Page 16 of The Auction

Søren studied Daniel with kind, searching eyes. Kingsley had come by earlier with a gift from his medicine cabinet, and the combination of the tranquilizer and the shock were the only two forces keeping Daniel vertical.

“I won’t insult you by asking you how you are. I will only ask you what I can do to help you today.”

Daniel remembered the rush of gratitude, knowing that he didn’t have to dissemble. He could tell Søren anything, confess any secret and it would be absolved.

“If I asked you to kill me, would you?”

The priest smiled. “No, though I won’t judge you for wanting to die. I would, too, in your shoes.”

That helped. It helped that this man who seemed to know all the answers to all the questions that had ever been or would ever be asked…it helped to know that he, too, would want to die if he lost his wife. Except he was a Catholic priest and so would never have a wife. Daniel felt almost sorry for the man.

“Perhaps there’s something else? Something other than a mercy killing?”

“Yes. Maybe. I don’t think I could stand it…” Daniel paused and tried to put his words in order. “If anyone touches me today or talks to me, I won’t make it. And I have to get through this. For her.”

Søren clasped his hands in front of him at the wrist. Daniel didn’t recall ever seeing the Priest of the Underground in his long medieval-looking cassock before. Usually, he was in layman’s clothes at Kingsley’s house—jeans and a white button-down shirt and jacket, or black pants and black t-shirt. In the floor-length black cassock with the tie around the waist, Søren appeared even more intimidating than usual, like a being from an ancient world.

“You want me to keep everyone away from you then?” Søren asked.

Again Daniel nodded. Or tried to. His body and mind seemed to be working independently of each other.

“That I can do for you.”

For the next two hours, Daniel stared straight ahead—he heard nothing, saw no one but for a blur of black behind him hovering like a dark angel. If anyone came to speak to Daniel, Søren would raise his hand to stop them, then he’d lower his head and whisper into their ear. What he said, Daniel didn’t hear. But it worked. Everyone nodded, turned, walked away.

Only at the graveside did Daniel come back to awareness again. He stood staring down at the coffin as friends and family made their way back to their cars. Even the minister and his own parents finally gave up waiting on him and walked away. Only his dark angel remained—not speaking, not consoling, merely present.

“My wife is in a box in the ground,” he said more to himself than Søren. “I should be in it with her.”

A long silence stood between them. Daniel sensed the priest weighing his words.

“Only Kingsley knows this,” the priest began, “but I now have someone in my life. Her name is Eleanor.”

“Pretty name.”

“If something ever happened to my Eleanor…” He paused and took a breath. “There would be no hole, no chasm, no canyon deep enough to contain my grief.”

No hole…no chasm…no canyon deep enough… Daniel felt the truth, the rightness of those words in his soul.

“I’m lost.” His unblinking eyes began to water. “I don’t know what to do.”

“What do you want to do?”

“Sleep. For years maybe. Hibernate. Dig a hole in the ground and bury myself until I can face the world without her.”

“Then do that.”

Daniel turned his head and met the priest’s eyes—eyes the color and strength of steel. “What if I can’t ever get out of that hole again?”

“Do you trust me, Daniel?”

Did he trust Søren? Daniel had friends, loads of them. He had a sister he loved and in-laws who treated him like their own. He still had lunch once a month with the professor who had mentored him in school. If anyone asked who his best friend was, he would have said his eighty-year-old grandfather.

But the day he found out Maggie had cancer, it was Søren he called. Søren, a Jesuit priest fluent in over a dozen languages, the beloved pastor of a small but devoted congregation, and the wisest, most erudite man Daniel had ever met.

And when Daniel told him about Maggie, Søren said exactly the right thing.

“Fuck.”

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