Sand from a Broken Hourglass at seventy years old. That was still the unsolved mystery of a long lifetime. Bill Reilly, his sponsor at AA, had blamed his own alcohol problem on being abused by a priest when he was a kid. Lochlin had thought of Father MacKay. He’d always hated the guy, but didn’t know why. Maybe the reason had been there all along, buried under safer memories. Waiting to be rooted out. He needed to find blame, and in it, absolution.
Scotch was usually liquid armour against marauding dreams, but that night it must have fuelled them, every one a scrap of memory. Chaotic. Disjointed. For the first time since his last real bender, he awoke not knowing where he was. Junis made a comment about the fatigue in Lochlin’s face, but not about his breath. And he went ahead with the second treatment. Lochlin ghosted through a shop of curios: touched them, sank into them. Like quicksand. His voice cracking in choir practice. University economics exam, palms slick with sweat. Splitting his lip on a hardwood floor, and glaring up at the offending rocking horse. Father MacKay beckoning him down the stairs at the back of the sanctuary. He tried to hang onto that one—force it to drag him along to its conclusion, but it slipped from his grasp. Junis said they should wait another week. Lochlin said not if the doctor wanted to see his money.
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