“The full board hearing begins tomorrow afternoon,” Wade said.

“Are you ready to walk into that room?”

“I’m ready,” I said.

I lifted the 1979 confession letter off the car seat and held the yellowed paper tightly in my hand under the bright afternoon sky.

I crossed the gravel church parking lot with the yellowed 1979 confession lying flat inside my leather pastoral logbook.

The afternoon air felt cold on my neck and carried the faint scent of wet oak leaves from the woods behind the cemetery.

The heavy double doors to the sanctuary council chamber already stood propped open when I came down the hallway at three forty-five.