Regret

Scarlet began to wander around her life in a daze. No physical pain or catastrophic event could distract her from the hell that played over and over in her mind. Although she hated the word, regret was now part of her mental vocabulary. Too many midnight scandals found at the bottom of a tequila bottle. Too many mornings spent searching a strange bedroom for her underwear. Too many times she’d prayed that the stranger in the bed would not wake to ask her questions or even her name. Too many hot showers spent trying to scrub the sins of the night away.

In the past, Scarlet claimed not to believe in Catholic guilt; but here it was. Contrition was no longer the right word for the scar she wore at the pit of her stomach. Sunday mornings, before entering the narthex, she paused and drew a deep breath to muster the courage to enter God’s house a whore. Scarlet cried through the Our Father: lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil. Could she really with any conscious take communion? Scarlet carried her rosary with her at all times now. Somehow by holding those beads she hoped to be absolved of her transgressions. But could praying to a virgin really be that helpful?

Scarlet had broken the one promise that she had made Declan. She had participated in the same indulgence that had killed him: unprotected flesh. Above all else, this is what was killing her. That one moment of drunken idiocy, was the parasite that gnawed at her already tattered heart. How could she recover after breaking such a promise?