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the mental fog rolls in with force. All that happened that night, and the next day, and the next week did occur, and if pressed for details I might be able to dredge the particulars from the muddled mix which is my memory of that time. But beyond any singular attempt to go back and relive a moment from the days following Katie’s death, there are only vagaries to be drawn upon. A mix of what is too hazy to remember, and what is made only of questions. What? Who? Why? All gnawing wonderings without satisfaction. Without answer.
    Until now.

Chapter Five
    Sinners
    “Absolution,” Eric says once more, the word barely escaping the rattle and rasp of his thick, shallow breaths. He stares up at me with that lone, pleading eye, anticipation raging in it. Expectation even. A knowing that before he leaves this life and drifts off to the mystery that awaits he will be granted that which he wishes. That which he needs.
    Were he not on the blinding edge between life and death a fuller ritual would be what he seeks. Communion. Anointing with oils. A gathering of the faithful offering prayers for his passage from light to dark, and on to eternal light. But here I suspect he waits for mere words from me. A simple prayer, maybe. The promise of a slate made clean before he passes from this mortal existence.
    This is all he wants. What I am here to offer.
    But I do not. I ease my face back from his, a flash of surprise in his eye as it tracks my slow withdrawal.
    “Father,” he says, his hand squeezing weakly down on mine. “I need absolution.”
    I slip my hand from his tepid grip, breaking the physical connection with little difficulty. With unconscionable intent.
    “Father…” He utters the word almost as a question now, puzzled by my actions. Maybe doubting my convictions. Most certainly afraid that I am not what I should be.
    I fear the same thing.
    “Please…” This soft plea comes with great effort. With fading, terrified breaths. “Father.”
    I stand fully now next to the gurney, my gaze cast down at the man who killed my sister. He is alone before me. Alone in his dying. That sudden realization swimming in his gaze, his perceived hope for salvation drifting away like a life raft caught in some rogue current. He cannot flail like a drowning man might at the sight of his rescue being inexorably pulled away, but behind his stare his mind grasps at possibility. At chance.
    “Our father, who art in heaven…” He begins the prayer, hoping to jumpstart my participation in this very last rite of his being. I stand mute in response, recalling the very same prayer, as I recited it among others as we watched Katie’s casket descend slowly into the hole cut in the green earth. I said it there with true and complete understanding of its meaning, its power. I said it for her.
    I cannot say it for him.
    He seems to try to start the Lord’s Prayer once more, but his will to do so no longer trumps the coming of what is inevitable. His mouth gapes slightly as his eye fixes on me. The fingers of the hand I held in mine stretch out and up toward me. He gasps one more breath, his mouth twisting to make sound, that one word coming once more. In whisper. Almost nothing.
    “Absolution…”
    So soft it comes I could claim to not have heard it, but I do. In that final utterance he is begging for what I am here to give him, and terrible thoughts of symmetry fill my mind and rage in my heart. Did Katie beg? For her life? As this man and the unknown other he spoke of raised a gun and squeezed the trigger and took all that she was, and all she would ever be? If she did, this man did not heed her plea. Gave her no consideration.
    Yet he wants that now.
    I watch him closely, wanting him to know my silent presence in these final moments of his life. Wanting him to feel what it is to be watched as one dies. I am holding a mirror through time for him to gaze at, though I am under no illusion that he has made any connection between Katie and me. He