“Parked by the gate.”
“Then I’ll walk with you. I’m leaving as well. I have to get back to my parish.”
“Oh, I thought that . . .” Manuel waved toward the church.
“No, I’m here today as a guest, because I’m a friend of the family. The local parish priest is one of those who assisted with the mass. This church really isn’t a part of any parish. It’s for private use and is open to the public only on special occasions.”
“Ah. When I saw so many priests, I assumed . . .”
“Yes, I suppose it was a bit of a shock for someone not used to it, but it’s a tradition of the region.”
“Folklore,” Manuel muttered contemptuously under his breath.
He wasn’t sure the priest had heard him until he noticed the distinctly cooler tone of the man’s reply. “It’s their way of honoring the dead.”
Manuel said nothing. He pressed his lips together and looked impatiently toward the path that led out of this place.
They started walking.
“My name is Lucas,” the priest said in a newly amicable tone as he held out his hand. “As I mentioned, I went to parochial school at the seminary with álvaro. With all the brothers, actually. It’s just that the others were younger, and I had less in common with them.”
Manuel shook the man’s hand briefly but didn’t stop walking. “Seminary?” he asked, surprised.
“That’s right,” the priest replied with a smile. “But don’t get any funny ideas. In those days all the wealthy boys of the area studied at the seminary. It was the best school around; and besides, since the marquis’s family have always been patrons of the center, it was only logical that their kids should study there. It had nothing to do with a calling to the priesthood.”
“It looks like it did, at least in your case.”
Lucas laughed heartily. “But I’m the exception. I was the only one in my class who wound up going into the Church.”
“You’re wealthy also?”
More amusement. “Another exception. I had one of the scholarships endowed by his honor the marquis for the deserving poor.”
Manuel found it difficult to imagine álvaro at a seminary. From time to time his husband had told stories about his time at university, at a Madrid boarding school, or in high school, but he’d never mentioned his primary school. The thought of a childhood in that rustic setting seemed paradoxical in comparison with what Manuel had assumed. He heard the gravel crunch beneath their feet as they walked. Lengthy pauses and silences between them didn’t bother him at all; they calmed him. With the wind blocked by the trees, he felt the noonday sun beginning to warm his back. It intensified the aroma of gardenias exuded by the hedges around the manor.
“Manuel—can we be less formal with one another? I’m forty-four, the same age as álvaro.”
Manuel didn’t reply. He made a vague gesture that didn’t settle the question. He knew from experience that such a proposal was not infrequently a preliminary to greater intrusion.
“How are you feeling? How are you?” The priest addressed him with familiarity.
The questions caught him by surprise, not so much for their content as for the fact that this was the first person who’d wanted to know. Not even gentle Mei with her load of guilt and regret had asked him that. And though he’d vented his pain and confusion to her as if spitting into her face, the truth was that he hadn’t stopped to ask himself that question.
How was he?
He didn’t know. He had an idea of how he’d expected to be: crushed, knocked down, and sunk deep. But instead he was apathetic and profoundly disappointed, somewhat offended by everything he’d had to endure. That was all.
“Fine.”
“Very well. But we both know that can’t be true.”
“In fact it is. All I feel is unhappiness and disappointment at everything that’s happened. I just want to get out of here, get my own life back, and forget all this.”
“Indifference,” commented the priest. “Sometimes that’s one of the stages of grief that death brings. It comes immediately following denial and before negotiation.”
Manuel was going to contest that, but he remembered himself opposing every statement from Sergeant Acosta as she delivered the news of álvaro’s death, his refusal to accept that news, searching for a life preserver or some way out, rejecting the notion with tortured reasoning.
“It seems you’re an expert in such matters,” he commented disdainfully.
“I am. I deal with death and bereavement every day, as well as other illnesses of the soul. That’s my profession. But it’s not just that; I was álvaro’s friend.” He paused to look for any reaction from Manuel. “Probably one of the very few people who stayed in contact with him over the years and knew the realities of his everyday life.”
“Then you knew more than I did,” Manuel whispered. He was suddenly upset.
The priest stopped walking and looked at him with a grave expression. “Don’t be so hard when you judge him; if álvaro concealed his family matters from you, it wasn’t because he was ashamed of you. It was because he was ashamed of them.”
“You’re the second person to say something like that to me, but I don’t know what that means. I’ve seen them, and they don’t seem so terrible.”
The priest smiled but held up a hand. “álvaro was not in contact with anyone from the manor after he went to the boarding school in Madrid, just out of his childhood. Every time he returned, his family’s rejection became more intense, until finally he didn’t come back anymore. His father died without agreeing to see him, although despite that álvaro inherited the title and its obligations. He came back, took charge of the family holdings, established allowances for family members, and disappeared again. I believe that other than his executor, I was the only one who knew how to find him.” He began to walk along the path again. “I know he was happy with his life. He was happy at your side.”
“And how can you be so sure?” Manuel attacked him. “Were you his confessor?”
Lucas closed his eyes for a moment and took a sharp breath, almost as if he’d just received a blow in the chest.
“Something like that, but not in a formal sense.” He took a moment and regained his calm. “We talked about you a lot. About everything.”
Now it was Manuel’s turn to stop walking. He responded with a wicked smile and explored that unwelcome topic. “Let’s see . . . why are you telling me all this? What do you want? Maybe you don’t see how absurd it is for a priest to try to comfort me for the fact that my husband was hiding his life from me? How do you expect me to feel when I hear he trusted you more than he did me? The only thing that’s obvious to me is that I didn’t know the man I shared my life with. He was deceiving me the whole time.”
“I know how you feel.”
“You don’t know a goddamn thing!”
“Maybe I don’t and maybe I do. What I do know is that right now you’re rejecting everything I say, but I also know that a few days from now things will be different. Come see me when that happens,” he said. He held out a card with the address of a church in Pontevedra. “You knew the real álvaro.” A broad gesture indicated everything in the majestic avenue dominated by the entrance gate. “All the rest was just show.”
Manuel crumpled the card in his fist and nearly threw it on the ground. But almost without thinking he slipped it into the pocket that held the fragrant flower. That was the only thing he intended to carry away from that place. In secret.
They passed through the gate and went out to the road in silence.