Chapter Text
Nick would never admit it out loud, but funerals are his favorite part of the job.
He takes no pleasure when people die, far from it. In fact, he hardly ever knows the identities of the people he officiates funerals for. He’s listed as a volunteer officiant for most of the funeral parlors in the greater Cincinnati area. When he gets the call, it’s usually for a lapsed Catholic—someone baptized as a baby, perhaps a Christmas-and-Easter Christian—whose children are doing their best to lay their parent or grandparent to rest the proper way. Maybe sneak the deceased past St. Peter with the claim that at least they had a Catholic burial.
But the minute he gets that phone call, Nick has to suppress his satisfaction. Death has a way of making the living feel useless. No amount of casseroles and Kleenex and I’m sorry for your loss-es makes a material difference. A cannonball has ripped a gaping wound through a family, and there is nothing anyone can do about it. Except Nick. Because Father Nicholas Nelson can help. He can counsel the grieving family over the phone, or in his office. He can take careful notes on the deceased to personalize the funeral Mass. When the family is too in shock, too desolate to make any decisions, he can reassure them that he’ll take care of everything, that the funeral will be word-perfect.
“Nick?”
All the funeral directors in Cincinnati love Father Nelson. He puts everyone at their ease the moment he walks into a room. Weeping daughters find a shoulder to cry on. Restrained sons nod at him, stiff upper lipped, as he reads psalms of comfort.
“Nick, what do we do?”
He can’t bring back the person they’ve lost, but every time someone walks away from a funeral done by Father Nelson, they can at least say, “It was a beautiful service. Exactly what Dad would have wanted.”
“Nick!” David hisses, shoving the phone into his face. “Did you hear what I just said?!”
Nick doesn’t answer, merely takes the phone from his brother and reads the text messages David just read aloud. David doesn’t have the number saved, but Nick recognizes the digits of Father Fitzpatrick’s cell phone number. Jonas was his classmate in seminary, always a good friend to the family. Nick trusted him to take care of everything today.
513-226-7877: I’m so sorry, I blew a tire on my way from the church. The potholes on 75 this time of year are murder.
513-226-7877: I have to wait for AAA, but I can Uber to Spring Grove once they arrive with a tow. Half hour at best, hour at worst. Is there any way you can wait?
“You’ll have to do it,” David decides, though Nick hasn’t offered. “You have to, Nicky. We’re already twenty minutes behind, and the caterers—everyone’s waiting—”
There isn’t much left to do, and what is left Nick could do in his sleep. Jonas already completed the funeral Mass, the procession has already arrived at Spring Grove Cemetery, led by the hearse. Spring Grove’s staff are the best; the casket is already on the struts over the open grave, which is rapidly filling with rain.
It’s January. People won’t want to spend more than ten minutes at the grave. All Nick has to do is usher the guests outside, say a few words, pull out some Scripture, end with a blessing. They might even say it was a happy accident that Father Fitzpatrick got a flat tire. It’s only right that Stéphane’s son lays him to rest, isn’t it?
“Nick?” David gawks as Nick hands the phone back to him and breezes past him, walking with purpose out of the vestibule where the guests mill about, umbrellas in hand. There’s a visiting clergy office in the back, left unlocked for Jonas to use, and Nick avails himself of it, pressing his back to the wood as soon as the door clicks shut behind him.
He’s been in this office more times than he can count. Rain pounds on the little window to the left, lit by an LED tea light. There are books from every world religion on the shelf, left untouched—every clergyperson worth their salt brings their own—and a green leather chair with studs on the arms in front of a basic desk. Nick lowers himself into the seat and buries his head in his hands.
When he was eight years old, he and David spent Christmas in France. Their parents waged war over the visit months prior, with Sarah reluctant to let her boys on a transatlantic flight alone but unwelcome to join them. But David, at twelve, kept Nick close by, and the unaccompanied minors made it to Charles de Gaulle without incident.
Stéphane drove the boys to Lourdes to see his mother’s family. His aunts and grandmother doted on Nick, praising his French, running their fingers through his auburn hair and commenting on the color. But Stéphane only had eyes for his eldest. David was Stéphane in miniature, in both looks and attitude. They practiced rugby out on the lawn of the family home, joked about David’s middle school girlfriends, and watched football matches on the television.
But one night, near midnight, Stéphane gently shook Nick awake and helped him to dress for the cold. They walked down the silent streets of Lourdes. Nick tried not to thrill at the feeling of his father’s hand holding his, strong and confident and proud. He looked up in awe at the basilica, more like a fairytale castle than any church he knew back in Ohio, and swore he had never seen anything more beautiful. They strolled along the river, and his father tugged him into a stone recess beneath the basilica, lined with metal bars like the kind they had to corral the lines for the roller coasters at Kings Island.
There were no lines tonight. A lone volunteer stood vigil in the cave, avoiding the water that dripped down the crevices in the rock. A few stubborn tapered candles burned in a candelabra at the feet of a statue of the Virgin Mary.
“Regarde ça, Nicolas,” his father instructed him, pointing to the statue. “N’est-elle pas belle?”
Nick squinted up at the statue. There was one just like it in the church he attended in Cincinnati, at least until Sarah gave up the pretense and said she would take her sons to church only if they really wanted to go. David opted out in order to sleep in on Sundays, and Nick didn’t want to rock the boat.
“Do you know what happened here?” Stéphane asked him, and he shook his head. “A long time ago, a young girl named Bernadette lived here in Lourdes. She wasn’t much older than you, mon cher. She came here to this grotto, and do you know what she saw?” He pointed again to the statue. “Notre Dame, mon fils. She saw Our Lady in a vision, wearing a white veil, with roses at her feet. She told her to build a chapel here at the grotto. People come from all over the world to pray at the grotto of Lourdes and to be cured by its holy water.”
Nick’s eyes, big as saucers, fixed on the pool of water behind the volunteer. What had seemed dank and damp before was now a source of pure magic.
They knelt below the statue, not minding the water that soaked their knees. After all, what made the rainwater and melted snow so different from the water of the grotto? It was all under the same holy boundary beneath the basilica. Stéphane nudged Nick. “Your brother,” he said, “is a good boy. He is fun, a favorite of the girls. When he’s older, maybe he will take over the business I’ve built here. But you, Nicolas…”
He smiled, and in the light of the tapers, the smile felt like the most promising gratification. “I have plans for you. You have a good heart, a pure heart. Like Bernadette. My father, he never let me join the church. I was his only son, he wanted me to carry on the family name…” Stéphane coughed a bit, choosing to elide over the fact that since the divorce, his sons were no longer Fourniers. “David will have my business,” he said with finality. “And you, Nicolas, you will have my heart.”
The door swings open, and Nick could kick himself for forgetting to lock it. “David, I just need a minute—”
But it isn’t David who walks in. Nick doesn’t recognize him. He’s not wearing the polos and pullovers of Spring Grove staff; the man is in a black suit with a black turtleneck underneath it, one of the mourners. Nick wonders if he’s one of the French cousins who flew over for the funeral. The man has that sort of otherworldly, catwalk-ready quality that so many Parisians exude effortlessly.
The stranger blinks his blue eyes, then averts his gaze. “Sorry,” he whispers, his accent distinctly not French. “Thought this was the bathroom.”
Nick sighs and puts his head back in his hands. “First left as you walk into the welcome center.”
“Right.” Before the man closes the door, he pauses. “Are you okay?”
He lets out a bitter laugh. “Exactly the kind of question people love to be asked at their father’s funeral.”
The stranger blanches. “Sorry,” he repeats, and then he closes the door.
Nick runs a shaky hand through his hair, then tries to pat down whatever mess he’s made of it. In the top drawer of the desk, he finds a pad of paper and a pen and starts jotting down some possible remarks. The story of his childhood visit to the Lourdes grotto seems a good enough place to start. David already took care of the eulogy at the Mass, but this can be Nick’s chance to show how the legacy of Stéphane Fournier will live on, how his wish for his younger son came true.
The pen idles on the page after a few bullet points, churning out scribbles that turn into words Nick would prefer left unseen by anyone else. He tears off the paper and stuffs it into the pocket of his suit jacket. When he exits the office and makes for the doors of the welcome center, dozens of red-rimmed eyes follow him, expectant. Nick clears his throat to get everyone’s attention.“There’s been a slight change in plans. Father Fitzpatrick can’t make it for the rite of committal, but if you’ll all just follow me…”
It’s his Father Nelson voice, gentle and soothing, a shepherd leading his flock to pasture. David joins him up front to prop open the doors, and the attendees file out, their umbrellas blooming and then wilting when they realize the rain has let up.
His mother Sarah stops next to him, putting a hand on his forearm. “Everything okay, Nicky?”
He grants her a tight smile. “It’s fine, Mom. Jonas just hit a pothole, he’s waiting for a tow.”
“How long will he be?” she asks. “Maybe we could start the luncheon early and do the committal when he’s able to get a ride to the cemetery—”
“Mom, it’s okay.” With his free hand, he pats his suit pocket. “I have it under control.”
Stéphane would not be pleased with his final resting place being Ohio. Over the last five years, Nick had urged him to sit down with a lawyer and come up with an advanced care directive, a will, and a burial plan. He had seen too many families bowled over by grief, twice heartbroken not only to lose someone they loved, but to find out how much their death was going to cost them. But every time, his father said, “Non, Nicolas, c'est trop triste! I’m not so old, eh? Not even sixty yet. Plenty of time for that later!”
Well, at age fifty-nine, Stéphane Fournier died visiting family for the holidays without a burial plot purchased, and it would have cost almost six grand to fly his body back to France, not to mention the cost of a plot once they got him there. Besides, his sons and ex-wife live here, so it will make it easier to pay their respects.
David let Nick handle choosing the plot, as long as it wasn’t “somewhere cheap and shitty, we’re not burying him like a pauper.” Nick’s always liked Spring Grove Cemetery. People come here to picnic when the weather is nice. They play movies here in the summer.
The thirty or so assorted guests assemble around the casket, which is suspended on a metal bier above the hole in the earth. The rain’s turned the pile of dirt into a mudslide, which the staff have tactfully covered with fake grass. There’s no headstone yet; Nick has to call the stonemason on Monday to see the final proof before they start to make it. Four gravediggers, muddy up to their knees, wait by the front loader and the vault. He recognizes one or two from the funerals he’s done here before, so he gives them a grim nod as he stands at the foot of the casket.
Despite the cold, his palms are slick with sweat. It takes him a few tries to fish out his travel-sized Bible out of his back pocket and to slip his notes inside the cover. Sarah takes her place next to David and puts an arm around his shoulders.
“Thank you for coming,” Nick announces. “For those of you who don’t know me, my name is Father Nicholas Nelson, and I’m Stéphane’s—I was Stéphane’s—”
He makes the mistake of looking behind him as he gestures to the casket. There are droplets of moisture on it, collecting on the white lilies arranged on the lid and sliding off the sides. He has the irrational urge to wipe the rainwater away. But it doesn’t matter. It’s not like the moisture can bother Stéphane. In an hour, he’ll be encased under six feet of mud. What can a little rain hurt?
And you, Nicolas, you will have my heart.
But Nick doesn’t. He never did. This is the closest he’ll ever be to it for the rest of his life, and it’s a dead organ, embalmed, beatless.
“I—” He swallows hard, tapping his fingers on the worn leather cover of his Bible. “I wanted to say, um—” He looks away from the casket and back to the mourners, who all wear identical expressions of patient pity. Poor dear. So choked up at his father’s funeral, he can’t even speak.
Then he catches the eye of the stranger, who quirks up one thick eyebrow at him. His gaze flickers between Nick and the casket. He might be the only person in the crowd who senses something, other than grief, is wrong.
Nick swallows again and holds the Bible over his heart. He can do this. Ten minutes, fifteen at most, and then they’ll adjourn to the event center for the luncheon, and all he’ll have to do is smile and nod slowly as people approach him and his brother to offer their condolences. He hopes David booked the caterers with the good shit, he’s going to need better than a watered down mimosa.
“He wanted to introduce me, actually.”
Every head turns, including Nick’s, when the stranger steps up, discarding his unused umbrella in the grass and taking his place next to Nick at the foot of the casket. He puts a hand on the small of Nick’s back, a congenial gesture that Nick has to fight not to shrug off. “After Father Fitzpatrick was detained, Nick—I mean, um, Father Nelson—was going to take over this part of the funeral,” the man explains. “And while I’m sure none of us doubt what a brilliant job he would do, I think we can all agree that Father Nelson deserves the chance to mourn with his family. So I asked him if I might pay my respects by leading this part instead.”
The man glances at him from the corner of his eye, allowing Nick a moment to choose. If he pulls himself together, he can do one of his patented-priestly-pats-on-the-shoulder and insist that he’s ready to complete the burial. Better to do that than chance a stranger taking over. He can see David going crimson in his periphery and knows the fight they’ll have over this won’t be worth the temporary reprieve.
So he surprises himself when he nods, and then the man holds out his left hand so Nick can place his Bible with the notes inside into his outstretched palm. Sarah makes space for him so she can put her free arm around Nick’s waist.
The man shakes raven curls out of his eyes and scans the notes Nick slipped inside the cover, his eyes flicking back up to Nick’s once he reaches the end of the list, betraying nothing. Then he shuts the Bible and folds his hands over it. “We who are gathered here today to lay Stéphane Fournier to rest ask that he comes to his eternal home in peace, and that those who mourn his loss will find comfort in the embrace of loving friends.”
“Nick,” David whispers, “who is this?”
“May we remember him at his best,” the stranger continues, looking directly at Nick, “and forgive him his worst. May we honor him by not letting his name or memory die out among us. For all the gifts he gave us, let us be grateful.”
There’s a mutter of assent throughout the crowd, and Sarah whispers back to David, “That’s Charlie Spring, bless him. Friend of mine from work.”
Nick’s brow furrows. Why on earth is his nearing-retirement mother friends with someone who looks even younger than Nick? Is he a nurse at UCMC, or a medical resident? His long fingers, as he cracks open Nick’s Bible, do look suited for surgery. “For those of us who are familiar,” he says, “we now read Psalm 23. The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want…”
Everyone joins in, mumbling through the words they don’t quite remember, though Charlie’s voice calls out strong and clear. When he finishes, he nods to the gravediggers, who step up to the bier and start to loosen the cords the casket sits upon. Sarah lets out a little cry and clutches her sons closer, and Nick freezes, awaiting the dreadful, undignified slosh of the casket hitting the collected rainwater.
But he doesn’t hear it. Charlie steps back from the bier and bows his head, and a soft melody issues forth from his lips, something mournful and sweet. A few sobs stifle when they hear it, consoled by the sound. The words aren’t English, and a flash of heat sears through Nick’s chest at the thought of this stranger singing some nonsense lullaby as his father is buried. But a few snatches of words surface in his memory—Adonai, nafshi, tov—and he realizes.
Charlie Spring is singing in Hebrew.
Nick’s Greek is serviceable, his Latin better, but his Hebrew barely passes muster. It has the same back-of-the-throat r’s as French, so inevitably his Hebrew sentences turn into French sentences about three words in. Language classes were never his forte in seminary. But there’s enough left in the vestiges of those memories to identify this. Charlie keeps his eyes on the casket as it’s lowered, unashamed, almost as if it’s his duty to make sure it’s safely interred. His voice rises in volume the tiniest bit just as the casket reaches the water level, so no one hears the splash, and then the gravediggers pull up the cords and back away so anyone who wants to do the first shovel-full can approach.
The angry color has leached from David’s face. He’s pale now with the effort of fighting back tears, his jaw clenched tight as he shovels some mud out of the pile and into the chasm. Charlie modulates his volume until everyone who wants a turn gets one, until only Sarah and her sons are left and the rest of the crowd makes for the event center for the luncheon.
David fetches the shovel back and hands it to Nick. “Come on. You have to do it.”
Nick stares at the spade of the shovel just as Charlie finishes the song. In the silence, the rain picks up again. All Nick can think about is leaping into the grave and slamming the shovel into the casket lid until it shatters into pulp.
“Nicky,” Sarah says with concern. “Come on, baby, it’s your dad.”
He shakes his head. “I can’t.”
David turns on his heel without a word, fuming as he storms away from the grave. Sarah dithers, unsure which son to follow, and then Charlie interjects, “Sarah, could you show me how to get to the event center? I’m more used to Weil Kahn, I don’t know this complex as well.” The shovel is out of Nick’s hand and back in the pile of earth before he can register his absence, and then Charlie offers Sarah his arm, umbrella raised.
“But what about Nicky?” she asks, lip quivering.
“I think Father Nelson would appreciate a moment alone to say goodbye,” says Charlie. “Let’s leave him to it, shall we? Come on, Sarah.”
The gravediggers look around, uncertain if they should continue with their audience of one. But Nick doesn’t move. A fresh round of rain starts to pour, sliding cold beneath Nick’s collar, and the gravediggers shrug and get started, signaling to the vault specialist. It’s an untidy business, actually burying a body. The machinery grinds noisily in the rain as the front loader pulls huge chunks of muddy earth and dumps them into a layer over the casket, and then the vault is loaded on top. Nick opted for concrete, not bronze. He wants something heavy and final so no ghosts can come climbing out.
He forces himself to walk away when the rain beats down without mercy, shivering all the way back to the event center. His coat drips on the carpet while he hangs it up. The luncheon is in full swing, a subdued murmur of guests sharing memories and loading up their plates with eggs and bacon. Nick does some quick calculations in his head of how long he can escape the well-meaning relatives, but his odds are shit. Someone presses a mug of hot coffee into his hands, another brings him a cookie wrapped in a napkin, and they are so, so sorry.
David’s by the bar, swigging something amber-colored. Lucky bastard.
“It’s just such a shame,” someone—an aunt? a co-worker? why is everyone’s face so fuzzy?—comments to him, oozing sympathy. “He was too young, simply too young."
“Too young,” he echoes.
“And he loved you so much,” she says, and the hand on his shoulder makes his skin crawl. “He was so proud of you, Father Nelson. I’m sure you know that.”
He plasters a smile onto his face. “Excuse me.”
Leaving the mug and the half-eaten cookie on one of the tables, Nick tries to melt into the wallpaper and leave the room unnoticed. His mother catches him, her hand raised in halfhearted greeting, but she doesn’t stop him. And right before he reaches the doorway to the kitchen, he sees him again—Charlie Spring, nursing an orange juice, in conversation with three white-haired ladies but not invested enough to miss Nick’s exit.
Nick walks through the kitchen around the caterers who arrange plates of fruit salad and trays of appetizers. They smile at him in a different way, less my condolences and more yes, we know you’re a mourner, but you’re kind of in our way right now. He finds the backdoor, seizes the handle, and throws himself back into the bracing cold.
About three or four times per winter, Cincinnati conveniently forgets it’s mere miles from the American South and blesses the populace with snow. But most of the time, it spits pouty rain, not cold enough to freeze into ice but plentiful enough to fuck up the roads. He curses the weather, curses Jonas’s inability to maneuver around potholes. Nick had gotten by just fine this morning at Mass, lost in the drone of Jonas’s voice, not thinking about anything at all. He had been counting on putting off all thinking until tomorrow.
“Father Nelson?”
He ducks under the sloped roof, out of the rain, and prepares to put on another wan smile. Clergy have a bad habit of being unable to hide from congregant requests for long. Nick’s lost count of how many times he’s been accosted on his way to the bathroom by a grandmother who wants him to pray for her grandchildren, ignorant of the fact that he’s about to piss himself.
But it’s not someone from church, not a relative. It’s Charlie Spring. “Sorry,” he says, reaching into his suit pocket and handing over the Bible he borrowed. “Wanted to make sure I gave this back to you.”
Nick lets the smile drop as he takes it, and almost as though he can’t quite believe what he wrote, has to double-check, he opens the cover and reads the notes.
- Took me to Lourdes, age 8, Massabielle Grotto story
- Wanted to be a priest
- Successful businessman, beloved father
- Favorite food croque monsieur with a crisp Sancerre
- Favorite psalm 93
- I hate you
- I hate you
- I hate you
- I hate you
- I HATE YOU
- I HATE YOU
- I HATE YOU
“I, um…” He lifts the note and holds it up, letting a few droplets hit and splatter the ink as they fall from the roof. “Thank you for not—”
“None of my business,” Charlie says smoothly.
“And I’m sorry about—when, um, when you saw me earlier, I wasn’t very—”
“Father Nelson, please.” Charlie’s voice is soft, soft as when he sang by the graveside. “You don’t have to make any apologies to me. Not today.” He looks uncertainly at the door. “I should probably—you wanted to be alone, I should—”
He’s the first person with enough tact to realize that Nick doesn’t want to be pestered with attention, which has the peculiar effect of making Nick desperate for him to stay. He’s suddenly seized by the conviction that he cannot, should not be alone right now. “No, please.” He gestures to the empty wall next to him, wishing he still smoked. If they were in Paris right now, it would be natural for him to offer the stranger a cigarette. As it is, they both cross their arms and stare out into the rain.
“Thank you,” he says belatedly. “For what you did back there. What you said, it was lovely.”
“I didn’t know him,” Charlie demurs. “Your mother, Dr. Nelson, she invited me. We’ve shared a few patients since I started in September. She thought she—she said she could use the support.”
Ah. Medical resident, then. “Well, you have a great voice,” Nick says. “What was it you sang, when they…?”
“Oh? Psalm 23, again. Just in Hebrew.” Charlie blushes slightly. “Sorry, I’m not Catholic. I don’t know any of the prayers. But everyone loves a good Psalm 23.”
“It’s the funeral standard,” he jokes.
Charlie laughs. “It’s all so standard, isn’t it?” he asks. “It feels so…inauthentic sometimes. We say the same things, every time. Same psalms, same sentiments, over and over. Funerals feel more like a play than anything real at this point.”
Nick frowns. Normally, he would disagree. Funerals are formulaic, sure, but everyone knows the part they have to play. The same words and sentiments are a comforting script for a family in freefall. At least he always thought so. And no one knew how to perform the script better than he did.
It makes him reconsider how well he’s done at funerals he’s officiated before. Being in this role, the mourner, not the priest, makes him agree with Charlie.
“I always felt like the ancients had it right,” Charlie continues. “We need to bring back wailing women.”
“What, just pay people to scream?”
“Why not? Enlist the professionals. Put it all out there.” He glances down at the piece of paper, crumpled in Nick’s fist. “Works for some.”
His fist tightens around the paper. What comes next belongs in a confessional. He goes every Friday, like clockwork, to the booths in the sanctuary of St. Francis Seraph to confess to Father Gonzalez.
But then he looks at Charlie Spring, and he’s reminded of an angel he saw painted above an altar once. He thinks it was Michael the Archangel, in shimmering armor, a halo floating above his dark curls, his wings spread wide. Michael beating back the forces of evil with his heavenly broadsword. Every twisting, curling feeling in his gut today, every tendril of darkness, of hatred threatening to spill forth and ruin Stéphane’s funeral—Charlie Spring held them at bay today.
“I wanted to scream,” he admits. “I wanted—I wanted to do far worse, actually.”
Charlie nods slowly, carefully, and then there’s no stopping the words.
“Everyone keeps coming up to me and telling me how proud he was, how much I made his dream come true when I—and I just—I want to throttle them.” His voice descends to a shameful whisper. “I just want to shake them and tell them, tell them they don’t know, that they have no idea he—and David’s so—” He crumples up the paper and tosses it to his feet. “Dad used us. He used us both. It just took him dying for me to realize it.”
Charlie blinks, and Nick awaits the inevitable response. Your father loved you, it isn’t right to speak ill of the dead, feelings are complicated after the death of a parent but in a few weeks, you’ll remember how much you loved each other—
“Sounds like a dick,” he offers instead, and a surprised shriek of laughter rips from Nick’s throat.
“Yeah,” he agrees. “Yeah, he was. A total dick.” And it’s not that he doesn’t swear, priests don’t spontaneously combust if they swear, but it feels a touch blasphemous anyway. “I shouldn’t be saying this kind of thing,” he says. “I’m just—you know. Funerals. Stir up a lot of emotions.”
Charlie mimes zipping his lips and throwing away the key, and Nick laughs again.
“I know it’s not really allowed,” he says. “I know I’m not supposed to say it, but I’m angry with him.”
“With your dad?”
Nick takes a deep breath. “With God.” It comes out on a hush, and he waits again for thunder to crash, for a lightning bolt to strike. “With Dad, too. Both, neither, I don’t know. It’s not right, I get that. Shouldn’t have said anything.”
He’ll call Father Gonzalez tomorrow and ask if he would consider listening to his confession a little earlier in the week. People say things in anger they don’t mean. As soon as he confesses this, as soon as he completes his penance, it will be as if it never happened, as if he never felt it at all.
“We should head back inside,” he says. “Mom will looking for me, and I have to thank everyone for coming.” He squeezes by Charlie to reach for the door, and as he opens it, he hears his name.
“Father Nelson?” Charlie’s face is intent, free of judgment. “I think you can be as angry with them as you want.”
Nick hesitates, feeling a nauseous wave rising within him. “No, I—no.”
Charlie shrugs. “The asshole’s dead. He doesn’t have to deal with it. And as for the other asshole, the Capital A Asshole…” He points skyward, then falters. “Ah. Sorry, you’re a priest. Probably don’t want me calling God that. Well, if God exists—and sorry, but that’s a big ‘if’—then…” He shrugs again, then walks past him through the door Nick holds open. “Then he can take it.”
Nick doesn’t follow him inside, not right away. He just considers Charlie’s words, appraising them like heirlooms too delicate to be trusted to hold for long. He scoops up his crumpled note from the wet pavement and heads back into the kitchen, and when he returns to the event space, Charlie Spring is nowhere to be seen.
Sarah commandeers him before anyone else gets to him. “Everything all right, sweetheart?”
“Of course,” he lies. The paper feels like a lead weight in his pocket. “Just needed some air. How are you doing?”
She rolls her eyes and waves her hand. “As well as can be expected, managing your brother.” Discreetly, she points her pinkie in the direction of David’s chair, where he sulks with both hands around a sweating glass of ice water. “Maybe you could talk to him?”
Pastoral care is part of the job description too, even when Nick’s technically not on the clock. But that’s the thing about being a priest. There is no ‘off the clock.’
You’re never not a priest.
“I’ll check on him,” he promises her, and just in case he missed him, he scans the crowd again. “Did that friend of yours leave? Charlie Spring?”
She nods. “Sweet boy, isn’t he? Only a year younger than you.”
Almost the same age. But Charlie Spring is a young doctor at an award-winning trauma hospital with his whole career ahead of him, and Nick, well. Nick just realized that at thirty-one years old, he’s been buried alive.
“Nice of him to step in, wasn’t it?” she adds. “Charlie’s good at things like that.”
Nick wonders what his mother would think of what Charlie had to say outside. Capital A Asshole. He kisses his mom on the cheek before he heads over to David, pulling over a chair by his. David raises his glass in acknowledgment. “Don’t suppose you could turn this into wine for me?”
Nick smirks. “That’s really more Jesus’s department. They don’t teach us that at seminary.”
“Pity.” He gulps some down, and then his phone rings, and Nick cringes. Didn’t he have the sense to turn the ringer off? What if it had gone off during the Mass? David pulls it out and answers a call from ‘Vanessa (Legs).’ “Hey, babe—yeah, it’s over, we’re at the luncheon now. I’ll come over when it’s done.”
Nick is oddly grateful. He didn’t have the least idea how he could counsel David at a time like this, and he figures Vanessa (Legs) will do a better job than he can. Once he hangs up, a small line has formed in front of the brothers’ chairs, and relatives and friends approach in single file to give their condolences and reassure them that it was a beautiful Mass, a lovely burial, a generous luncheon, and it was all exactly what Stéphane Fournier would have wanted from his sons. Nick and David remain seated until there’s no one left in the event center but their mother settling the bill with the catering company and a few workers taking picked-over plates back to the kitchen.
“I’m headed home,” David says as he rises. “There’s somebody I—” His lips press into a thin line; he’s not about to get into talks of premarital sex with his priest brother. Not that Nick cares. That’s a battle the Catholic Church has been losing since its inception. Matthew 7:1, and all that. Besides, people go about grief in different ways, he remembers from his classes on pastoral care. If David wants to lose himself in Vanessa (Legs), let him do that. Stéphane undoubtedly would have approved.
Nick doesn’t exactly have that luxury. But it’s a sacrifice of his own choosing, however much he wants to blame his father. It’ll be a quiet night at the rectory for him. If Father Manolo did the grocery shopping on time this week, maybe he’ll bake something.
He gets to his feet, and he hears the crinkle of the paper in his jacket. “I’m headed back to the grave,” he says.
David glares at him, like Nick’s thrown down the gauntlet in the duel for which son will mourn their father best.
“Just checking the plot number,” he placates him. “I forgot which one it is, have to email the stonemason about it.”
It’s an excuse David accepts. They both hug Sarah on their way out. “When you see your friend,” Nick says as he grabs his damp coat, “could you tell him I said thank you?”
“You could tell him yourself,” she suggests, “if you ever bothered to come visit me during one of my shifts.”
“You always have a patient!”
“And he could keep you company until I’m finished!” She pulls him in for another hug. “I’m proud of you, Nicky. Your father would have been proud, too.”
It’s the last push he needs. Once he sees his mother safely into her car and his brother safely into an Uber, he trudges back toward the grave, under the Railroad Archway, past the Civil War section and the Soldiers Monument. The gravediggers are gone, their work completed, and a muddy patch is all that remains. The lilies are placed at the head in lieu of a marker.
Nick gets on his knees, remembering what it felt like for the water of Lourdes to soak through his trousers all those years ago. Charlie didn’t offer a Lord’s Prayer or a Hail Mary, and Nick has the instinct to close the loop. Instead, he pulls his paper out from under his coat.
The mud squelches beneath his hands as he grabs a few handfuls, not minding his coat cuffs getting dirty. He buries the crumpled up note, wipes his hands on the soaked grass, and leaves it there.
Charlie Spring is wrong. Father Nicholas Nelson cannot be as angry with his father as he wants to be, and so this anger will remain private. It will decompose where it won’t hurt anyone. Stéphane Fournier, if he’s aware of how Nick feels from the vantage point of his eternal rest with his savior, is infused with enough grace to forgive him this momentary lapse.
It’s his anger with God that scares him. He can compact his anger with Stéphane, crumple it, bury it, leave it at the grave. But this anger, it can’t be made smaller. He rings with it, reverberating like a bell as he walks back to his car and starts it, rubbing his frozen fingers in front of the heaters.
He doesn’t turn on the radio as he turns right onto Spring Grove Avenue, headed downtown. He prays.
Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name—the only father I have left—
What am I supposed to do now?