“I think it’s time we started preparing for your trip, don’t you?” “You’re still going to let me go?” I ask, my voice cracking with relief. “I thought maybe you might—” In my peripheral vision, I can see his bushy eyebrows slant down in a frown. “That I might punish you for a kiss by taking away something important to you? No. You are a man seeking God, not a teenager who took the family car without permission. But I am letting you go on a condition.” “What’s that?” I ask, ready for anything. Hair shirts, fasting, a hundred rosaries a day, anything—I’ll do it. He nods up at the sun. “That you
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