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1 " She made herself ill remembering her last words to him, hearing them over and over as she carried her bucket up and down the stairs, as she ate her lonely soup, as she sat in the confessional before the priest. “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.” She leaned on the partition, feeling the dampness at her forehead and her breast from the holy water’s anointment. “It has been one month since my last confession.” “And what sins have you committed since then?” Father Marche’s question was so familiar, his cadence always precisely the same, kind but tired, a little bored. Violetta always gave her rote response: acts of laziness and selfishness, disobeying the prioress, taking the Lord’s name in vain. Not today. Her words choked her. She could hardly get them out. “I have lied to a friend.” Father looked at her through the grate. He’d never done that. “This weighs on you.” She nodded; tears spilled from her eyes. “It is unforgivable.” “Nothing is unforgivable with penance and contrition,” he said with a kind of faith Violetta could not muster. He went on about Hail Marys; she said them aloud in a daze. He gave her absolution, but it did nothing to ease her mind or heart. As she left the confessional, she felt diseased by her own actions. Mino thought she didn’t care. But apart from music, he was the best thing in her life. "
― Lauren Kate , The Orphan's Song