I hadn’t been expecting this story. I hadn’t been expecting to hear about the time he almost died because he hadn’t been able to let me go. I drop into the chair across from him.
“Someone found me though. Someone who’d been out delivering sandwiches to the homeless. He helped me up, drove me home, and listened to my story. The whole drive, he didn’t say anything. He just listened. He was the first person to do that, you know? Listen. Everyone else had been throwing so much ‘you’ll be okay with a little time’ or ‘she’s in a better place’ at me I was ready to break the nose of the next person who said it.” Torrin clasps his hands in front of him, popping his knuckles as he rolls them together. “After he dropped me off back at home, he told me that if I wanted to ever talk again, I could find him at St. Mark’s. He was the priest there.”
That’s when he glances at me. The look on his face makes me want to crawl into the chair beside him and hold him.
“I went back. A bunch of times. I talked. He listened. Until finally one day, I was done talking. It was the same day he finally offered me some kind of advice or reassurance.” His phone buzzes in his pocket again, but I don’t think he hears it. “He told me that I wouldn’t be any help to you if I got myself killed. He told me that as long as there was still hope, not to give up on it. He told me that when I felt like an absolute failure and that I was getting nowhere, to repeat a certain quote to myself.”
I tip my head and wait.
Torrin exhales, his face bound by emotions I’m not sure I know the names of. “‘Try again. Fail again. Fail better.’”
I repeat the words to myself. I imagine a young, desperate Torrin repeating them to himself. I wonder if those words could help get me through my dark period, if they could pull me up when the weight of a thousand failures was holding me down. “Who said that?”
“I don’t know. Someone brilliant.” Torrin stares at his hands, his brows drawn together. “Because it worked. It’s what got me through a decade of dead-ends and cold trails. I just kept failing better until I ultimately remembered something that would lead the police to the man who took you.”
I have this priest and those words to thank for my freedom. It kind of knocks the wind out of me, and I sink deeper into the chair. “If you never gave up hope, why did you go to seminary? If you still felt like I’d be found, why did you become this?” I gently motion at him, my eyes lingering on his collar.
He takes a moment to answer. He’s still studying his hands like they’re not his but someone else’s. “Because holding on to that kind of hope—that there was still a chance for you and me?—made me too desperate. It was counterproductive. The tighter I held on to you, the further away you seemed to slip.” His hands curl into fists before he looks at me. “Once I committed to this, I was able to approach your case from an unbiased, almost objective perspective. Once I gave up that selfish part of wanting you back, I could think clearly. If I hadn’t become this . . . I’m not sure you’d be sitting across from me now.”
“So you sacrificed your whole life for me?” I work my tongue into my cheek, overwhelmed. With guilt, appreciation, and unworthiness.
He leans across the distance between us, refusing to tame his stare. I feel my heart beating in my throat. “I’d sacrifice this life and every life I have coming for you.”
I have to close my eyes. “I’m so sorry, Torrin. God, I’m sorry. I didn’t want you to give up ten years of your life for me. I didn’t want you to give up whatever could have come after before you became this . . .”
He stretches closer. His eyes refuse to blink. “You were my first. And you were my last.” His words echo in the small space. “A man could have a thousand different partners and settle down with an amazing woman, and I’d still hold the bragging rights. Don’t feel sorry for me for that. I’m not.”
Everything I want is in front of me, but I can’t have it. It’s the carrot dangled in front of me—just out of reach, never to be realized. Life is so goddamn unfair.
“I’m sorry,” I say again because what else is there to say? He’s given so much, and I have so little left to give.
“I’m not sorry. Never.” The air stirs when he pulls back. “Besides . . . this is not a death sentence. This is not an executioner’s swing. I knew exactly what I was doing when I started down this path, and I went into it with both eyes open and with reasons other than just hoping to fail better at finding you.” When he smiles, it’s a sad one.
“What reasons?” I ask, glancing toward the doorway. I need to leave, but I’m not sure I know how.
Torrin rolls his fingers, and his knuckles snap one after the other. “Father Sullivan was my light in the darkest time of my life. I was hoping that maybe I might be able to be the same for someone else one day.”
I clasp my hands together when I feel them reaching for him. “You are that. To that woman inside that room, you are.” I lean back to look at him. He’s still hunched over. “You were that to me. You are that to me.”
When he glances up, I see it in his eyes again. That look takes me back in time to a dark sidewalk, to a certain question, and an answer in the form of a kiss.
Before he can say anything, I continue. I can’t risk him opening his mouth and changing my mind. “You became this for a lot of reasons. Good reasons. Remember those when you feel that conflict. Remember how great you are at this. Remember how many more dark places you can shine light on.”