The last time I saw Constantine was in church, on Good Friday. The church was dark, the sun had set hours ago.

My friends had stopped attending mass a long time ago. Davy was gone, too. He and his parents had moved to Chicago to manage a new plant for the company that had opened while I was in a psych ward. My mother and I were only there for appearances. I wouldn't be attending the Easter service on Sunday. My belongings were packed into boxes at home; I would be leaving the next day, to go somewhere far away. No one else knew this, though.

A slow tune started playing on the piano, and I realized it was the tune the girl at the psych ward had been humming that night. "Were you there when they crucified my lord," the conjugation began singing. "Were you there..."

The song continued and I played with the ends of my hair. I'd just cut it short.

"Were you there when they nailed him to the tree?"

A figure moved out of one of the pews in front and began limping to the back, to the door. I knew that hobble anywhere. Constantine. I watched as she passed and took my hands off the back crest of the pew in front of me, but without taking her hands off the songbook, my mother grabbed my wrist. Her hold was gentle but unrelenting. I looked back to Constantine.

Our eyes met. She was in the doorway now, a silhouette against the darkness outside. She looked like death now. Her eyes and cheeks were hollow. There was no joy left in her features, only tiredness and sorrow. I watched as she stepped out the door, into the cold night, and I watched her leave.

God forgive me, I let her leave.