“Weird that you have a mother. I thought you fell from the sky. You know, like a meteor. Or an alien.”
Or a god.
He smiled slightly but still didn’t look at her.
“I have a mother and a father. I love my mother. I hate my father.”
“You’ve got one up on me. I hate both my parents.”
“You don’t hate your mother.”
“No. But I don’t like her very much, either. I think the feeling’s mutual.”
“She loves you.”
“Are you sure about that?”
“How could she not?” he asked, as if it were the most foolish idea in the world to consider for one second that anyone could not love her.
Eleanor fell silent again. She’d never had a more painful conversation in her life. Even her allocution before the judge when she’d pled guilty for the car thefts had been less awkward and uncomfortable than this nightmare chitchat.
“Why did you come here tonight?” Søren asked her, his eyes still on the wall in front of him.
“I wanted to talk to you,” she said. “I had a question.”
“What question?”
“I don’t remember it now. Seemed important at the time.”
Søren clasped his hands together and rested them in his lap. He wasn’t praying now. At least it didn’t seem like it. It looked more like he was trying to control himself, trying to hold his hands down to keep them from doing something. Doing what?
“This is going to be difficult for us,” Søren said. “You and I working together. You understand this?”
“I …” She paused and thought about the question. “I think I do.”
“I’m a priest. Do you also understand that?”
“No.”
“No?”
“Of course I don’t understand why you’re a priest.” The words she’d been holding back since the day she met him rushed out. “You’re twenty-nine and you’re the most beautiful man on earth. You could have any girl in the world you wanted. You’re brilliant and you could do any job you wanted. You could get married and have kids. Or you could have crazy sex with anyone you wanted whenever you wanted to. This is fucking Wakefield, Connecticut. You walk two miles south of here and you reach the end of the world. There’s nothing here for you. You’re wasted in this place. You could be running the world if you wanted and the world would probably be okay with that. I hate following the rules, but I would follow you into Hell and carry you back out again if I had to. Do I understand why you’re a priest? No, and I don’t think I ever will. Because if you weren’t a priest …”
“If I weren’t a priest,” he repeated. “Do you know what would happen if I weren’t a priest?”
“Yeah,” she said. “You and I could—”
“You and I could do nothing,” he said. “If I weren’t a priest, Eleanor, you and I would never have met. If I weren’t a priest, you would be in juvenile detention right now because Father Gregory wouldn’t have been able to help you the way I did. If I weren’t a priest, you would have a felony conviction on your permanent record. You would graduate from high school in detention and the likelihood of you getting into college would be practically nonexistent.”
Eleanor felt the floor shiver under her feet. Her eyes filled with tears.
“Søren?”
“When I was fourteen I decided to become a priest,” he said. “Once I made that decision, I felt peace in my heart for the first time in my life. And I didn’t know why or from where that peace came. It should have scared me—a life of poverty, a life of celibacy and chastity, a life of obedience to a community that could and would send me all over the world. But I knew there was a reason I needed to be a priest. I was certain of it. And that certainty carried me all the way through seminary and all the way here. And now I know why I needed to become a priest. Because God knew long before I did that I would need to be a priest to find you and help you and keep you on the right path. And I will keep you safe even if it kills me.”
A lone tear traveled down her cheek and dropped onto the floor. Now she was grateful he wouldn’t look at her so he wouldn’t see her crying.
“And if I weren’t a priest,” Søren continued, “I would likely be dead. There were moments when I was your age and younger, foolish moments when I feared I didn’t deserve to live. The things I’d done, the things I wanted to do, taunted me constantly. I worried God had made some terrible mistake when he’d made me, and perhaps the world would be better off if I wasn’t in it.”