, saw Riley coughing in the smoke, and the reality descended: a house of God, a man inside.
“Jesus, Joe, you idiot!” someone yelled.
They surged forward, not with malice now but a panicked urge to undo. To save.
Riley’s vision narrowed to a tunnel of orange and black. The heat seared the hairs on his arms. He didn’t see neighbors; he saw the faces from the courtroom, the angry whispers at the grocery store, Bev’s triumphant sneer in the church. He never wanted to see any of them again.
A length of burning baseboard snapped near his foot. Without thinking, he kicked it, sending a cascade of embers and flame skittering toward the doorway. The men stumbled back, arms raised against the sudden shower of fire.
“Stay the fuck out!” Riley roared, the sound tearing from a raw place.
He turned and ran into the smoke.
Paul’s cries guided him. They were not human sounds, not anymore. They were the high, ragged whines of a mortally wounded animal, ripped from a throat stripped of language by pain and terror. The sound clawed at Riley, worse than the heat. Paul was crying for him, for the pain Riley was in, for the burning world.
He crashed into the bedroom. Paul was thrashing, a trapped, broken bird trying to beat its wings against the mattress. The firelight danced on the ceiling, a hellish aurora.
“Paul! Stop! I’ve got you.”
He threw the wrench onto the bed, shoved his arms under Paul’s back and thighs. He lifted. Paul screamed, a short, sharp puncture of sound, then dissolved into continuous, shuddering whimpers. Riley stumbled, his boots slipping on a hymnal that had fallen from a shelf. The heat at his back was a physical press. A painting of the Sacred Heart curled and blackened in the hall.
Through the foyer, now an inferno of their past—the couch where they’d sat reading, the table where they’d shared silent meals, the doorway where Paul had first hesitated before inviting him in. A beam groaned. Riley hunched over Paul’s body, taking the shower of sparks on his own back. The smell of his own singed hair filled his nostrils.
Then they were out, collapsing onto the cool, damp grass of the churchyard. The air was a balm and a betrayal. Riley gulped it, his lungs burning. Behind them, the rectory roared, windows blowing out in showers of glowing splinters. Their home. Their fragile, secret place of rest and whispered confessions and the first, trembling touch of hands. It lit up the gathering dark, a beacon of ruin.
Before them, the mob stood frozen, painted in the flickering orange light. And before them all, standing just a little apart, was Bev Keane. Her smile was small, tight, utterly serene. She looked at the burning building, then at the two men huddled on the ground, and her expression was one of deep, satisfied completion. She’d won.
Riley pulled Paul closer, a protective curl around his broken spine. He was shaking, from adrenaline or rage or grief, he didn’t know. Paul’s awful whines softened into choked sobs. Then, with a trembling, immense effort, Paul lifted his un-splinted hand. It shook violently as it rose, ignoring the agony of the movement. His cool, ash-dusted fingers found Riley’s cheek. They rested there, a tender, deliberate weight. A seal. A promise. A sign that burned hotter than any fire behind them.
The spell of the mob broke. Some took a hesitant step forward, shame on their faces.
Then, from the side, two figures erupted from the shadows of the church. Erin and Sarah, both armed with heavy, driftwood sticks.
“Get back!” Erin shouted, her voice not shrill but low and dangerous. She planted herself between the mob and the men, her stick held like a baseball bat. “I mean it! You come one step closer!”
Sarah didn’t even look at the crowd. She dropped to her knees beside Paul, her nurse’s eyes scanning the damage, her face a mask of professional fury. Then she stood, turning to face the people she’d grown up with, healed, prayed beside. Her stick was in her hand, but her weapon was her voice.
“Who did this?” she screamed. The raw sound cut through the roar of the fire. “Who looks at a man who gave up everything for you and thinks, ‘Yeah, let’s break his spine’? He held your mothers as they died! He baptized your screaming babies! He spent eighty years in lonely service, and you give him fire? You give him hatred?”
She swept her arm toward the burning rectory, then to Paul, cradled in Riley’s arms. “Is this your holiness? Is this the fucking fruit of your faith? A broken man and a pyre?”
Bev’s smile had tightened. She took a breath, drawing herself up to speak, to redirect, to sanctify the violence with scripture.
Sarah took a step toward her, pointing the gnarled end of the driftwood stick at Bev’s face. “Shut up,” Sarah hissed, her voice trembling with a pure, clean fury. “You don’t get to talk. Only the holy get to speak here tonight. And you…” She looked Bev up and down, the embodiment of righteous contempt. “You’ve just proven you’re with the devil.”