As God Intended

You Realize It Was Wrong

The newspaper headline hit poor Sherlock with the strength of a meteorite, and nearly sent him tumbling backwards onto the kitchen floor. His father was looking solemn, with his head hanging over top of his breakfast and his fork lying unused at his side. Sherlock merely gaped, ruffling up the pages to better scan what was left here by the reporters. He recognized the face that was looking up at him, though it made no sense why he would make headline news.
"You knew him, didn't you dear?" Mrs. Holmes asked, coming up alongside of her son and looking down at the terrible mug shot they had chosen of Father James. He looked as if he had aged forty years throughout the time of his arrest, for there were deep wrinkles settled within his face and his eyes were dark and gray. It had been years since Sherlock had last seen that man, though this was the first time he had given any thought to him. He was in his junior year of high school, so far removed from that third grade class. Evidentally he had been lost throughout the school system enough to have missed one of their teacher's arrests.
"What has he done?" Sherlock asked quickly, looking up towards his mother with a concerned look upon his face. The woman hesitated, keeping her glass of orange juice poised between her manicured nails and giving her husband something of a frantic glance.
"Read the headline, Sherlock." Mr. Holmes demanded, as if he wasn't brave enough to pronounce those words himself. Sherlock obeyed, looking down upon the headline once more as if to spot something he had missed before. Child Molester Gets Sixty Years. Sherlock's frown deepened, his fingers ruffling at the pages as if he hoped to find a dictionary lodged between them.
"I don't know what that word means." Sherlock admitted at last. "What's...a molester?"
"Shhh!" Mrs. Holmes demanded, springing upon her son and snatching the newspaper from his hands at once. "Sherlock don't say that word around here!" quickly the woman made the sign of the cross, to which her husband and son followed quickly. Surely God will have forgiven them, even if the word had been said purely accidentally. Sherlock's face had grown quite pale now, as he was trying to connect the strings which didn't seem to reach quite yet.
"He's arrested for it?" Sherlock clarified at last.
"Yes, yes Sherlock." Mr. Holmes agreed, his voice sharp and short, as if he wasn't intending to go any farther with that statement. But now Sherlock was curious, wondering if that was just a fancy word for teacher or something like that.
"Mother, what does that mean?" Sherlock asked a bit more forcefully, his fear mounting as he remembered each moment he had ever spent with Father James. Most of that time had been in the classroom, some of that time was regrettably behind closed doors. What did it mean, this word? And did it have any connection to that strange activity?
"It's when..." the woman sighed heavily, trying to choose her words carefully to cater to her son's very limited vocabulary. It was a shielded household; in fact there may as well have been iron armor across the entire exterior! Sherlock had hardly even seen a kiss before; much less understand where babies come from. He knew God, and the rosary, and almost every page of the Bible. In those days he figured those were the only things that mattered, the only things that would keep you safe and pure.
"It's when older men take a romantic interest in younger boys." Mr. Holmes declared at last, saving his wife from this awkward and prolonged silence. Sherlock felt his legs begin to numb, his fingers clenching along the etched wood of their kitchen table as he stared across towards his father's dull, uncomfortable face.
"Romantic?" he muttered again. "Romantic as in...as in what context?"
"Sherlock you're too young to think about these things, dear." Mrs. Holmes insisted, patting her son on the shoulder carefully and tucking the newspaper even farther behind her back. Sherlock faltered, looking between his parents once more and trying to find a reasonable explanation or their silence.
"But I knew him! Shouldn't I at least know what he's being charged for?" Sherlock defended.
"It's nothing to concern yourself over." Mr. Holmes insisted sharply.
"Mother, men aren't supposed to love boys. Men are supposed to love women." Sherlock pointed out, twisting in his chair to scan his mother's worried face. Obviously she could tell her son was thinking too much upon these forbidden subjects, and with the more questions he asked the more troubled he became.
"Certainly dear." The woman agreed. "That's what the Bible tells us." For a moment Sherlock sat stiffly in his chair, staring down at his breakfast with his stomach turning over and over again. He didn't have an appetite any longer, for his brain was beginning to think back into long forgotten territory, into memories he had pushed away because he simply didn't understand them. A romantic interest...romantic interest... Suddenly Sherlock felt his stomach drop, finally connecting the dots which had seemed not to correlate before. He realized now, now after all of these years...
"I'm going to go pack my things for school." Sherlock announced abruptly, pushing out his chair fiercely and scrambling up the stairs before his parents could catch up. He heard their mutterings of concern, but only briefly before he slammed the door to block out any sound coming in or going out. Suddenly the boy's legs gave out, and he went tumbling upon the ground in a panicked heap. A child molester, a criminal...a man who loved boys, a man who summoned boys, a man who touched boys. Sherlock's eyes closed anxiously, with one hand he covered his face and with the other he crept his fingers along the buckle of his belt, remembering a time when different fingers had followed the same path. Had it really been so long, had he really not given it another thought for eight years, simply because he didn't understand the entire interaction? After all of these years he had been keeping a secret he didn't know he had, and carrying a weight he only just realized had been strapped to his back this whole time! He had been...he had been a victim. After all of this time that strange interaction in the office, the one which he couldn't quite understand enough to discredit...it had been wrong! It had been criminal! The man was going to jail for the things he had done to Sherlock, for the things he had done to other boys. It was wrong...