The Confession Booth

The confession booth had been broken for nearly three months when I heard Joseph Desai confess to murdering my sister.

I should have fixed it sooner.

The latch had warped during the last monsoon, just slightly, the kind of swelling you ignore for a week that somehow becomes a season. Father D’Souza kept bringing it up after mass, patting the wood and saying things like “God hears all, but the door should still shut, no?” I’d nod and promise, but broken things have a way of becoming part of the furniture in Goa. Like plastic chairs with one short leg, or the tiled step outside the vestry that everyone learned to step around.

My name is Samik Fernandes. I’ve worked at St. Mary’s Church for fifteen years. Not because I’m particularly pious. It pays. It keeps me in the house I grew up in, lets me walk to work, and most days, no one asks too many questions. Churches are good at that. They collect secrets quietly, the way old wood collects damp — slowly, invisibly, until something starts to smell.

That Tuesday morning, I was wedged behind the confessional, trying to pry off the ventilation grate. It had rusted shut. Monsoon air does not just soak the walls here, it makes them clingy too. My screwdriver slipped twice and I cursed under my breath, wiped sweat on my forehead with the back of my palm. Then I heard the footsteps advancing towards me.

Heavy ones. Slower than usual.

I didn’t even have to look up. I knew that gait. Joseph Desai walked like a man pulling something behind him, invisible but real. He always had. In a place like Anjuna, you know everyone’s walk before you know their name.

I should’ve said something. Tapped the grate maybe. Made some noise to let him know I was back there.

But I didn’t.

I went still, crouched like a child hiding under a bed. The light rays came in through the stained glass in thin strips and I watched dust floating through them similar to the ash floating in water.

Then the voice came.

“Father, Bless me… for I have sinned.”

The panel muffled it, but it was not enough. I knew it instantly. Joseph. The mayor. The man who’d spoken at Ma’s funeral like he’d meant it, saying things about “grief shared by a community” and “loss that ripples.”

“I killed her, Father,” he said. “The Fernandes girl. Twenty-three years ago.”

I dropped the screwdriver. It hit the floor with a sharp crack, like dry wood snapping.

For a second I thought he might have heard it. But he didn’t pause.

“I’ve carried this for so long,” Joseph went on. “Priya. Her name was Priya. She was young. Righteous.”

Righteous.

I pressed my hand to the wall beside me. It was warm, solid, familiar. I needed something to hold on to.

Because this couldn’t be happening.

Priya hadn’t been murdered. She had vanished. She’d left a note. A single sentence: “Don’t look for me.” Papa searched every police station in the state. Ma waited by the window for a year, maybe more. But no one ever found her.

She’d run. That’s what everyone said. Too smart for this town. Probably working in Mumbai. Maybe London.

But Joseph was confessing to killing her.

“I see her face all the time,” he said, voice cracking now. “At night. In my dreams. When I pass her brother in the church…”

My breath caught.

He was talking about me.

I nearly stood. I badly wanted to tear through the booth, shake the truth out of his own mouth, scream it into the walls until the all the saints on the stained glass turned away.

But something stopped me.

Maybe it was fear. Maybe instinct. Maybe something older — a voice that said, listen first.

Father D’Souza’s voice came next, low and careful. “Tell me what happened, my son.”

“She came to my office,” Joseph said. “It was late. Past nine. The watchman had gone. She said she had proof. Documents. She’d figured out what was happening with the land sales. The forged papers. She was going to blow it wide open.”

I remembered that scandal. Half the village had lost their homes, overnight. Some signed things they didn’t understand. Others weren’t even asked.

Joseph was just a municipal officer then. Young. Ambitious.

“She said the people deserved to know the truth.”

He paused.

“We argued. I grabbed her arm. She pulled away. Hit her head on the edge of my desk.”

Silence followed. Long. Like a held breath.

“I didn’t mean to. I didn’t plan to.”

Father D’Souza said nothing for a while. Then I heard his voice again, soft, almost floating. Latin words I couldn’t translate. The shape of forgiveness.

Rustling clothes. A door closing. Silence.

I didn’t move.

Not for a long time.

I kept staring at the grate, the cracked wood, the faint smell of incense and old varnish. I thought about Priya and the last time I met her. She had made me toast, said she was going out, ruffled my hair like I was five.

She never came back.

I do not clearly remember leaving the church. I just remember sitting on the front steps of our house later, my head in my hands, the ground was still wet from last night’s rain. Our old house hadn’t changed. Same peeling blue paint. Same rusted gate. Same wind chimes she hung when she was sixteen.

I think I sat there until evening.

Joseph Desai had killed my sister. And I was the only one who knew it.

…___….

For the next few days, I moved like someone walking in water.

I saw Joseph everywhere. At the fish market, laughing with vendors like he always did. At the municipal office, signing papers, nodding at tired men who needed permits and women who needed signatures to keep their land.

On Sunday, he stood beside his wife at mass, daughters on either side, lighting a candle at the Virgin’s feet. His hands didn’t shake. His voice didn’t crack. He smiled at the baby in the pew ahead like he had nothing to hide.

He looked the same. But I wasn’t.

I started watching him, quietly. Not stalking — just… observing. He took his morning walk along the beach at 5:30 sharp. Same route every day. He paused near the coconut vendor, sometimes bought two. One for himself, one for the stray dog that always waited.

Office by nine. Lunch at that same whitewashed place near the old post office. Home by six. Routine like clockwork. Predictable, calm, polished.

But now I noticed things.

He never looked at me anymore.

He used to nod. Raise his hand. Once, he offered to drive me home in the rain. Now, nothing.

And when he lit candles in church, I watched his fingers. There was a tremor. Just a flicker. You wouldn’t see it unless you were looking. But I was looking.

He came to confession again. That same week.

Sat in the same booth.

Father D’Souza was already inside. I was fixing the hinges on the votive candle stand, maybe ten feet away.

Joseph didn’t mention Priya this time. Just said something vague. “I lied again. I’m afraid of what it will cost.” His voice was lower. “I want to do the right thing. But the right thing… it’s so hard, Father.”

When he left, I stood at the door and watched him walk away.

He passed me without turning. But I know he saw me.

That night, I opened my Papa’s abandoned old trunk in the back room. It still smelled faintly of mothballs and sandalwood. I hadn’t opened it since Ma died. I didn’t want to remember how she sat for hours beside it, pulling out old photo albums, letters, recipes Priya had written out for her.

At the bottom, wrapped in brown cloth, was a tin box.

Inside were papers. Newspaper clippings about the land scam. Maps. Handwritten lists. Names. One page had lines drawn in red, linking municipal departments to property sales, sale deeds to middlemen, middlemen to money that never showed up in bank accounts.

At the bottom of that page, in Papa’s tight, teacher’s handwriting:

“Joseph Desai. Involved. Possibly salvageable. Priya to meet. Urgent.”

I sat on the floor with the old truck open beside me. The night crawled past. I read every note twice, sometimes aloud. There was no music. No flash. Just facts.

My sister didn’t die chasing drama.

She died trying to save someone.

Trying to save him.

I imagined her walking into Joseph’s office, shoulders squared. Telling him, you still have a choice. Telling him, I can protect you if you do the right thing.

And him choosing the wrong one anyway.

I couldn’t sleep.

That’s when I began thinking about the screwdriver. Not the one I dropped, but the one in the toolkit under my bed. It had a blue handle. Heavy. I’d used it for years to repair kneelers and altar frames.

I held it in my hand for a long time that night.

Not because I wanted to use it. But because I needed to know if I could.

Would it be justice? Would it make anything whole?

When the birds started, I put the screwdriver away.

The next morning, I went to his office.

He looked up when I entered. His face didn’t change. He didn’t smile. Just closed the file he was reading and folded his hands.

“I know,” I said.

He didn’t ask what I meant.

“You were behind the booth,” he said. “That day. I heard something fall. I thought maybe it was… God, I don’t know what I thought.”

“Why didn’t you say something?”

“I kept waiting for you to come.”

“I needed time.”

“I understand.”

He stood slowly, walked to the window. His back to me.

“You could report me,” he said. “You should, maybe. I’ve imagined it. Police. Press. My wife finding out.”

“Why didn’t you tell anyone? All these years.”

He didn’t turn.

“Because I was afraid,” he said. “I thought I could carry it. Live with it. Be good in other ways. But that never… balanced it out.”

Silence.

“I see her,” he added. “In my daughters. In mirrors. Sometimes in dreams. Sometimes not even in dreams.”

I said nothing.

Finally, he turned around.

“What do you want from me?”

I didn’t answer right away.

Because I didn’t know.

Because I didn’t know what justice looked like anymore.

I had imagined this moment so many times. Her face, rising between us like fog. My voice, firm. His shame. Maybe even a confession written down, signed. Maybe court. Maybe ruin.

But none of that felt enough. Or maybe it felt like too much. Too late.

All I said was: “Tell me everything. From the beginning.”

And he did.

He told me how Papa had reached out to him. Offered a chance to come clean. Told him the story could be shaped, that it didn’t have to burn everyone down.

He told me how he’d said yes at first.

And then changed his mind.

That Priya had come to confirm the details. That they’d argued. That she threatened to go public on her own.

That he panicked.

That she hit her head.

That he had buried the body.

Alone.

No one else knew.

Not even his wife.

When he finished, I stood up.

And I left.

I didn’t know what I would do. I just knew I couldn’t breathe in that room anymore.

That night, I went to the church.

I didn’t light a candle.

I sat in the second pew from the front. Where Priya used to sit during mass.

I looked at the confession booth.

Still broken.

Still waiting.

…___….


It rained the next morning.

The kind of quiet, steady rain that doesn’t flood or shout. Just falls. As if it’s been falling for years, and only now did I notice.

I opened the church early. Lit the incense, wiped the pews, watered the money plant Father D’Souza insisted on keeping near the sacristy.

At half-past nine, Joseph arrived.

He didn’t speak.

He just stood in the aisle, looking at the confessional. His shoulders hunched slightly, like he wasn’t sure if he was meant to kneel or beg or speak at all.

I kept polishing the brass on the altar. Let him wait.

After a while, he came and sat beside me. Second pew from the front.

Right where Priya used to sit.

“I still have the files,” he said. “Your father’s notes. Some others too. From my side. Names, amounts, forged signatures. Some of it… it’s enough to bring down the others. The real ones.”

He didn’t look at me when he spoke.

“Let’s say we use them,” I said. “Let’s say we go after the people who profited from what happened. And what about you?”

He was quiet for a moment.

“I’ll tell the truth. All of it. Publicly. I’ll resign.”

“And your family?”

“They’ll leave me,” he said. “I think they already know. Or feel it. That something inside me broke a long time ago.”

“You’ll lose everything.”

He nodded.

“I already did.”

We sat in silence for a while. The fans whirred above. The church smelled of polish and wax and rain.

“Why now?” I asked finally. “Why offer this now?”

“Because someone needs to know she didn’t die for nothing.”

It wasn’t an answer. But it was honest.

Later that evening, I pulled out Papa’s notes again. I read them slower this time. Less like evidence, more like letters. He hadn’t just written names. He’d written people.

He wrote, “These are our neighbours. Not all are innocent, but not all are villains either.”

He wrote, “If we expose everyone, we burn the village down. But if we stay silent, we build on ashes.”

He was trying to find a middle road. Not to protect the guilty, but to spare the innocent from collateral damage.

That night, I sat in front of Ma’s photo. Lit a lamp.

“I found them,” I said. “I found what happened.”

Her smile in the photo stayed the same. But in my head, she closed her eyes and said thank you.

The next few weeks blurred. Joseph and I met in the church office, mostly after dark. We laid out documents, typed lists, recorded voice notes.

We didn’t laugh. We didn’t talk much outside the work. But there was a quiet rhythm to it.

He handed me a letter one evening. “For my daughters,” he said. “If something happens. If they ask why.”

He also handed me the location of Priya’s body. Said he wanted to help bring her home.

I called the police anonymously. Told them where to dig.

The story broke in stages.

First, a journalist from Panjim picked up the corruption angle. Then a second wave of reporting uncovered the body. There was speculation, outrage, calls for justice.

But Joseph confessed before they could dig too far.

He stood on the church steps and told the whole town.

Said her name.

Said he was sorry.

Said he was ready to be punished.

Some people shouted. Others cried. His daughters didn’t come to court. His wife moved to her sister’s in Margao.

But he went to prison without protest.

He wrote to me once from there.

“Thank you for not killing me when you had the chance,” it said.

I didn’t reply.

Not yet.

Maybe not ever.

But I did keep working at the church.

Fixed the roof leak. Sanded the pews. Painted the back gate. People started saying I looked more settled. Father D’Souza stopped asking about the confessional.

It’s still broken.

Warped at the hinge, the wood still swollen from monsoon. If you kneel just right, you can hear every word from the other side.

But no one’s confessed anything that heavy since.

Sometimes I sit in the pew and talk to her. Tell Priya about how Joseph looked in court. Tell her that Papa’s files helped more than she ever imagined. That at least six families got their land back. That the real estate bill changed because of her story.

I tell her that the truth hurt, but it also healed something. Not everything. But something.

Sometimes I ask if she’s proud of me.

She doesn’t answer.

But the church feels quieter now.

As if it’s breathing easier.

As if it’s carrying one less secret.

The booth is still broken. I like it that way.

Not because I want to hear more confessions.

But because some truths were never meant to be hidden.

Not behind a veil. Not behind a priest.

And definitely not behind silence.

…___….
END
…___….