Wanderlust

I laughed on my way inside. “And I love you for it.”

I pulled out the laptop and cables, which were pretty new as far as I could tell, and thankfully not messed up from being in a damp, enclosed space for so long. There was a little router that pulled up a signal, though it was slow all the way out in the woods.

The cursor waited patiently for me to type some search terms about a job nearby. Or maybe there would be some kind of assistance program for homeless people—which I basically was at this point. Or if I were really desperate, I could try to get in touch with my mother.

Instead I typed in Hunter’s full name. Apparently there was a B-list actor of the same name so I had to scroll through a few pages of search results until I found the one I was looking for. A news site reporting on a conviction for aggravated assault.

Nineteen year old parishioner…

Spiritual advisor and close friend of the family…

Abused his position of authority…

Guilty and sentenced to five years in a medium security prison…

A priest?

Jesus Christ, Hunter had been a priest. No wonder Laura had been so sure of him. And yet, what I’d told her had been true. How had he come to this? Why had he done it?

I went back to the search results and found a new article dated one year later.

U.S. Federal Appeals court tossed out the conviction on Friday…

New evidence brought forward by the victim’s friend…

Had fabricated the story over a series of emails…

Released on bond pending official exoneration…

The conviction was overturned.

My palms felt sweaty on the keyboard. A girl had lied about him. Lied to get attention or for whatever reasons, and he’d gone to jail for that. Where Hunter had gotten raped. The article didn’t say but I knew it with a certainty bone-deep. A priest who had raped a teenage girl would be exactly the kind of person targeted for assault by the other inmates. He wouldn’t have stood a chance against those men.

The first article had a picture of him. I returned and studied it.

The same features. The same man.

But the younger Hunter had a smooth face and guileless eyes whereas the Hunter I knew always wore a certain level of scruff. And his eyes were haunted. The pain he held was more marked now that I had seen him before.

Even though the picture had been taken from the shoulders up, I could see the changes in his whole body. His cheeks were more gaunt now, his shoulders broader and thicker. He’d gotten leaner while bulking up on muscle. He even held himself differently, more proud before, now defiant.

I had once wondered who had broken him, and now I knew the answer. That girl had when she lied about him. The judge and jury had when they convicted and sentenced him. His fellow priests had turned against him. The inmates had attacked him.

The whole world had turned against him and in a way, he had cracked. He wasn’t entirely right in the head. Even knowing this about him, caring for him, I had to admit that his actions at that motel had been inexcusable.

But in another way, he wasn’t broken. He lived, he felt, he suffered like any person.

More than other people.

A clink sounded on the kitchen table beside the laptop. Car keys.

I looked up at Jeremiah. “No way.”

“Don’t give me a hard time about this, missy. I know what I’m doing.”

“I can’t take your car.”

“You take it and go where you want to go. Then if you still need a place to stay, you come back here. Ain’t no use for a man as old as me to be alive if he can’t help someone who needs it.”