Being in the church for the first time, she wanted to take her time, mainly to find out where to use the key she just found. She soon found the confessional booths and thought it was a logical place for the matching lock. She eventually realized that there were no locks, save the six-digit combination scroll locks in the booths.
Being in Bernard’s house earlier, and from other examples she learned from the teens’ investigation, she knew that dates were commonly used as passcodes to open locks. The only dates she figured important for the church were birthdays. The only ones she knew for sure that would be connected to a confessional booth would be priest birthdays. Figuring that information on the previous priest, Father Calvin, would be important, she took out the Polaroid Lydia took of his gravestone which had his birthday, October 24th, 1902, and formulated the code: 102402.
The seat of the booth revealed a letter from a woman named Sylvia Eden. Confiding in Father Calvin, she wrote that she accompanied Magdalene Roberts during a visit to her son in June 1975. She told him of the affair Charles had and the son resulting from it. Magdalene was told that Sofia left Painscreek with her baby, so she launched a search for them, wanting to accept them into the family regardless of the affair.
Supposedly, this two-month search had taken a toll on her health, according to Dr. Johnson, and she died of a heart attack, but Sylvia suspected otherwise. She thought that Magdalene’s medicine was still the same since it had always kept her stable before, but her condition deteriorated. Despite the stress of the search, her main physician back home thought she’d be fine. There was no autopsy since Charles wanted her body to remain untouched.
Sylvia, sharp as she was, wondered if someone could have wanted Magdalene dead and who. She even thought that there was a connection between her death and Charles’s affair with Sofia and the disappearance of her and her child. Finally, she suspected someone, but wanted to refrain from accusing the wrong person and instead hoped and prayed that the truth would someday be revealed.
It wasn’t hard evidence, but Scott was not the only one who suspected that Magdalene’s death was at least unnatural.
Janet added the letter to her bag and checked the other confessional using the same combo from the other booth. That storage booth was empty, so she headed upstairs.
One of the doors was still locked. She eventually found her way into Father Matthew’s office. She checked the shelves of books and sermons on tape and the drawers the girls went through earlier before stumbling upon the locked one. It too had a combination button lock, a four-digit version.
“Birthday,” she thought. She tried Father Matthew’s birthday from Sofia’s locket, 0526, but it didn’t work. She tried Father Calvin’s birthday, shortened to 1024. No dice. Behind her, she noticed the pictures on the wall of Father Calvin and a separate one of Father Matthew working at his desk.
“What other date would be important to you, Matthew,” she asked the photo of him. Then it came to her.
Sofia.
She tried her birthday, 0318. Click. The drawer slid open revealing a key and a memo. It was from a place called The Office of Church Haven in Southampton and was dated two days before Vivian died. It read:
Dear Father Matthew,
We regret to hear that you will not be attending the annual religious gathering event from July 18th till the 23rd. We wish you a swift recovery from your illness so that you may serve the people of Painscreek once again.
Sincerely,
Rev. Todd McDermont
Janet then recalled that Steve wrote that someone lied about their alibi, saying an event was cancelled. She took another look at the photo of Father Matthew behind her and saw that he was writing with his left hand.
“It really was you. But are you the kind of person who would get rid of the evidence? Where would you keep such a thing if you did? Bedroom?”
With the key, she headed into the locked room she passed earlier. In a closet, she found an old journal from the early ‘70s detailing Father Matthew’s origin as an orphan who was brought to Painscreek Trinity Church by Father Calvin at 21 years old. He learns the ropes of the church and picks up a woodworking hobby, making different objects in the attic above Father Calvin’s office. He mentions his “cousin” Sofia and helped bring her into town and get a job at the mansion, and who was also from the same orphanage, St Patrick’s. Meanwhile, they hung out in various places in town and life seemed to be improving for them. They sometimes reminisced about their time at the orphanage together. He’s happy to have her in Painscreek with him.
Another journal detailed his mission work in Indonesia. He was sent there by Father Calvin. The only reference to Sofia was that he left a birthday gift for her in a stump and had written a letter to her about it.
She looked everywhere in that room, checking floorboards for bloodstains, or if they were simply just loose.
Nothing.
She walked out onto the second-floor railing to think. She looked over it and down into the pews. As she looked up, she noticed the floral-outlined window above.
“A window looking out onto the second floor?”
She then remembered a detail from Matthew’s first journal, that he made wood carvings in the attic above Father Calvin’s—later Matthew’s—office.
Quickly, she raced back to the office and frantically looked around for a door next to it, but there wasn’t any. There was literally no other door, locked or otherwise, on the same side of the hall. Where was it?
Sighing, she reentered the office and looked at the photo of Father Matthew again. Checking the floorboards around his desk yielded nothing so she checked the other side. Also nothing. On that side of the room was a small table and a bookcase within a wall on her left. She rested her bag on the table and took out her notes. That’s when she saw it.
Getting excited, she hurriedly put her notes back and took out Steve’s photo of the light sconce—the one no one else could readily identify. She couldn’t see anything special about it at first. She looked to her right at another identical fixture and then back to the one on her left. She did this a few times until she saw the difference.
Upon closer inspection, below the sconce on the left, was a button. Pushing it caused the false light to open, revealing a lock. Knowing what to do, she took out the key from the drain and placed it in. She hesitated, her hand shaking.
“No, he’s not in there,” she told herself. “This key has been in that drain for two years. He wouldn’t be up there now.”
Taking a breath and readying herself, she turned the key. The bookcase swung in, revealing a secret passageway. Janet followed it up a staircase to the attic.
Reaching the top, she found some woodworking tools and a toolbox against the wall on her right side. Ahead of her, she spotted some pieces of wooden furniture, some of which were half completed. There were boxes in another corner. A dark chestnut desk was set against the right wall.
Approaching it, she immediately clocked the murder weapon, an axe stained with dried blood. Snapping a photo, she realized…
“This isn’t Bernard’s. This axe looks particularly worn as if it’s been used regularly, whereas Bernard’s were clearly for display. This was Matthew’s own axe that he used for his woodcarving hobby.”
Next to the axe was a typewriter. There was some blank paper already in it. Curious, she typed the word “Painscreek”. The off kilter ‘e’s from the threat letters Vivian and Dr. Johnson received became obvious.
Opening the top drawer revealed two letters. The first was from Father Calvin. His last letter, and perhaps last confession, to Matthew in November 1984, months before Scott was adopted. In it, he writes explaining that Sofia and Charles had an affair while Vivian was hospitalized. Everyone believed that she and the baby left Painscreek after Vivian found out, but Calvin admitted that he took the boy to St. Patrick’s Orphanage after Andrew gave the baby boy to him. Calvin renamed him Scott.
He wanted Matthew to raise Scott and without telling him about his parents and to give him a fresh start. He hoped Matthew would forgive him for keeping the truth for so long and tells him to just move on and to stop dealing with matters of the heart. He had no idea what happened to Sofia but told him that if God meant for them to meet again, it would happen. Until then, he was to prepare Scott for his new home and raise him well.
The second letter, from Sofia to Matthew, written April 12, 1975, read:
It’s been more than two years since I started working at the mansion. I like this place a lot. Most of the people here are nice to me.
Although I cannot be there with you for your missionary work, I will pray for your success. You were always the noble one.
Thank you for your letter and the birthday present. Do you remember the wishes we made when we were at the orphanage? Yours was to help the unfortunate. Mine was not to be poor anymore. Well, I did not expect opportunity to knock so soon. Maybe heaven is helping me? With all that has happened these past few months, my wish might just come true. Soon I won’t have to be a maid anymore.
I’d love to tell you more about it, but it can wait until you’re back. Things might be different by then. I hope it will be for the better.
Love always,
Sofia Miller
She placed the letters in her bag. The next drawer down was empty. The bottom third one revealed a tape recorder. Opening it, she read the label, “Last Confessional”. Thinking it was regular church business, she placed the tape back and closed the drawer. Leaving the attic, she began thinking why a sermon tape would be in the same desk near the letters and the murder weapon.
And that title…
She returned to the drawer, opened it, and reached for the “Play” button.
A. Renee Art 
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