Perfect Contrition

To cope with his anxiety Waneright continues a longtime affair with his paramour Dare, a New York City-based, Asian-American nurse practitioner he met in Rwanda before the genocide. He also drinks with his confidant Lucky Freddy, a parishioner, local liquor storeowner, smalltime gambler and the local sheriff’s brother Jake.

Waneright’s anxieties escalate after the altar boy Al turns up dead. Jake determines the cause is a fentanyl overdose.

Complicating matters, Dar arrives on the pretense of researching the circumstances of Al’s death for a fictitious study about opioid-related deaths she’s contrived, but her true intention is to glimpse Waneright’s clerical life upstate.

The following day another altar boy, Sig, is found dead on his family’s estate hanging from a tree. The sheriff, rules the death a suicide.

Sig’s father Rich tells his daughter Hildy, who is Sig’s twin, that Waneright violated Sig and is responsible for his suicide. Rich explains he plans to sue the Catholic Church for the wrongful death of his son and use the money to restore his family’s fortune and influence by reopening the salt mine. Hildy rejects her father’s claim arguing Sig would have confided the priest’s alleged abuse to her.

Later, Hildy tells Waneright in the confessional box that she believes her father killed Sig. When asked if she can prove it Hildy says no but insists she knows Rich did it. She also hints that Rich sexually abuses her. Waneright understands the accusation of sexual abuse against him could at the very least tarnish his reputation and possibly ruin his career.

Dare informs Waneright that Hildy has pointed to evidence proving Rich is the source of fentanyl, that Rich killed her mother and Sig, and sexually abuses her.

Convinced of Rich’s guilt on all counts, Waneright meets with him in an abandoned artist’s studio where he strangles Rich then buries him in a forest.

After Waneright risks his life and soul in a mortal act of revenge, Hildy reveals to him that she and Sig were the source of heroin and that Sig killed himself due to guilt for contributing to Al’s accidental death. She admits that her father did not sexually abuse her. Instead, she and Sig engaged in an incestuous relationship.

The revelations shatter Waneright. Instead of attaining redemption and peace of mind, he falls deeper into sin and regret.