Chapter 21 Hera - St Jude

• The chill inside St. Jude’s on a Tuesday evening was a steady, damp reminder of the stones themselves, older and more enduring than any soul who passed through its heavy oak doors. For Hera, it was the sound of silence that supressed and subdued her. It wasn’t an empty silence; it was a filled one, full to the brim with whispers of guilt and longing, all pressed up against the soaring, Gothic arches. She shifted slightly on the hard wooden kneeler, adjusting the simple, dark wool coat she wore, feeling the familiar, nervous pulse in her wrist.
• It had become her ritual. Every Tuesday, four o’clock, without fail. Not that she was especially pious, no. Not that her sins were grand or worthy of such rigid devotion. Her sins were entirely internal, entirely focused on the man waiting just beyond the thin wall of the confessional booth.
• Father Richard.