They were an attractive couple, both of them tall and slender and fair, with not dissimilar facial features-long narrow noses and penetrating blue eyes. I’ve noticed that couples grow to resemble one another after they’ve been together a long time, and I suspect this is largely the result of their having each learned facial expressions from the other. The same thing happens on a larger scale, doesn’t it? The French, say, shrug and grimace and raise their eyebrows in a certain way, and their faces develop lines accordingly, until a national physiognomy emerges. Have you observed how older persons will look more French, or Italian, or Russian? It’s not that the genes thin out in the younger generations. It’s that the old have had more time to acquire the characteristic look.

The Thompsons had been married for a decade and a half, long enough, certainly, for this phenomenon to operate. And, spending as much time as they did together (living in a small house in one of the northwestern suburbs, working side by side in their shop) they’d had ample opportunity to mirror one another. Still, the resemblance they bore was more than a matter of shared attitudes and expressions. Why, they looked enough alike to be brother and sister.

As indeed they were.

William and Carolyn attended my church, though not with great regularity. I’d heard their confessions from time to time, and neither of them disclosed anything remarkable. I didn’t really get to know them until Bill and I were brought into contact in connection with a community action project. We got accustomed to having a few beers after a meeting, and we became friends.

One afternoon he turned up at the rectory and asked if we could talk. “I don’t want to make a formal confession,” he said. “I just need to talk to someone, but it has to be confidential. If we just go over to Paddy Mac’s and have a beer or two, could our conversation still be bound by the seal of the confessional?”