My Father Sold Me to His Oldest Enemy to Play House, and the Old Man Bought the Only Witness Against Him novel · Chapter 18 of 24

Chapter 18: The Truce

The meeting was held in the cathedral hall, at the long table under the font.

The priest sat at the head in his black robe with a cup of tea going cold in front of him.

Six old men from the church committee sat down both sides.

I stood at the back wall with the old man.

Across the room my father sat at the other end in his good grey suit.

The nine men stood behind him, and a lawyer sat at his shoulder.

He smiled when I came in.

"Fathers," he said, to the committee, in his warm voice. "I come in sorrow."

"A family in the church has been torn apart by slander," he said. "A young man was put out of his uncle's house on the word of a girl who is not well."

The priest lifted a hand.

"We are not here to judge. We are here to ask for peace in Holy Week."

"Peace is all I want," said my father.

I did not move.

I had seen him do this at a hundred tables.

He did it so well that a man who knew him was moved by it.

The priest turned to Aris.

"Aristides," he said. "Will the Pallis house walk the Epitaphios under a truce?"

"From Palm Sunday to the Resurrection," he said, "no word against the Mavrakis in the street, no hand raised."

"The Mavrakis walk in front," Aris said. "He has said so."

"It is the custom."

"It is," said the old man. "My son walked behind it for thirty years."

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