Page 37 of Splintered
Hehadseen Father Mathew before: mowing his graveyard outside of his church.
“Why is Evan in counseling?” Ben blurted before his butt hit the living room chair. Dr. Kao and Father Mathew sat on the couch, the couch where Evan had seized and nearly died. Every blink, and he saw it again: Evan’s pitch black eyes, his arched spine so viciously bent he thought it would snap in two. “How long? And why withyou?”
He didn’t mean it to come out so harsh.
Dr. Kao and Father Mathew shared a long look. Dr. Kao’s folded her hands around her coffee mug. “Father Mathew and I work together across the entire spectrum of care. From the medical—the physical body and mind—to the spiritual. The health of the soul.”
“But Evan doesn’t believe in any of that.”
“Evan has been experiencing a crisis of faith,” Father Mathew said. His voice was laced with something old, the sound of deserts and antiquity. Faintly accented, a life livedelsewhere. “He came to me several months ago and asked for my advice.”
“About what?”
“Evan was at a crossroads. He had made a choice, but was struggling through it. We walked the path together to a point where he was happy. And then another choice was forced upon him. All of the consequences of each choice were beating on his mind and breaking his soul. He was drowning.”
“Choices? What choices?” Enough of the double talk. Ben slammed his coffee cup on the side table. Coffee sloshed over the side and onto his cast. “Dammit, what did he talk to you about?”
“You,” Father Mathew said. “You, Ben.”
He inhaled sharply. Sat back. His gaze darted to Dr. Kao. She watched him, her eyes pinched.
“The first time Evan came to see me, he showed me those rings.” Father Mathew pointed to the hallway and Evan’s packed belongings. The black velvet box perched on top, sucking in the light from the foyer. “He said he wanted to get them blessed, but that he was afraid. Terrified. He had so many questions.”
“He wanted to get the engagement rings blessed?”
“Evan grew up when the Church was in a different time. He went to Catholic school his whole life, and many of the priests who taught him were adherents to pre-Vatican Two creeds, even in the eighties and nineties. Their clinging to an old tradition was their little rebellion against the pope and God, it seems. Evan’s faith was shaped by these beliefs from an older, out of touch faith that wasn’t walking in sync with the modern world. Naturally, he didn’t care for that faith or for the promises it offered.
“But faith is a tricky thing. We can run from it. We can hide from it. We can ignore it. But the seeds God plants inside of us will always germinate. It doesn’t matter how long that takes, or where. Or even how. Evan left the Church, he said, and never thought twice. Until he decided he wanted to marry you.”
Ben shook his head, a rejection of Father Mathew’s words and the picture of Evan he was painting. “Evan never said he wanted to marry me. He never even hinted at it.”
“He wanted to surprise you. He told me some of his plans to propose, but I swore I would not tell.” Father Mathew’s eyes gleamed like he was sharing an inside joke, something funny.
Ben glared.
“He called you the love of his life,” Father Mathew said simply. “He said he knew you were the one from the day he met you. That every day since was just proving to himself that he was right. But the more he was sure he wanted to be with you forever and the more he wanted to marry you… the more that old, dusty faith rose inside of him. Hellfire and brimstone. Eternal damnation. He hadn’t cared when it was just him and when he was single. But in the thinking ahead. In thinking of you, and about creating a family with you. Evan had questions about eternity. About the nature of love, and about himself.”
“He’s never believed he was going to burn in Hell.”
“And I assured him he would not,” Father Mathew said. His voice was a gavel falling, the sound of the earth settling. Rock sliding on stone. Finality. “With me, Evan was walking a path back to his faith. He was realizing he was not the monster he’d been forced to believe he was.”
“He never said any of this—”
“He did not know how you’d react. But he was gaining strength in his personal faith, enough to where he felt God’s blessing over your love. And he was ready to propose.”
“But he didn’t propose,” Ben whispered. “He never did.”
“Another choice was forced upon him.” Father Mathew stared into Ben’s gaze. “New York.”
Ben pitched forward, burying his head in his hands. He didn’t want to hear it. He didn’t want to hear that Evan had decided on New York over him, had been to counseling with a priest to work through it, all of it, in secret. Evanhadbuilt a secret life he didn’t know anything about, but instead of Grindr and secret lovers, it was a priest and spiritual counseling.
“He struggled with the job opportunity that fell in his lap. He’d worked so hard, always fighting to be the best, to succeed. To prove himself. He was fighting his past as much as the world, fighting his own shadows and hauntings of failure. He’d been given the message, somewhere, that who he was meant he was less than everyone else. And he’d made himself a promise, he’d said, as a younger man: to never let anything get in the way of his success. To be boundless. Limitless. But he was afraid he was breaking his own promise by wanting to stay here with you. And he didn’t know which path to follow: the path of marriage and faith and family and love. Or the path of change. He knew he could be successful in New York. He could find another lover, he’d said.”
Ben groaned. He bit his lip until he tasted blood. To hear himself be talked about so disposably, like trash already thrown out, something forgotten, out of sight and out of mind. And after hearing about Evan working his way to a proposal.
“But Evan said he’d never find another man he could love as much as you.” Father Mathew leaned forward and rested his hand on Ben’s trembling shoulder. “Evan was paralyzed. He’d found the love of his life and had wrestled with his demons. He’d found a peace where he was content with who he was and with God. And then…” Father Mathew sighed.
“He didn’t know what to do. His mind was going a million miles an hour, all day, every day. We spoke about how being boundless wasn’t just about professionalism. Being limitless wasn’t only about the career ladder. Being limitless in love, accepting what God offers us. Being boundless when we find a soulmate to walk this life’s journey. Being brave enough to embrace love in all its forms. That true peace comes from embracing our lives with love and not trying to prove something to the world.
